I got my hood pass working on the Obama campaign (at least I presume I got one by the neighborhoods I was assigned to canvas). Do I have to get it renewed after a year?
I’d still never use that word though.
Edit: As for toolish reporter questions, I’m going to go with the threat from the first episode of Futurama:
“What if I don’t want to do that job?”
“Then you’ll be fired…”
“Fine!”
“…out of a cannon. Into the sun.”
I just have to say, that yes, Mayer is a doucheface… but thank god for that interview, because without it we wouldnt have had this thread, to which I have laughed out loud at mutiple times whilst reading it.
What’s the expiration date on the stamp stuck to your forehead? There’s laws for this kind of thing, buddy. If they don’t put you back up on the rack and run all the diagnostic tests, there is *no way *that is getting renewed, lemme tell ya.
12 hour surgery to permanently bond them together as a siamese twin.
Okay I have to respond to this. First, I totally do because I am so cute and clever and witty and edgy and I acknowledge and mock it in the same sentence, which makes me invulnerable to criticism. And second, I wasn’t even implying I was arrogant or had any reason to be.
I always thought his songs sounded like some sleazebag trying to fake being sensitive. It’s something of a relief to learn that he comes across as a creepy jerk in interviews too. If Mayer were a really lovely person I’d feel bad about wanting to kick him in the balls every time I hear “Daughters” on the radio.
I prefer “Your breathing is arrogance.” 
He sounds like he’s immature, entitled and clueless. The term tool fits.
The last time I watched that movie and several times before I remember wondering
1- why he went with that choice
2- why there wasn’t more outcry about it
3- if the decision to make Jimmy’s wife Bonnie black was for the irony or to soften the use of the term
Re: John Mayer: he’s totally a douche and I would totally still bang him like a screen door in a hurricane. (Those Borat swimsuit pics of his— damn.)
Actually, he is funny. He can be hysterical.
John Mayer has a TV Show. There are quite a few funny bits here.
I haven’t read the interview, but a few of the things quoted here don’t strike me as being all that bad - “I have a Benetton heart, and a David Duke Dick”. All he’s saying there is that despite the fact that he doesn’t believe he’s a racist, he does not find black women personally sexually attractive. I think that’s fairly common, across all races. It doesn’t make him a racist. Did he state this in a provocative way? Yep.
He may be a complete tool. I don’t follow him enough to know. He’s a very good guitar player, though. I love his stuff with the John Mayer Trio.
Jessica Simpson, obviously. The overlord (overlady?) of stoopid.
His character has a black wife - which pretty much makes him black*.
It’s the same sort of logic as that of Public Enemy’s song, “Fear of a Black Planet”
*I satire, I satire…but the fact remains he has a black wife, and thus might have occasional access to the N-word in exceptional situations. E.g., when an old friend pulls up to your house wanting to temporarily stash a corpse.
What the hell? The way I read it:
a) He specifically states he does not have a hood pass
b) He makes fun of the exact phenomena of nigger being off limits for non-black people
c) The entire thing struck me as a wry play at humor
Maybe his Hood Pass is what’s in the briefcase.
[quote=“WordMan, post:5, topic:528558”]
He was probably thinking, “This is a fictional movie wherein I play a character that doesn’t exist. Therefore, I think a bit of outrageous dialogue wouldn’t be so bad.”
FWIW, there were also slurs against Asians, Hispanics, Jews, the homeless and some implied homophobia in that movie, but the n-word is the big “false note” of the whole film, huh?
What I never get over is how celebrities for whom “this ain’t their first time at the rodeo”- who have given interviews before, who have probably been misquoted or taken out of context in interviews before, who are aware that entertainment journalists are usually people who were unable to be entertainers or journalists and are notoriously less than scrupulous in getting noticed in an overcrowded field, will nevertheless say things that every synapse in most people’s brains would be screaming “BAD IDEA BAD IDEA BAD IDEA… that comment about turtles is funny in context but in the print version it’s just going to sound like I hate Third World orphans” or whatever.
Which makes me think one of two things about Mayer.
or
I lean towards 2. I think he pulled an Adam Lambert, my current term for a self promoting ‘gaffe’ that doesn’t just pre-date Adam Lambert but probably pre-dates the pyramids*, but is achieved by a celebrity doing and or saying something that is so shocking and controversial and socially unacceptable that it’s absolutely assured to be talked about on every entertainment and “news” show and blog and message board and will generate more publicity in a week than paying most PR firms $2 million could justify in a year. You can, to quote Mel Gibson (who is neither 1 nor 2 but 3- really crazy, and a narcissist) and do “all the necessary mea culpas”, but as for the bumps to your Q factor- “no no, they can’t take that away from” you. So I think it’s a well thought through stunt that isn’t going to cost him any fans but will get him tons of press. (This is a guy who has his own annual cruise with fans and donned the aforementioned Borat swimsuit for it after all- he ain’t above stunts.)
He’s also brilliant in making the “my penis is a white supremacist” analogy because there are lots of people- male and female- who aren’t generally attracted to a particular race, be it their own or another race, and while they may not confess to it and may be closeted about it they can relate to it. In addition to sharing his “that doesn’t make me a racist” feeling (which when it comes to sexual attraction I don’t think it does make you a racist- I’ve never had any ill will towards Maoris or Pygmies or Inuits but I’ve never been attracted to one either, and the feeling seems to be mutual- you’re attracted to who you’re attracted to, and for me that’s ‘the usual suspects’ (Taylor Lautner and whoever else is hot at the moment) plus a blend of who’s funny and cute when I’m drunk.
So, in ‘going there’ Mayer gives people who feel that way a little bitty persecution chip, which- let’s face it- everybody wants and possibly needs from time to time- and that largely absolves him of insensitivity to them. Plus, as mentioned, he is- at least to me, your penis or sexual parts may differ- extraordinarily fuckable, not to mention a celebrity for whom tact and sensitivity and intelligence aren’t to be expected and thus any that surfaces is automatically a good thing, so that absolves the rest.
From an amoral perspective, not a bad move.
*For Adam Lambert it was the Grammys of course- that guy so totally knew that he was going to be front page (or I guess that term’s obsolete now— ‘Opening minute news’ on every news and entertainment program and this was in a week when he incidentally had a debut album coming out. A much older example is Jayne Mansfield’s boob “accidentally” falling out while photographers were present, or Sarah Bernhardt accidentally dropping names of famous married men she’d shagged and famous women she hated almost a century before that.
I started typing a response to ask “Is saying you’re not attracted to a certain ethnic type racist?”
I even considered started a thread in GD to discuss that very question, saying that tastes can be very specific, and that people can’t really help what they’re attracted to, or not… but you know what? In thinking it over I came to the conclusion that it is racist. There’s just no way I could build a defensible argument, even playing Devil’s advocate. Yep. It’s racist.
Thanks for helping me get that one figured out, SDMB.
I suppose the weirdest thing about my penis (in its preferences, not in and of itself) is that it’s less David Duke than it is Henry Higgins-ist. There are certain dialects and voices that act as an auditory Dickorette and will completely destroy any type of attractiveness: certain redneck twangs (Matthew McConaughey’s even, but especially Billy Bob Thornton or the Charley Daniels patter- not that I would ever think of BBT or CD as attractive), that nervous self righteous Nathan R. Thurm-like fast paced patter of closeted gay guys like Ted Haggard or pre-coming-out Clay Aiken (not that post-coming-out Clay Aiken is that attractive either but he does sound better), the illiterate arrogance of Kanye West or Ashton Kutcher, the way too measured tones of a Buckley or Vidal, the self obsessed nerdiness of Woody Allen, the Fargo accent (reference to the movie, not the place)- all do more to call “Retreat!” to blood cavalry deployed to the Orificial Front than anything this side of body odor.
OTOH, a James Earl Jones or Orson Welles or Jeremy Irons need only have ‘just okay’ body to be moved into McConaughey/Lautner gorgeous. Though I still don’t find Maoris or Inuits attractive, even if they sound like Anthony Hopkins.
I don’t think the racial stuff was anywhere near the most unctious and obnoxious stuff in the interview.
There have been several in the past. Here’s one. (Pity the threads don’t have subject-keyword tags.)
I can say that I also am not attracted to black people in general. I even can think that a specific black woman is beautiful and has a nice personality and I am simply not sexually attracted to them. There are ex post facto reasonings behind this but to reveal those would also sound – well not racist but stereotyping at least – but I think those excuses would just be, well, ex post facto justifications for something that just is that way because it’s that way.