Note to the editors of Esquire: Genuinely classy guys don't deny paternity of a child they know is probably theirs.
Minnesota's Larry Fitzgerald Jr. made Esquire's "List of Men," in its 2009 "How To Be A Man" issue: "There's Larry Fitzgerald, of course. Cardinals receiver, age of twenty five. The guy goes up there, the guy gets the ball. The rest of it? Class. Drive. Calm. Forethought. But mostly class."
Somebody at Esquire is justifiably besotted over Jr.'s athletic prowess and pulchritude. But sometimes you have to do more than scratch the surface, i.e. vetting, because unfortunately Jr. doesn't spend all his time on a football field. He has had a couple of image-bruising court-related matters when he wasn't going up there for the ball in the regular season and the 2009 Super Bowl.
Arizona's Angela Nazario had to take this "man" to court to get Fitzgerald to acknowledge paternity of baby Devin, 1, whose presence is now mandatory at big public events in his doting daddy's life. And then there is the matter of Jr. allegedly assaulting Nazario in a case making its way through the Arizona court system.
Failing to judiciously handle your end of preventing surprise pregnancies doesn't exactly show forethought. Esquire standards are kind of low. Character lapsees such as pot-toking Michael Phelps and cell-phone-throwing Russell Crowe are also making the grade, although a certain baseball player did not make the grade. "A man owns up. That's why Mark McGwire is not a man," reads Esquire.
On Thursday, I called Esquire editor David Granger's office to tell him how annoying the Fitzgerald item on page 63 is.
Esquire PR guy Adam Schiff followed up with an e-mail that stated the mag was "lauding his abilities on the football field and the fact that he doesn't engage in trash talk or other forms of excess while playing the game." Esquire is just another branch of the Larry Fitzgerald Jr. PR machine, which pays no attention to how an athlete treats a woman as long as he plays well on Sundays.
Whaaat? No chicken? Bossip.com used a racially offensive word to describe the chicken fans around the country who got famously fried about certain Popeyes franchises running out of chicken during a discount promotion.