Make Enemies and Alienate People

What's the difference between being an [epithet that begins with the first letter of the alphabet] and just a jerk? Where's the line?
The alpha male is someone like Donald Trump. They're simply decisive, commanding. But they have empathy. And if somebody appeals to them on a human level they'll respond, probably. The [buttocks personified] takes it to the next step: he or she is somebody who literally has no empathy. What I was trying to do in this book was press the point and ask, "How far is too far?" What direction are we going in when we try to out-alpha each other to the extreme? It almost becomes a comical character. It's no longer simple dominance, it's ridiculousness.

It becomes a caricature.
Yeah. And the big insight of the whole thing for me is that I was able to adopt a kind of persona that I didn't have. It wasn't really me, but it was a character. And it let me off the hook, because it wasn't really me. We all do that to a certain extent, we do that at the office.

If Donald Trump is just an alpha male, who are the famous [human derrieres] throughout history?
There are [scatological body part] philosophers. Everyone says Nietzsche, Machiavelli. But my favorite is Ayn Rand. Everyone really likes her, but if you look at her books it's like an [rectal] manifesto. It's a big ego trip: either you're the special person and you can do literally whatever you want—that is the definition of an [a-hole]—or you're not, in which case you're the victim of one of these people. It's a pretty clear [orifice] worldview. She even had a book called "The Virtue of Selfishness." But my perfect role model is a fictional character, Tony Montana [in "Scarface"]. He was over the top; he was not quite real.

But now you have a blog  where you cite examples of such behavior in the real world.
Women can be [disagreeable people] too. Heather Mills is a classic. She seems a little unhinged. Everyone thinks of Simon Cowell. Some people have said Rupert Murdoch, but I was on Fox News, so I wouldn't call him an [excretory opening]. There are some timeless [proctological] maneuvers: interrupting, taking credit for everything, claiming every idea you've ever heard as your own—that's the one I like.

I like interrupting the person talking to you just to assert something that makes absolutely no sense.
[Laughs] People do that. Neil Cavuto did that on his [Fox News] show! It was pretty funny. He took out his BlackBerry and started looking and he wasn't listening to me. He said, "Oh, uh, I wasn't listening." He didn't say, "Sorry." He was being an [posterior portal]. See?

What's your take on alternate words, like "a--hat" or "douchebag"?
[Laughs] I like "d---head," because apparently you can say that on the radio.

You can?
That's what I've heard. You can't say [the word we have refrained from printing thus far in this interview] in America, but you can say d---head.

Yeah, I'm still not sure how we're going to print this interview, to be honest.
On TV I can say masspole, so I just say masspole the whole time. Or a-hole is all right, or jerk. By the way, the BBC made a new rule for me. I was allowed to say the word [begins with A, you figure it out] after 10 p.m. So I changed history. Me. I'm so proud.

© 2008