Robert Kraft’s complaints about being “duped” by Hernandez don’t cast anyone in a good light.
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It’s a good thing for us to have the “Art of Being Duped” back in the conversation again. No need to ignore it. Happens every day to the best of us. Can’t pretend it doesn’t.
Still, whether you’re being duped or the one doing the duping, it all starts to stink at the end of the duplicitous day.
So I thank you Mr. Robert Kraft, owner of the almighty New England Patriots, for admitting that you’d been duped by the young and wild Aaron Hernandez. It’s not an easy thing to admit to the public that you’ve been duped when you knew all along that you were being, well, duped.
You, Mr. Kraft, I imagine, prayed hard and fast that this particular duping wouldn’t reveal itself and end so hellaciously sadly for everyone involved.
But, so be it. Personal gain is personal gain. Unless it’s not.
It’s scary though, isn’t it? When you’re getting duped by the banker man or your church, your kids team leagues, your co-workers and best friends, well that’s one thing. Them dupes you can handle because no one is getting physically hurt.
Anyone can handle a standard duping with an iron tongue or a retaliatory super duping. Name a duping, any duping. Today, for example, maybe you were swinging through the mall parking lot, kind of hurried, kind of bored. You actually wanted to park your SUV under the giant awning at the front door of your favorite department store because Manchester was being hit by yet another monsoon.
You swung the vehicle around the lot until you thought you saw a spot right up front. No bumper hanging out that space. Nice. Run in, run out. But snap! You been duped! There’s a Fit or Fiesta or some other terribly ridiculous kid mobile tucked deep in the parking space.
Dupe City.
You briefly bum out from the duping but you move on quickly and unharmed.
Heck, seconds later you likely evened out the dupes when someone called you on your cell and you sent them directly to voicemail, duping them right into thinking you were to busy to talk.
That harmless type of duping is nothing like the duping Hernandez pulled on Patriot Nation. There was no duping taking place at any part of the duping process when Hernandez was running post routes for Brady on Sundays. The duping began when Hernandez took his regular left turn out of Gillette Stadium after practice or a game.
Seconds out of Patriot Place, well, Aaron was right back in the thug life, looking like a Marvel comic, able to transform himself within milliseconds from being a world class athlete to a dupendous, hungry street urchin that cares far less about the respect he gathers on the field compared to that of the mean streets of, ah, Bristol, CT.
Duping was his life. Hernandez just duped on a far heavier level than the rest of us. While we’re busy duping each other into thinking we’re smarter, richer, stronger, healthier and holier than we actually are, Hernandez was taking the art of duping to a whole new level.
His was the ugly, bloody kind of duping. Otherwise known as the “Double Dupe.” The Double Dupe is rooted in pain and anguish, the kind that Oldin Lloyd’s mom and Shanna Jenkins and countless other victims of the Double Dupe can only describe.
It reminds me of a time when I was Junior Double Duped in Providence. I thought I was actually doing the duping as I tried to convince an undupable large man into letting me dance with his date. Then the man turned around and started duping me into a doorjamb for 45 minutes until my friends rescued me from the duping.
Again, scary that this kind of duping is going on everyday all around us. But we can’t let some wild dupers ruin our day. We just have to remember to respect the dupe, don’t abuse it or deny it or hurt others too badly with it. And surely don’t run away from a solid duping. Duping is good for the soul here and there. Keeps you even with the earth.
Thankfully, most of us have our freedom to be duped tomorrow. So, dupe away, I say. Just don’t allow yourself to be driven to some industrial park in the middle of the night by a professional duper.
That’d be just downright dupid.
Photo—AP/File
Not being American, not knowing the background to this story, I haven’t got a clue about the context. It comes across totally parochial gibberish. I also bet that the US cits who don’t follow football (assuming it is, maybe it’s baseball, or tiddlywinks) will have any idea what you’re talking about either – one paragraph of context could have saved us all this. Not a lot more effort.
Yet you read it…..