Theory of Disqualifying Statements

This excerpt, from best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell's Slate diary, is somewhat similar to a prior Tornado Slide topic:

As I've gotten older, things have gotten worse, particularly since I stumbled across the Theory of Disqualifying Statements.

This was a principle that came to me several years ago, when I was seated next to a very attractive woman at a dinner party. During a lull in the conversation, I asked her where she went to college, whereupon she launched into an elaborate explanation of how her grandfather went to Harvard, her father went to Harvard, her mother went to Harvard, and her brothers went to Harvard--but she was way too much of a maverick to do something that safe and predictable.

"So where did you go?" I asked, imagining this young rebel at Oklahoma State or the University of Kinshasa or even UTEP.

"Brown," she replied, without missing a beat--and, at that moment, the Theory of Disqualifying Statements was born: For every romantic possibility, no matter how robust, there exists at least one equal and opposite sentence, phrase, or word (Brown!) capable of extinguishing it.

There was a time when I was something of a connoisseur of Disqualifying Statements, and actually compiled a short list of the most compelling. (My favorite: A friend moved to a tiny town in uppermost New England and began to date a local. She managed to overlook their difference in class and perspective, until one night, during their inaugural amorous encounter on his couch, he removed her shirt, and, slack jawed, blurted out, "Nice Tits!" At which point, the Trans-Am and the Naugahyde furniture and the Pabst Blue Ribbon suddenly became unendurable. She walked out, never to see him again. "Tits," until then a word of harmless connotation, was the disqualifier.)

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I have nothing more to add, because Speed is on TV right now, and it's sucked up all of my available focus.