Boston Herald: Aaron Hernandez's fiancée could have made a nice 'trophy wife'

By foxsports
Published

By Andrew Bucholtz

Aaron Hernandez’s ongoing murder trial appears to have led to one of the worst newspaper columns in quite some time, written by Peter Gelzinis of The Boston Herald. In a piece published this week, Gelzinis manages to hit the jackpot of combining racially charged and misogynistic tropes with his comments about Hernandez’s fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins. Here’s how he starts it off:

There are a whole lot of problematic assumptions and stereotypes in there, but Gelzinis somehow manages to make things even worse as he continues:

If this whole column-writing thing doesn’t work out for Gelzinis, it sounds like he wants to start a business matchmaking NFL players with attractive women. While discussing who Jenkins “should have married” is bad enough, he still manages to top it later on:

So, to recap, Peter, you know so little about this woman that you were “expecting Lil’ Kim” based on her appearance and facial expressions, but because she appears attractive to you and talks eloquently, you’re not only willing to suggest other NFL players she should have married, but also to proclaim that her life goal is to be a “very nice trophy wife?” That’s more than just a little bit troubling.

Readers are rightfully taking Gelzinis and the Herald to task for this latest piece of drivel on Twitter.

The tabloid Herald doesn’t have the greatest reputation in many circles (although Editor and Publisher named it one of 10 newspapers that demonstrate “flexibility, creativity, sound judgment, and a commitment to high-quality journalism in some unique manner” in 2012); considertheir highly-questionable role in the 2008 Spygate saga, for one thing. It’s also the place that hired Bill Simmons as a high school reporter, then gave him a host of menial tasks that drove him out of print journalism. So, we’re not exactly talking about a universally respected bastion of journalism here.

Still, having a newspaper of any sort publish such a misogynistic and racist piece is another indication of the sports media landscape’s widespread problems with objectifying women, something we discussed last week thanks to a pair of Chicago radio hosts. The Herald deserves all the criticism it gets for publishing this particular piece, but the wider landscape has to change too, and it has to get to a point where this kind of material is clearly unacceptable. We’re obviously not there yet.

 

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