It’s A Tough Job Making Curt Schilling’s Racist Memes, But Somebody’s Gotta Do It

In this economy, you can’t be too picky about your job. Especially when you’re a middle-aged guy like me, and everyone wants to hire some young hotshot with a Stanford MBA. When you’ve been in and out of work, and you’ve got two college-bound kids trying to avoid massive loans, you take what you can get. Even if it’s making the virulently xenophobic memes that Curt Schilling posts on Facebook.

Just because I’m contributing to the dumbing down of America doesn’t mean I don’t take my job seriously. You gotta remember, this guy ain’t your regular crazy uncle from back home in Nebraska. We’re talking about a three-time World Series champion. A pitcher with over 3,100 strikeouts to his name. They even put his DNA in an exhibit in the Baseball Hall of Fame! So when it’s your responsibility to use Photoshop to express Mr. Schilling’s disturbing viewpoints on non-Christians and non-whites, positions that somehow hardened over a 20-year career spent playing with diverse colleagues from all over the world, you act like a professional. An ignorant, hateful professional.

Take this meme, for example:

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It’s got so many layers, it could be my wife Susan’s famous Super Bowl party dip. First, I hone in on the “topic” + “Mr. Schilling’s viewpoint.” For example, here we have “illegal immigration” + “Democrats only support a path to citizenship because Latinos will inevitably vote Democrat.” But then I add the twist: What if undocumented workers voted for Republicans instead? Sure, that hypothetical scenario would require a thoughtful examination of both the New Deal Coalition and the Southern strategy’s role in flipping the geographic and demographic base for our country’s two political parties. But this is a meme. We ain’t go time for that! So, I throw in a childish insult like “demonrats” and then put these words over a low-quality picture of Jim Ignatowski, the sixth most popular character from the 1978 sitcom “Taxi.” Could I have picked a more recent depiction of a loony liberal caricature? One from, say, the last 25 years of pop culture?  Sure. But I’m working for Curt Freakin’ Schilling, not National Review. Always know your audience.

Making repulsive memes for a born-again who ignores “Love Thy Neighbor,” one of the basic tenets of Christianity, can get a little tedious. So you gotta figure out new angles to keep yourself from getting bored. One of my personal favorites is cloaking jingoistic viewpoints behind support for the troops. Who the hell is gonna speak out against providing stellar health care and job opportunities for returning military veterans? No one! Especially when you compare it to 10,000 refugees whose only options in life are either getting killed by a depraved despot who bombs his own people, or living under a brutally violent Islamic fundamentalist caliphate.

SchillingVets

He loved that one, by the way. Calling the refugees “rebels” was my own personal touch. Not sure if he noticed, though. Or if he knows the difference.

One of the downsides to the job is that Mr. Schilling can be a very demanding boss. Last month, I made some Iran Deal memes, but he sent them back because there wasn’t any racist rhetoric towards Arabs. You should’ve seen his reaction when I told him that Iran is not an Arabic country. It only got worse when I stated that most Iranians are of Persian descent. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say Mr. Schilling thinks the “Italians” in 300 went easy on their Persian foes. In the end, I just strung together a meme purporting that the 14-year-old Muslim kid who built a clock was really a sleeper cell agent for the Ayatollah Khomeini. When it comes to being willfully uneducated on a massive scale, you gotta know when to pick your battles.

In the end, I can’t complain too much about the job. Mr. Schilling has a lot of opinions he feels should be out in the world, so that means a lot of labor for yours truly. But I work at home, set my own hours, and get to be creative in finding ways to express pure, inborn hatred of one’s fellow man in a way that isn’t so overt as to get one fired, but just prejudiced enough to get one suspended from ESPN for a month. By the way, if you’re looking for a new gig, Mr. Schilling mentioned that he’s looking for someone to unload his historical artifacts on eBay. It’s a great way to make an honest day’s wage for a dishonest’s day work.

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Pablo Goldstein is a comedy writer living in LA. You should follow him on Twitter.