Former Chicago Bears player and head coach Mike Ditka slammed President Barack Obama as the worst president. Naturally, ESPN punished him for exercising his freedom of speech.
In a radio interview on The Bernie and Sid Show on Thursday, Ditka declared: “Obama is the worst president we’ve ever had.”
“He would be great to play golf with. He’s not a leader,” Ditka said. “This country needs leadership. It needs direction. It needs somebody that steps up front. We need somebody like Ronald Reagan.”
Shortly after Ditka made these innocuous comments, ESPN removed Ditka from their NFL Sunday Countdown morning program. Recently retired quarterback Matt Hasselbeck will take Ditka’s spot on the program, while Ditka will remain as an employee on ESPN in a more limited capacity.
The sports network was tight-lipped on whether Ditka’s criticism of Obama factored in their decision to demote Ditka, but there’s plenty of reason to believe that it did. ESPN has a history of censoring their employees for engaging in political speech that runs counter to their far-left views. For instance, ESPN suspended former pitcher Curt Schilling in August for tweeting that radical Islamists are comparable to Nazis–which is accurate. The network is also looking into Schilling’s comments on Kansas City radio station 610 Sports that he would be “stunned and upset” if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton isn’t in prison by the general election.
“If I’m going to believe, and I don’t have any reason not to believe, that she gave classified information on hundreds, if not thousands, of emails on a public server after what happened to General [David] Petraeus, she should be buried under a jail somewhere,” Schilling said.
ESPN’s political censorship doesn’t apply to leftists. Back in October, ESPN host Tony Kornheiser compared the Tea Party to ISIS, and no action was taken by ESPN against him.
“MSNBC with spherical and oblong projectiles.”
Ben Shapiro on ESPN
The Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro has referred to ESPN as “MSNBC with spherical and oblong projectiles,” which is truly fitting since the far-left politico wannabes at the network were aghast that Ditka would criticize their dear leader Obama.