If I had it all to do over again, I think I would have stayed in school and become some kind of linguistic scholar. One
Okay, pictures like this are not really helping the case, John.
with a very specific discipline: I would work on developing newer, stronger insulting terms.
Because after reading John Mayer’s recent Playboy interview, I wish I could more authoritatively say that with each and every answer he gave, John Mayer reduced the power of the term douchebag, necessitating a more powerful insult.
It had been my impression that if you needed to make the term more iron-clad, you simply preface it with “complete and utter.” He is a “complete and utter douchebag.” That would mean, “It is not possible, given the known laws of the universe, for him to be more of a douchebag.” But even “complete and utter” do not do the heavy lifting required to call John Mayer what he needs to be called.
This was a particularly fascinating interview, because the common interviewing thread seemed to be, “How does it feel to be widely considered a douchebag?” And Mayer responded in kind. In fact, he responded in such a way that I’m not 100% convinced it wasn’t some kind of bizarre performance piece – that he was trying to rob the word “douchebag” of its power by simply overwhelming it (how Lenny Bruce!). By overstuffing its own definition to the point that it exploded (sorry for the visual, but you get my point here).
But the fact that he later, somewhat tearfully, apologized for the interview at a concert tells us he has learned a lesson about trying to be clever in an interview where the lead topic was clearly, “How come people think you’re a douchebag?”
While my initial intent was to simply pick out a few Douchebag Greatest Hits, going through the piece, I was astonished to find that literally every answer Mayer gave was like an ode to douchebaggery.
That’s actually what the interview reads as: John Mayer’s Epic Douchebag Poem. (Which, to his credit, is still better than all of his songs – except “City Love,” I kinda like that one. THAT IS NOT THE POINT!)
So I’ve narrowed it down to seven choice moments, and afterward you can start coming up with your own terms for douchebaggery in a post-John-Mayer world (to get things started: “maxi-douche,” “douchelplex,” and “dodecadouchetron”).
Read more »
