For those of you who have not heard yet about Curt Schilling’s most recent blog post, the story in a nutshell is this: Curt Schilling’s daughter Gabby was accepted at Salve Regina College to play softball. Proud dad–but polarizing figure–Curt, tweeted this news, congratulating her. In response, a few young men–no, to give them status as human beings is too kind. A few Internet trolls (with apologies to trolls everywhere) responded with about the most vile tweets I have ever read. Curt went Columbo, investigating, uncovering and publishing the tweeters’ identities. For those that he could not find, he shared what he knew, and asked his readers to do the rest. Which of course they did.
The karmic comeuppance has been satisfying. One of the individuals has been fired (from a job with the Yankees!); another has been suspended by his college. And many people are commending Curt for protecting his daughter without going Rambo. Happy ending. Huzzah!
What floors me is how many people, media outlets included, have chosen to downplay the substance of the tweets, many calling them “offensive.” Offensive? A BusinessInsider.com story includes the headline “Curt Schilling destroys 2 dudes who were harassing his daughter on Twitter.” Harassing? The article goes on to say “Of course, along with the many kind and very harmless messages of congratulations come trolls who have nothing better to do but type lewd comments and fire them off into the Twittersphere.” Lewd?
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