Curt Schilling Shares Meme Comparing Muslims to Nazi-Era Germans on Twitter

Former MLB pitcher and noted espouser of digital discretion Curt Schilling spent a portion of his Tuesday engaged in an ironic bit of penance after sharing a video over his Twitter and Facebook accounts comparing Muslims to Nazi-era Germans.

The video itself is unintentional high comedy—a paranoid mixtape of Illuminati conspiracy theories predicting the world will be drowned in fire by next fall and it's all because America isn't in the Bible and thanks a lot, Obama.

But few who saw the ESPN baseball analyst's social media posts got as far as the video.

Most were hung up on the link's preview picture: a Photoshopped meme of Adolf Hitler adorned with "statistics" about Muslims and Nazis.

As Deadspin's Tom Ley noted, Schilling tweeted the link with the message, "The math is staggering when you get to true #'s."

Michael Perez/Associated Press

After facing immediate backlash from his followers, Schilling backed off the post. He's not the one saying it, he claimed; he's just saying the numbers are haunting:

Schilling then transitioned into full apology mode:

Some time after deleting the tweet, Schilling got around to scrubbing the post from his Facebook, where he appears to have initially discovered it via a group called "BREAK UP the IRS."

Schilling has yet to issue a public apology as of this writing, but ESPN public relations representative Josh Krulewitz tweeted out a statement from the company calling Schilling's tweet "completely unacceptable" and announcing his immediate removal from the network's ongoing Little League World Series coverage.

Per Krulewitz:

"

ESPN comment on Schilling: Curt's tweet was completely unacceptable, and in no way represents our company’s perspective. We made that point very strongly to Curt and have removed him from his current Little League assignment pending further consideration.

"

This seems like the best move ESPN could make in light of the number of people who remain less than enthused about its employee spreading the idea that one in 10 Muslims might be Nazi monsters awaiting activation.

UPDATE

Schilling has issued an apology for the posts via Twitter:

"

curt schilling’s rebirth as your ex’s racist uncle who facebooked you after her family dinner that one time is one of sports’ great quirks

— Greg Howard (@greghoward88) August 25, 2015"

---End of Update---

Dan is on Twitter. Sometimes you need to take a deep breath, push the keyboard away and do literally anything else.