Ouch

Cornell West's new memoir gets slammed.

On love -

“The basic problem with my love relationships with women is that my standards are so high -- and they apply equally to both of us. I seek full-blast mutual intensity, fully fledged mutual acceptance, full-blown mutual flourishing, and fully felt peace and joy with each other. This requires a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find. And it shares a depth of trust and openness for a genuine soul-sharing with a mutual respect for a calling to each other and to others. Does such a woman exist for me? Only God knows and I eagerly await this divine unfolding. Like Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship in Emily Bronte’s remarkable novel Wuthering Heights or Franz Schubert’s tempestuous piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat (D.960) I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!”

No doubt this is meant to be inspirational. It is at any rate exemplary. Rendered more or less speechless, I pointed the passage out to my wife.

She looked it over and said, “Any woman who reads this needs to run in the opposite direction when she sees him coming.”

Yikes! That sounds like a terrible internet dating profile (not that I would know).

Just reading this and thinking about Tiger Woods, I think I'm going to patent the "The Tiger Woods Mistake," as the choice by a nerdy guy who somehow makes it big to marry a super hot bitchy chick. It sounds like Cornell West suffers a bit from this syndrome.

Here is my theory - Tiger Woods is a nerd. It is obvious by the way he talks. He has ridden his nerdiness combined with prodigious golf talent to become the most successful athlete ever and best golfer ever and a billionaire. For what should he deserve for the fruits of his spoils? To bang hot chicks, of course. No decent society would deny Tiger deserves to bang hot chicks. If any man does, it is Tiger. And hot woman will swoon over Tiger - he is successful, powerful, confident, and rich - all sexy traits.

But like all men, Tiger is conflicted inside. His true nerdy nature - what makes him who he is - tells him - I ought to get married. I'd like a family and a wife. But he is also vain. He is successful and so he tells himself he ought to get a super hot wife, the type of girl he could never "get" growing up, this is the symbol of his triumph, him acting like the Alpha Gorilla, the competitor in him...

...and so he splits the difference. He decides to marry the super hot bitchy weirdo crazy chick...the type of chick who is crazy enough to only eat seeds and grapes, who works out all the time, is willing to get work done on herself, who has been told she is "hot" by every person she's ever met since she was 10 years old, and who loves celebrity, power, and all the trappings...

...in other words, the type of girl who will go after you with a golf club and take 1/2 bil off you in a divorce.

Here's the thing - if you want to bang all sorts of hot chicks around the globe and be an alpha-DOG you got two good options. 1) Pull the Derek Jeter/George Clooney move and just commit to being a bachelor. You gotta have mad confidence to pull this off, obviously, and assume you can stay at the top of your game, because if you quickly fall off, you won't be able to pull off the lifestyle (see Vince in Entourage two seasons ago). 2) Pull the Tracy Jordan/Allen Iverson move and marry the nice, overweight, high school sweetheart who loves you no matter what and will let you go bonkers crazy with the strippers and pornstars so long as you provide for the family and come home to her at the end of the day.

Those are your good choices. Or you can make the "Tiger Woods Mistake," and marry the crazy hot chick and then try to have it all and bang other crazy hot chicks as well. The problem is, crazy hot chicks are liable to go crazy one day and in the case of Tiger, it seems all at once. You will end up getting chased with golf clubs, leaving rambling, nonsensical and paranoid phone messages, crashing into trees, and dealing other unpleasant situations. If you marry the crazy hot chick, your only decent options are 1) stay loyal and just embrace the craziness and hope the good times outweigh the bad or 2) get a prenup and a divorce and then go bang other crazy hot chicks but don't get married to them.