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A dozen words for jerk

With his new satirical self-help title, author Martin Kihn counsels us to be more aggressive, and he took his own advice when titling the book: it’s called A$$hole: How I Got Rich and Happy by Not Giving a Damn About Anyone and How You Can Too (Broadway/Random House).

That hook has scored Kihn a Q&A in Newsweek, but apparently the magazine thinks its sensitive readers cannot withstand the word “asshole” unless it’s spelled with dollar signs. Whenever the a-word comes up in the interview, writer Brian Braiker substitutes a euphemism, such as “family-unfriendly word that NEWSWEEK generally avoids.”

To his credit, though, Baiker has some fun with it, using a different euphemism every time one is called for – which is often. Here’s the full list.

• aggressively un-nice person
• curse word synonymous with “unbelievable jerk” that begins with the letter A
• epithet that begins with the first letter of the alphabet
• buttocks personified
• human derrieres
• scatalogical body part
• a-hole
• rectal
• orifice
• disagreeable people
• excretory opening
• scatalogical body part
• posterior portal
• the word we have refrained from printing thus far in this interview
• begins with A, you figure it out

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