Friday, May 18, 2007

Douchebags and Assholes

For language geeks, Res Ipsa Loquitor at Rising Hegemon has an enlightening discussion on the distinction between a douchebag and an asshole. The main distinguishing factor seems to be intelligence. A douchebag has less of it than an asshole. A douchebag might not even be malevolent and could still be a douchebag. RIL’s example is that Bush is a douchebag while Cheney is an asshole. Mitt Romney seems to be a douchebag in contrast to Guiliani, the archetypal asshole.

Evidently, per RIL, a douche and a douchebag are not the same thing, but I don’t know the difference. South Park had an episode in which the cold reader Jon Edwards was crowned Biggest Douche in the Universe by some space aliens. And another episode’s moral was that every election is always between a douche and a turd sandwich. South Park’s writers seem to treat douche and douchebag as synonyms as I have always done.

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