Story highlights
Curt Schilling has been an ESPN baseball analyst since 2010
He posted a meme comparing Nazis and radical Muslims
He calls the decision to post a bad choice and says he accepts his suspension
(CNN) —
Curt Schilling, a star pitcher who was in the Major Leagues for 20 years and a baseball analyst for ESPN, was suspended from his Little League World Series duty after sending a controversial tweet Tuesday.
Photos: Mouthing off: Celebs said what?!
Actress and Fox commentator Stacey Dash told Entertainment Tonight in a discussion about controversial bathroom laws involving transgender people "OK, then go in the bushes. I don't know what to tell you, but I'm not gonna put my child's life at risk because you want to change a law."
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Raven-Symone, the Cosby kid turned co-host of "The View," has made a huge social media splash since joining ABC's chat show. She has provoked viewers to call for her removal for statements she's made about religious liberty, the arrest of a teenager in a South Carolina classroom and her views about so-called "ghetto" names.
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ESPN analyst and former MLB pitching star Curt Schilling re-posted a tweet comparing Muslims and Nazis. He later apologized and was suspended by the sports network.
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Kelly Osbourne tried to call out Donald Trump on ABC's "The View" about his comments about Latino immigrants, but her comment was not well received by the show's other co-hosts.
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A transcript released by the National Enquirer on Friday, July 24, detailed racist remarks wrestler Hulk Hogan made about the dating life of his daughter, Brooke. Hogan issued an apology.
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Lupe Fiasco used his Instagram account to take down the concept of white supremacy. "You are regular," the rapper wrote in an open letter on his Instagram account. "White Regularity is congruent to all other forms of regularity i.e. Black, Brown, Etc etc. But in regularity there is room for differences and this is where White Regularity shines!"
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Comedian Jerry Seinfeld told ESPN that he thinks the politically correct climate on college campuses hurts comedy. "They just want to use these words: 'That's racist, that's sexist, that's prejudiced.' They don't even know what they're talking about," he said.
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Chester Hanks, son of actor Tom Hanks, was widely criticized in June for using the n-word in social media posts. The aspiring rapper, who goes by the name Chet Haze, defended himself by saying, "hip-hop isn't about race. It's about the culture you identify with."
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Twitter wasn't laughing after Jamie Foxx made a joke about Olympic hero Bruce (now Caitlyn) Jenner during the iHeartRadio Music Awards in Los Angeles on March 29. "We got some ground-breaking performances, here too, tonight," Foxx said. "We got Bruce Jenner, who will be doing some musical performances. He's doing a his-and-her duet all by himself."
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Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, center, told New York magazine in 2015 that she's appeared as a black man on one of her album covers. "I really feel an affinity because I have experienced being a black guy on several occasions."
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More than 80,000 people signed a petition to cancel the TLC reality show "19 Kids and Counting" for what the petition says is an anti-LGBT stance. According to the petition, Michelle Duggar's voice can be heard on a recorded call from summer 2014 urging the citizens of Fayetteville, Arkansas, to vote to repeal a law that forbids business owners and landlords from evicting and firing people based on gender identity. Demands to cancel the show gained fervor in May after a magazine reported that as a teen, Josh Duggar molested five girls, including four of his sisters.
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Charles Barkley's mouth landed the former NBA star in the middle of controversy in October. During an interview, the commentator said that he believed successful African-Americans are targeted by "brainwashed" and "uneducated" members of their community. "For some reason, we're brainwashed to think if you're not a thug or an idiot, you're not black enough," he said. "If you go to school, make good grades, speak intelligent and don't break the law, you're not a good black person. ... As a black person, we all go through it when you're successful."
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Back in 2012, while covering a basketball game for TNT, Barkley also got caught on a hot mic saying that his Weight Watchers endorsement deal was a "scam." The company saw the humor in it and released a statement saying, "We love Charles for the same reason everyone loves Charles. He's unfiltered."
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Chris Noth turned off "Sex and the City" fans with an observation about his on-screen love, Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw. "How many boyfriends did she have?" the actor, who played Mr. Big, told Australian press in 2014. "She was such a whore!" The paper noted that Noth laughed when he said it, so apparently he was trying to make a joke.
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In the August issue of GQ magazine, Kanye West gave more than a few head-scratching quotes. One of the most perplexing was his stance on what you could call celebrity civil rights: "I talked about the idea of celebrity, and celebrities being treated like blacks were in the '60s, having no rights, and the fact that people can slander your name," he recalled of his wedding toast. Last we checked, celebrities are able to vote and are not barred from using the same public facilities as everyone else, but OK, Kanye.
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Actor Jason Biggs came under fire after making what some found to be an insensitive joke after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed in eastern Ukraine in July. "Anyone wanna buy my Malaysian Airlines frequent flier miles?" he tweeted. When the Twitter backlash followed, Biggs didn't back down. "Hey all you 'too soon' a**holes," he wrote, "it's a f**king joke. You don't have to think it's funny, or even be on my twitter page at all."
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Kim Kardashian was criticized heavily when she was expecting her first child, North, in 2013, and perhaps a part of her wishes she could've just stayed home. When asked to give style advice to pregnant women, Kardashian told Elle magazine that expectant moms should be "hiding for a good year and having no pregnancy style. That's what I recommend. If you can do it, hide. Never leave the house." Kardashian caught so much blowback from that quote that she later had to tweet that she was joking and that she's learned a new lesson: "I guess you can't be sarcastic when doing interviews!"
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"Opie and Anthony" radio host Anthony Cumia found himself fired by his program's carrier, SiriusXM, because of a series of inflammatory tweets he posted in early July 2014. Cumia says that his profane and racially insensitive Twitter rant was caused by an attack on him by an African-American woman, who, according to Cumia, was upset because he was taking photos of her. After the alleged assault, Cumia turned to Twitter to air his grievances, calling her a "lucky savage" and a "lying c---," among other defamatory phrases.
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Tom Cruise -- aka the man still trying to live down the infamy of calling Matt Lauer "glib" during a tense 2005 interview -- has claimed that he invented the global movie press tour. On Jimmy Kimmel's talk show, Cruise said that around the time of 1986's "Top Gun," "I came up with the idea of, let's have premieres in different countries and do it that way." When Kimmel responded with a surprised, "You started that?" Cruise affirmed, "Yeah, I came up with that. It took me a few years to get it going."
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Gwyneth Paltrow is known for having alternative views, but one observation has raised more eyebrows than usual. In a 2014 post on her website GOOP, Paltrow said she's "fascinated" by a study on how "negativity changes the structure of water, and how the molecules behave differently depending on the words or music being expressed around it." So does that mean Paltrow believes water has feelings? Some think so.
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Jonah Hill has also owned up to yelling a homophobic slur at a paparazzo, which was seen on a video released by TMZ on Tuesday, June 3, 2014. The actor said to the photographer, "Suck my d---, you f-----." He later told radio host Howard Stern that he was frustrated by his own words: "From the day I was born and publicly I've been a gay rights activist. ... I played into exactly what (the paparazzo) wanted and lost my cool. And in that moment, I said a disgusting word that does not at all reflect how I feel about any group of people."
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Actor James Franco criticized The New York Times' theater critic, Ben Brantley, over a lukewarm review of the Broadway revival "Of Mice and Men." "Brantley is such a little b----," the actor said in an April 2014 Instagram takedown that he later removed -- but not before it was screengrabbed for posterity.
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Reese Witherspoon might seem prim on the red carpet, but the actress has been caught making more than one slip of the tongue. When the actress was arrested in April 2013 after having "one drink too many," she chastised the arresting officer for not recognizing he was arresting a celebrity. "Do you know my name?" she asked. When the officer replied that he didn't, Witherspoon shot back, "You're about to find out who I am."
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And then there was the time Witherspoon was caught giving advice to Cara Delevingne, Kate Upton and Zooey Deschanel, reportedly after the 2014 Met Gala. The Southern actress was taped saying, "The most important thing in a name for a girl is that a man can whisper it in his pillow."
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Justin Bieber took responsibility for using racial slurs as a teen. In two videos that surfaced in June 2014, a younger Bieber can be seen using the "N" word on two separate occasions -- instances that he says were the result of his own ignorance. "As a young man, I didn't understand the power of certain words and how they can hurt. I thought it was OK to repeat hurtful words and jokes, but didn't realize at the time that it wasn't funny," the star said in a statement.
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Adam Levine learned the hard way that you have to watch it before you speak. "The Voice" judge found himself facing some serious backlash in May 2013 after his disappointment over voting results led to him uttering, "I hate this country." He released a statement trying to clarify what he meant, saying that he was frustrated.
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Madonna was on her best behavior at the "W.E." news conference, seen here during the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. But at the Venice Film Festival that same year, she was caught saying "I absolutely loathe hydrangeas" after a fan gave her the flowers.
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Almost everything that Kanye West says can be met with a debate, and that includes his comment in November 2013 about his use of the Confederate flag on some of his new merchandise. The rapper told Los Angeles radio station 97.1 AMP that observers can "react how you want. Any energy is good energy. You know the Confederate flag represented slavery in a way -- that's my abstract take on what I know about it. So I made the song 'New Slaves.' So I took the Confederate flag and made it my flag. It's my flag. Now what are you going to do?"
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Like Kanye West, Alec Baldwin's commentary is a magnet for controversy. From once calling his daughter a "rude, thoughtless little pig" to using anti-gay slurs, it's no wonder that the actor is trying to keep quiet these days. There are times when he can't help himself, though, and his May 2014 arrest for riding his bike the wrong way was one of them. "New York City is a mismanaged carnival of stupidity," Baldwin tweeted upon his release.
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Politicians have to deal with this type of thing all of the time, and U.S. President Barack Obama is no exception. After Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift at the MTV Awards in 2009, the commander-in-chief called the rapper a "jackass" while waiting for an interview to start. West was reportedly not amused.
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In January 2013, director Quentin Tarantino was doing press for his film "Django Unchained" when Britain's Channel 4 reporter Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked him whether he thinks movie violence can lead to actual violence. Tarantino shot back, saying: "You can't make me dance to your tune. I'm not a monkey," and "I'm shutting your butt down!"
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When you're as famous as Britney Spears, it pays to first ask for someone to repeat the question. When she was asked for her thoughts on the passing of fellow former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello in 2013, the star accidentally responded, "I think that's great."
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Mel Gibson's mouth has been a famous source of trouble for the movie star, and in 2010 it happened again. The actor was being interviewed about his film "Edge of Darkness" by WGN reporter Dean Richards when Gibson was asked about various scandals, including an anti-Semitic rant. "That's almost four years ago, dude," Gibson said. "I've moved on. I guess you haven't." The actor could be heard calling Richards an a**hole at the end.
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Actor Samuel L. Jackson is not Laurence Fishburne, and he's been very clear about that. In February 2014, Jackson scolded KTLA's Sam Rubin for misidentifying him. "You're as crazy as the people on Twitter," Jackson said during a live TV interview. "We may be all black and famous, but we all don't look alike. You're busted."
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In March 2014, comedian Chelsea Handler challenged CNN's Piers Morgan, calling him unfocused. "You can't even pay attention for 60 seconds," she said. "You're a terrible interviewer."
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The tweet re-posted a meme that reads: “It’s said only 5-10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How’d that go?”
The text was superimposed of a red-tinted photo of Adolf Hitler.
Schilling added, “The math is staggering when you get to true #’s.”
Schilling also shared the photo on Facebook, where the original post links to a video about the end times.
At first Schilling didn’t back off from his post, but eventually he said it was wrong to post the meme.
“I understand and accept my suspension. 100% my fault. Bad choices have bad consequences and this was a bad decision in every way on my part,” he wrote.
The former pitcher was hired by ESPN in 2010 and is a game analyst and also works on some editions of ESPN’s studio show “Baseball Tonight.”
“Curt’s tweet was completely unacceptable, and in no way represents our company’s perspective,” ESPN said in a written statement. “We made that point very strongly to Curt and have removed him from his current Little League assignment pending further consideration.”
Schilling deleted the tweet after individually replying to his some of his critics and supporters.
In one he wrote, “needed to actually think a bit before acting on that one, or not acting. On me though.”
Not long ago Schilling was getting kudos on social media for standing up to cyberbullies who tweeted crass and rude things about his daughter, who had signed to pitch softball for a Division III college.
Opinion: What Schilling learned after his bizarre tweet
Schilling, with the help of Internet sleuths, tracked down the men. Nine received some form of penalty. Some lost their jobs, and some were expelled from college.
In a blog post about the nastiness, Schilling wrote, “These boys have yet to understand one of life’s most important lessons. In the real world you get held accountable for the things you say and if you are not careful that can mean some different things.”
The 2001 Sports Illustrated co-Sportsman of the Year has engaged in other controversial Twitter conversations. In November he debated other users on the subject of evolution. He also has made intriguing statements like telling a Boston radio station that he hasn’t been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame because he is a Republican.
More coverage on Bleacher Report
CNN’s Greg Botelho and Kevin Dotson contributed to this report.