Aaron Hernandez, a tight end for the Patriots, is in a spot of trouble. He's been charged with murder and authorities are, apparently, looking into whether or not he was involved with a double homicide in Boston a few years back. Yikes.
There were signs that Hernandez might have some issues. His draft stock apparently dropped because franchises were concerned about his past. As the Boston Globe noted last week:
NFL teams knew there were concerns about Florida tight end Aaron Hernandez going into the 2010 NFL draft.
The marijuana use, the short fuse, the shadowy friends from his Connecticut hometown who made visits to Gainesville, Fla. — where they were well known. It was also known that Hernandez was generally regarded as a hard worker on the field, and his talent and versatility were evident. ...
An NFL scout revealed his team’s pre-draft file on Hernandez on Thursday, and one section stood out:
"Self-esteem is quite low; not well-adjusted emotionally, not happy, moods unpredictable, not stable, doesn’t take much to set him off, but not an especially jumpy guy," the scout said.
This strikes me as interesting and relevant, given the circumstances. Others are less convinced:
Nobody really knows what’s going on. Nobody, that is, except for the self-righteous media types who’ve suggested that we should’ve seen it coming all along, whatever it turns out to be.
Today, the Boston Globe ran an aggravating piece headlined "Aaron Hernandez’s scouting report was ominous." The story details several unsavory aspects of Hernandez’s past: "The marijuana use, the short fuse, the shadowy friends from his Connecticut hometown." Earlier this week, Sports Illustrated ran a similar story, reporting that, in 2010, Hernandez slipped to the fourth round of the NFL Draft because many teams had "marijuana use and gang concerns." The implication of these stories is obvious: Hernandez’s pals and weed smoking should have tipped us off that one day he’d be in real trouble.
That was Justin Peters writing in Slate. Deadspin's Tommy Craggs wants everyone to "Shut Up. Shut Up, Shut Up, Shut Up. Shut Up" about Hernandez's shady past. He added today that "what's really dumb about this is the underlying Kiperlike conflation of "character issues" to the point of utter meaninglessness. Smoking weed and hanging around shady dudes isn't on the same side of the spectrum as orchestrating a freaking execution."
Well, yeah, sure. I don't think anyone's disputing that. That doesn't mean that the information isn't interesting or useful for readers.
I'd be curious to know where the magical line requiring us to ignore the past of various individuals falls. Why was the press so interested in Paula Deen's past? Why was the press so quick to paint George Zimmerman as a short-tempered neighborhood busybody? Why did the press find Mark Fuhrman's past relevant during the OJ trial?
I'm not saying we shouldn't be interested in the past of these people. Indeed, I think their pasts were interesting and modestly relevant to the various cases under discussion. But it is curious to see what gets people riled up—and where these lines get drawn.