It's hard not to feel a twinge of pity these days for John Mayer, who's currently standing in a blinding shitstorm of his own making. After all, as odious as his recent admission is that he's got David Duke for a penis, the guy has done every man in the world a massive favour.

Or, more specifically, every man who's ever stood fidgeting in front of a convenience-store counter, waiting to pay for the magazine that keeps Hugh Hefner in silk pyjamas.

If you've done the walk of shame out of one of these stores, then you've likely given the spiel. In an enfeebled attempt to convince the cashier you're not planning to go home and defile yourself, you've offered an explanation no one has ever bought. Until now.

Thanks to Mayer, the clerk at Balls Grocery on Victoria Drive might actually believe you when you plop down your copy of Playboy, stare at your feet, and then mumble “Umm, I'm buying it for an article.”

Yes, Mr. “Your Body Is a Wonderland” has just destroyed a major myth. For decades, the world has been convinced that the only thing the average guy cares about in the average issue of Playboy is the size of Miss March's jugs. Instead, it turns out people do read the text. How else do you explain the massive beating that Mayer is now taking for an interview that ran in the March issue of the rag?

In case you've let your subscription lapse, let's get you up to speed. In a wide-ranging, sex-obsessed interview, the artist favoured by four out of five Yaletown condo dwellers touched on everything from his undying love of porn to the revelation that Jessica Simpson fucks like a bucking bronco.

The confessions didn't stop there. After noting that, intellectually speaking, he loves all people equally regardless of skin colour, Mayer proceeded to describe his penis as being possessed by the spirit of former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke. As middle-of-the-road as his records might be, the dude, with that comment, caused the kind of furor that must make Marilyn Manson wonder why he's wasting time going door-to-door in Middle America.

In case there's some confusion, Mayer's dong isn't selling photographs of rare birds and wildlife in the mountains of Austria; what he's saying is that, when he hits the buffet table, he sticks strictly to white meat. In fairness, he went on to note that he's dreamed of plugging his joy-prong into the sockets of Holly Robinson Peete, Kerry Washington, and Hilary from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but by that point the damage had been done. Everyone from Roger Ebert to, well, Holly Robinson Peete is currently all over him. Adding to the trauma, should Halle Berry ever end up back on the market, Mayer has just torpedoed whatever chances he might have had at tapping that ass.

Where this all gets a little unfair is that there's obviously a double standard at play. Had Chuck D—who's never, God bless him, made a secret of his feelings about white folks—come out and announced that his tube steak takes its walking orders from Louis Farrakhan, no one would be organizing a lynch mob. Same goes for Kanye West. Actually, scratch that—the world would gladly be calling for Kanye West's head on a stick, not for his sexual preferences, but because he's Kanye West.

Huffington Post poster Hetert-Qebu Walters has been one of the few sane voices who's been able to cut through the hysteria on this matter, which has generated so much heat that Mayer actually broke down on-stage in Nashville on February 10. Walters—who is Black—wrote: “While many are offended because he was discussing dating Black women, I found his honesty refreshing. Mayer isn't calling Black women ”˜nappy headed hoes' or denigrating us, he is simply stating that his dating preferences are not aligned with how he makes friends.”

Indeed. Now if only she'd made things a little easier for the rest of us by noting: “I read about this controversy in Playboy, which, by the way, is really worth picking up for the articles.”