Here is some unsolicited advice for Tiki Barber. Quit talking. Don't give any more interviews. Stay in the gym and work out getting ready for your NFL comeback. Obviously, what comes out of your mouth never seems to be a good thing.
By now, I am sure you know about Barber's unfortunate invocation of an Anne Frank analogy during an interview with Sports Illustrated, comparing going into hiding with his girlfriend in his agent's attic after the breakup with his pregant wife to what Frank went through during the Holocaust.
"Lep's Jewish," Barber told Sports Illustrated. "And it was like a reverse Anne Frank thing."
The comment, of course, has been roundly criticized. The Anti-Defamation League called it "outrageous and perverse." The Daily News called it " ignorant and incredibly inappropriate." The Gothamist called the statement "a boneheaded move to rival all his other boneheaded moves."
SI.com Jon Wertheim -- in a remark found in Pro Football Talk -- says Barber "has the wit and smarts to make an Anne Frank allusion and the artlessness to liken himself — an adulterer trying to elude gossip columnists — to a Holocaust victim."
I truly believe there was no malice in Barber's words. No anti-Semitism. Just thoughtlessness and stupidity. Just like many of the other things Tiki has said and done over the past several years.
No matter what he tries, Tiki just can't seem to get it right.
Rather than being foldly remembered by Giants fans as one of the greatest players in franchise history -- which he is -- he is remembered as a pariah who ripped his coach in public, ripped the team's quarterback and quit the game way too early for a television career that didn't last long.
He will be remembered as an adulterer who bailed on a pregnant wife for a much younger woman. He will be remembered now for senselessly and needlessy comparing himself to a Holocaust victim.
That's just it with Tiki. All the negative publicity, all the hits to his personal and professional reputation, are self-inflicted.
He is a talented, yet incredibly self-absorbed and seemingly insecure man who just can't get out of his own way. The best thing Tiki could do for himself is probably the one thing he can't bring himself to do -- be quiet.