...but he won't be after next week when Rolling Stone Magazine publishes their second Boston-based propaganda salvo in as many months, transforming murderous punks into rock stars - this time in an attempt to discredit Hernandez's former college coach and the entire New England Patriots' organization and, seemingly, to absolve Hernandez of any responsibility for his behavior.
Just as they did for Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the magazine portrays Hernandez as a product of his environment without lending any sense of personal accountability to the story - a home that was broken up when his father died unexpectedly when he was 16 - a product of a group of people that he turned to in grief, and a product of working for people who held him accountable for nothing...
...which is true on one level, as Rolling Stone contributing editor Paul Solotaroff captures the emotional element of his formative years in Bristol and how his home life crumbled once his father was out of the picture, even indicting the father of doing a disservice to Hernandez for trying to shield him from the very influences that he turned to out of pain and grief.
But the reality is that Hernandez is a savage thug that put the fork to anyone who tried to help him, always falling back on the memory of a dead father as an affirmation for using and hurting the people who cared most for him.
And that, Solotaroff fails to capture despite enlisting the help of Boston sportswriter and resident Bill Belichick hater Ron Borges - or perhaps because of it - their finished product more an itemized list of people whom Borges has a beef with than anything investigative, essentially painting the Patriots' organization as fools, and the football program at the University of Florida as a fool's paradise - former Gators' coach Urban Meyer, Patriots' owner Bob Kraft and head coach Bill Belichick as the Three Mystic Apes...
...Kraft as the ape Mizaru, who covering his eyes sees no evil; Belichick as Kikazaru, covering his ears and hearing no evil; and Meyer, who allegedly knew of Hernandez' wicked ways, yet covers his mouth as the ape Iwazaru, speaking no evil.
Most of the country won't know about the hatred that Borges has for the hand that's fed him these many years - he could be Adam to anyone outside of New England as far as they were concerned - so it goes to figure that these same readers wouldn't know that he was also suspended from one Boston daily, the Globe, for outright plagiarism. He retired briefly after the suspension, but then suddenly reappeared on the pages of the other daily, the Boston Herald...
...and now in Rolling Stone Magazine where with his co-conspirator Solotaroff they venture off together in a time capsule, visiting a young, hungry Aaron Hernandez in Bristol, Connecticut, graphing his journey - allegedly speaking with nameless punks who, of course, would rather their names not be associated with a person charged in multiple felonies.
Which is wicked convenient for Borges, who lost the only Patriots' contact that would have anything to do with him more than a decade ago, and has been winging it with "unnamed" contacts ever since - which are actually better, as anonymous contacts are difficult to discredit, and absolves their user from any responsibility whatsoever.
Story is, Borges relied on Patriots' quarterback Drew Bledsoe for the majority of his insider information and became enraged when Belichick traded Bledsoe to Buffalo after the 2001 season, so much so that Borges began what is now a dozen years-long temper tantrum of hateful illusory articles and comments aimed at the head coach and which regularly paints a dim picture of the Patriots' organization as a whole.
So, with his reputation in New England viewed as pathetic as that of a jilted lover gone rouge, Borges moved his feeble credibility to the national stage and took a page out of an old politician's book of tricks to mete out his revenge by attempting to drag the Patriots and Meyer down into the pig pies with him...
...employing blunt cynicism to put them back on their heels, completely on the defensive and hoping that they come out swinging wildly...
Back in the early 1970's Hunter S. Thompson regaled us with the tale of a young Senate hopeful from Texas named Lyndon Johnson, who in the 1948 general election was running 10 points behind his opponent with just more than a week to go before voters hit the polls, when he called his top aide into his office.
Johnson ordered him to schedule a lunch time press conference to accuse his foe, a pig farmer, of having carnal knowledge with his barnyard sows. "Jesus, Lyndon," his shocked aide shot back "You know that isn't true!", to which Johnson replied with a grin, "Of course it's not - but let's make the son of a bitch deny it."
Indeed, make Belichick and Kraft and Meyer deny that they knew anything about Hernandez's violent behavior. Make them deny they covered up failed drug tests. Make them deny that they dealt with Hernandez's alleged panic and paranoia with threats and a call for a gangland style hideout.
It's a game played every day in every business, in every town in every country in the world. Credibility is worth more than money on this playing field - because it is currency that never crosses anyone's palm but you can be bought and sold with it. Borges and Solotaroff tried to play the game, yet armed with nothing but Borges' misguided sense of vigilante justice, the co-authors are the ones who lose credibility
In the end, Solotaroff generated nothing more than an excellent tale of fiction, one that has a name associated with it that so negates the definition of objective journalism that the reader should be biased against and unbelieving of it's conclusions - a point that Jonathan Kraft made very clear in his rebuttal so we won't be visiting that here...
...except for the fact that one would think that the man who tried so hard for all of these years to discredit Belichick and the Patriots and had so many "unnamed" contacts would have uncovered how troubled and dangerous Hernandez was long before now, and could have helped to prevent it.
But he didn't know and neither did the Patriots - or else they sure as hell wouldn't have offered Hernandez one of the richest contracts for a tight end in NFL history, because you just don't hand over 40 million dollars to someone who you think is going to go right out and start shooting people.
Maybe in Borges' twisted world of imaginary friends and corrupt ideals, but not in any world where people are held accountable for their words - it's called libel, and Borges is about to find out what happens when lawyers start asking questions that he has no idea how to answer and becomes so panicked and paranoid that he starts naming off his contacts...
...and if his "unnamed" contacts are even half the thugs Hernandez is, he will have every reason to feel panicked and paranoid - maybe look into a flop house to lay low in for a while.
After all, that's what his good buddy Bill Belichick would advise him to do.
A timeless read, Michael. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Darel!
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