Curt Schilling the Next Donald Trump, Matt Taibbi piece in Rolling Stone
Having proven incapable of running a business, being a good steward of either his own money or the taxpayers', or holding down the world's cushiest job, Schilling naturally decided to get into politics.
Don't bet against him winning a Senate seat in my home state of Massachusetts, either. His would be a victory for the cause of ignorance and tone-deafness perhaps even exceeding Trump's capture of the Republican nomination.
Schilling's biggest political crime isn't his ranting about subjects he knows nothing about, his insistence on arguing science with scientists, or his pathological touchiness about being labeled a racist even as he makes endless unprovoked sorties into explosive racial/ethnic controversies.
No, the baffling thing is how miserable he is in the face of great fortune.
Understanding that there's a distinction between being smart and being educated, Schilling got to be filthy rich without being either, thanks to that winning genetic lottery ticket hanging off his right shoulder.
He lived the good life in the majors for 19 years, and even after he blew all his money, he kept getting second and third and fourth chances. In a classic example of failing upward, Schilling may even ultimately get elected to the U.S. Senate precisely because of the "bad decisions" that got him fired from his ESPN gig.
He's living proof of a truism H.L. Mencken noted nearly 100 years ago, i.e. that for a certain kind of person in America, failure is something you've got to sprint after at full speed to catch – it won't come to you:
"In the United States the business of getting a living is enormously easier than it is in any other Christian land – so easy, in fact, that a forehanded man who fails at it must almost make deliberate efforts to that end.
"Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head."
I doubt Schilling has read 50 good books. I'd put the over/under at three, including whatever abridged version of the Bible he owns. But he might run for high office anyway, and would get lots of people to fund his effort, still more proof of how awesome it is to be a white guy in America.
