Ricky Gervais, my new hero

Ok, so if you don't know who Ricky Gervais is, you should, because he's freaking hilarious.  He's a British comedian.  He just had a movie open with Greg Kinnear, in which he plays a cantankerous dentist who sees dead people (the reviews are mixed).  What he's most famous for, however, is originating the role now played by Steve Carrell on the "The Office".  That show is modeled after a similar one from the UK that was Gervais' brain child.

Anyway, last week he wrote an article for Newsweek about 8 things that annoy him.  I was skeptical going in, as usually such articles written by comedians are annoying, vulgar, offensive or all three.  But I loved the whole thing.  Showed that he is a classy guy who also happens to have a great sense of humor.

One of his pet peeves I share in spades, so I had to pass it on:

"People who use the line 'I say what I think.'  No, you're rude, and you're just trying to make it a virtue.  People are always going on about how 'I'm not two-faced.'  No, but you are a nasty, facist, racist piece of dirt.  That outweighs two-faced.  Next time, be two-faced."

So true!! I know so many people who think that in order to be polite you have to be fake and it drives me absolutely mad!  If I don't like someone, I don't have to pretend that we're best friends.  But I also don't have to ignore or denigrate them.  If I have an opinion that I know is rude but can't help but feeling, it hurts no one to keep it to myself until I can adjust my attitude or remove myself from the problem.  

I have always had trouble understanding true extroverts, being so far from that inclination myself.  But I have a hard time believing that, even if it is in your nature to say anything that comes into your head (and I work with a few teenagers for whom I know it is a very real personality trait), you couldn't learn to control what comes out of your mouth by the time you're an adult!