The Boston Herald Wrote a Racist Column on Shayanna Jenkins' Testimony

Aaron Hernandez’s fiancée Shayanna Jenkins took the stand again this week to testify in the former New England Patriot player’s murder trial. The Boston Herald wrote about Jenkins’ testimony in a column that I briefly wished was actually an April Fools’ Day gag, but it’s dated March 30, so here we are.

In the article, writer Peter Gelzinis critiques both Jenkins’ testimony and her defense of Hernandez. Let’s take a look at the ridiculous lede that one or more Boston Herald editors approved:

To be honest, Shayanna Jenkins was not at all what I expected. From those icy stares Aaron Hernandez’s fiancee has flashed in her previous appearances at the Fall River courthouse, I braced myself for Lil’ Kim.

But what I got Friday from Shayanna’s first appearance in the witness chair was a lot closer to Halle Berry.

Translation: Gelzinis fully expected Shayanna Jenkins to enter the courtroom wearing a lime green wig, dancing and rapping, “I used to be scared of the dick/ Now I throw lips to the shit!” What he got was an Oscar-winning actress. He continues:

I was not prepared for her composure, or the graceful way she kept deflecting so many of Bristol County prosecutor William McCauley’s questions with, “I don’t recall.”

Not a grunt. Not a snarl. No curses mumbled under her breath that would force the judge to remind her she was in a court of law.

In short, Shayanna Jenkins betrayed no echo of the mean streets and dance joints that her $40 million tattooed fiance liked to haunt in those evil hours before the dawn.

Jenkins, shockingly, defied the racist expectations of the writer and spoke as if she was testifying in a serious legal case:

Shayanna even sounded a bit like Martha Stewart when she talked about cooking breakfast and preparing smoothies for the likes of Hernandez and his deadbeat buddies, Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz, the morning after Odin Lloyd’s murder.

Martha Stewart.

Gelzinis goes on to write that Jenkins “should have married someone like Julian Edelman”—a Patriots player who is white—“or Malcolm Butler,” the Patriots player whose last-second interception clinched the Super Bowl back in February. And he wishes, in closing, that Jenkins could have had more in life—specifically, that she could have served as a trophy wife to a more deserving NFL player than Hernandez:

She appears to know she’s trapped in a cesspool. It’s too bad, because Shayanna might well have made some NFL stud a very nice trophy wife. Now the money will go to the lawyers.

And all she’s left with is a thug.

That, and, of course, the kind of racism that describes her as an animal at worst, a possession at best, and a Lil’ Kim-Halle Berry-Martha Stewart hybrid the world never knew existed.