by Matt St. Amand

Created on: October 02, 2010

"Give him enough rope and he'll hang himself," goes the old expression.  Apparently, some people are capable of doing this 140 characters at a time.

John Mayer may be the King of Light FM and may fancy himself the reincarnation of Blind Lemon Jefferson on guitar, but  following his spectacularly disastrous Playboy interview several months ago, it appears he's wakened to the fact that he's been living in a sycophant-adorned bubble for the past few years.

John Mayer is actually a great example of why people should follow an old piece of advice that goes, "Stick to what you know."

Play guitar, John Mayer.  Leave Twitter to the experts like Justin Halpern.

Norman Mailer was famous for venturing away from his strengths.  He'd show up partially intoxicated on the Dick Cavett Show or the Mike Douglas Show and would either veer, himself, or find himself pinballed into droning on about how he would run the world if he was the President of the United States.

It would be interesting to see where Norman Mailer's career and public persona would be today - yes, this writer is aware that Mailer is now deceased - had the Internet existed back in the days he was showing up on TV talk shows, all too willing to bloviate on topics far and wide.

It was probably one of John Mayer's numerous handlers, agents, publicists or lawyers who prevailed upon him to simply quash the Twitter account.  Unless he was posting links to free new music, he should probably have been kept well away from any keyboard connected to the Web.

The other half of the Perfect Storm of public Twitter - and other media - scandals is the scandal-addicted tabloid media.  We live in such an upside-down world that the The National Enquirer was actually in the running for a Pulitzer Prize when the 2010s were handed out.

That's beyond belief.

So, when a star such as John Mayer takes to the Internet and lets fly, there is a voracious waiting audience there ready to copy and paste the next foot-in-mouth pronouncement or admission and disseminating it to every bedpan hub on the Web.

50Cent is the latest to fall/jump into that shark tank after making some fairly offensive remarks on his Twitter account about how men who don't have sex with women should simply kill themselves.

Maybe it's all a cynical ploy.  Maybe it's just a way to stay in the headlines - such as they are these days - amid the overcrowded circus of celebrities and "stars" and wannabes.

Whatever it is, it's a mean, ugly, no-win game for celebrities who appear all-too-willing to share what they perceive as wisdom, which usually is ill-conceived chum for the shark-mouthed gossip press.

In so many cases, it seems that the two were made for each other.

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