The doughy white dude who wants to teach us about race.

Thirty-four years old, 12 or so years out of Harvard. Writes about music for the New York Times.

Quite white.

Yep, I absolutely agree that Jon Caramanica is qualified to tell us what’s wrong with John Mayer, and to assure us that “what Mr. Mayer might perceive as a progressive understanding of race can be just as shortsighted and pat as a conservative one. It also shows just how easy it is to presume that cultural intimacy means comprehension.”

Let me just ask now: Has Caramanica spoken to Mayer about his true views? Did Mayer intend to elaborate more in his Playboy interview? Was anything left on the cutting room floor?

I’ll answer my own question: Caramanica has no clue and doesn’t care. He had one motive in his “review” of Mayer’s MSG concert (which Caramanica loved, by the way; the show, I mean): To kick up as much dust as possible in the hope that somebody would care about his opinion of the weeks-old, let-it-die-already stupid stuff Mayer said - and acknowledged as such.

Nope. For Caramanica, that’s the entire problem:

But it’s also the last significant public statement he has made about the controversy, a silence that is threatening to become too much of a comfort zone.

In the last week or so there’s been little conversation about Mr. Mayer’s faux pas. The result is an implicit and worrisome approval of Mr. Mayer’s quick fix, as if it were enough.

Shamefully, that part of the interview drew far wider attention than his egregious discussions of race. First, there was the use of the slur, regrettable even though he did so ostensibly to demonstrate a point about the limits of racial understanding. (”It was arrogant of me to think I could intellectualize using it,” he wrote on his Twitter page.)

But what followed in the interview was even more troubling. “What is being black?” he said. “It’s making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that’s seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you’ll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude’s.”

It’s a stunningly naïve perspective…

From the outside looking in, everything is more or less as it was before. And that comfort, that status quo, is dangerous.

Let’s recap:

Worrisome.

Shameful.

STUNNINGLY NAIVE.

Why so worried, shamed, stunned, Jon?

Oh, right: Because you know better than Mayer does what it means to be black in America.

Which we can tell by looking at your picture. Or from the fact that you hang with black musicians. Or from the explanations you provided in this hit job.

Please, Mr. “I went to Harvard so I could write music reviews”, please oh please tell us all that you know about race which eludes Mayer.

Just start with this, Jon:

“What is being black?”

As if we didn’t know that the world is full of fat, stupid idiots.

But here is my real question: Why does Mother Times allow people such as Caramanica to wander so far from their mandate, especially when it’s for clear self-aggrandizing purposes?

Or is it Mother Times’ opinion that Caramanica has elevated this discourse and shared with us something which is so meaningful that they just had to let it through?

More likely: Do they even acknowledge such a thing anymore as journalistic standards?