Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Memoir Proves He’s an Even Bigger Tool Than We Thought
We know one person who's probably very happy Arnold Schwarzenegger won't be baahck: that saint of a woman known as Maria Shriver.
In his new tell-too-much autobiography, Schwarzenegger describes how he set a new bar for douchebag husbands the world over by doing little things like keeping secrets and having affairs and, you know, impregnating the help. And now we all get to hear about it, whether we want to or not.
In multiple interviews, the bodybuilder, movie star and former California governor tells reporters that he doesn’t want to talk about the lovechild that resulted from him banging the housekeeper or the other affairs that drove a wedge between him and ex-wife Shriver, saying the nastiness is “something that’s obviously between Maria and me.”
What he didn't add was "unless you buy my new book," because in the tome, titled 'Total Recall,' he has no problem at all dishing the details about those indiscretions and a number of other things he kept hidden from Shriver before and during their marriage.
For example, he cops to having a "hot affair" with actress Brigitte Nielsen while they filmed 'Red Sonja' in 1985 -- the same time period in which he and Shriver were living together. But he thinks all that meaningless sex is what convinced him he really wanted to marry Maria, so hey, it was all worth it, right?
He claims his standard policy of secrecy stemmed from his bodybuilding days when he determined that athletes who get emotional tend to lose, so he learned to suppress icky things like "feelings" or "guilt" or "a conscience."
"I became an expert in living in denial," he said.
Of course what he calls secrecy and denial, we call being a first-class wuss. He said he didn’t tell his wife about having major heart surgery or that he wanted to run for governor or even that he was running for a second term (she had to read that in the paper) because he was afraid she would overreact and tell all her well-connected family and friends. Because yeah, she's the one with the impulse control problems.
He also didn't have a conversation with the housekeeper he knocked up, even when he noticed an uncanny resemblance between himself and the resulting child. He just started giving her extra money in silent acknowledgement of the kid's paternity.
We find it eye-rolling that such a sculpted, cocky, self-important dude would be so terrified of women, but his book paints a different picture. It also has stuff about being in movies and winning lots of bodybuilding championships, but the press junket has focused mainly on the scandals and other crap we're sure Shriver is just thrilled to have in the headlines again.
Some people deem their first marriage a "throwaway." And for Maria, filing those divorce papers must have felt an awful lot like taking out the trash.