The problem with great art is that it’s sometimes made by horrible humans.

Well, that’s my problem with it, anyway.

I first noticed this in grad school where some of the English department’s most famous writers and poets were also some of its most execrable people.

It has always been difficult for me to enjoy an artist’s art when I know that the artist mistreated his wife, children and dog and generally made life miserable for all the long-suffering, tragically non-gifted folks around him.

I have been thinking about this since Playboy released excerpts of what is certain to go down in history as one of the magazine’s most notorious interviews (and that’s saying something).

In it, musician John Mayer makes racially insensitive comments, he makes seemingly misogynistic comments, he brags about his sexual conquests, and he provides intimate details of his relationships with famous women that those women probably did not give him permission to provide.

Mayer has since apologized, but he is apparently hard-wired for this sort of behavior, as is evidenced by a recent phone interview he gave to Davis Fleetwood of the Web show “The Hermit with Davis Fleetwood.”

You can listen to it at YouTube and at Alternet.org.

In all fairness to Mayer, Fleetwood clearly went into the interview with the intention of baiting Mayer into responding the way he did. But Mayer didn’t have to take the bait and run with it.

There’s lots that’s loopy about this latter interview, assuming it’s real. (Fleetwood insists it is, and Alternet is a reputable news organization.)

One of the things that disturbs me most about it is Mayer’s tendency in the face of some incendiary questioning to mock the interviewer for being unfamous, unwealthy and unable to bed the world’s most beautiful women.

That describes a lot of us, John, including many of your fans.

He also calls the interviewer a “Godless Commie,” but I lack the perceptive ability to discern what is ironic and what is sincere in that statement.

I don’t know Mayer, but I suspect that he suffers from fame inebriation. He is besotted with himself and seems to believe that his every admission and emission is a gold nugget.

More often than not, however, it’s a steaming pile of something else entirely.

Mayer is awfully crass and abrasive for a guy who produces pretty pop songs. It’s a shame his music isn’t as challenging as his rhetoric.

Which brings me back to that occasional disconnect between artist and art.

Do you really want a guy who sings romantic ballads to be as cynical and jauntily avaricious about the whole enterprise as Mayer makes himself out to be in some of these interviews?

If I were a big fan of Mayer’s music, this sort of stuff would bother me. But I am not a big fan of his music, primarily because I am turned off by Mayer’s public persona and have been for years.

Mayer has styled himself as a celeb for the new millennium, a guy who makes frequent use of social-networking sites like Twitter and luxuriates in the attentions of the tabloid press.

This was an apparent bone of contention between Mayer and his on-again-off-again (most probably off-for-good) girlfriend, Jennifer Aniston.

Aniston presumably prefers to have a more private life, but Mayer thinks (according to the Playboy interview) that she is just refusing to acknowledge certain new realities of celebrityhood.

And yet Mayer’s “too-much-of-John-Mayer-is-never-enough” theory was disproved by Mayer himself in that same Playboy interview where he explained the wisdom behind such exhibitionism.

Mayer has since told a Nashville, Tenn., audience that he has “quit the media game,” according to Us Weekly magazine.

“I’m out,” he said. “I’m done. I just want to play my guitar.”

Good idea, but I doubt it will last.

I’m with Aniston: Less is more.

I wish artists would stop spoiling their art by oversharing everything else.

Single, photo debut

Stoney Creek Records has released Columbia City native Megan Mullins’ new single along with a fabulous photo that is a thematic match for the song’s title.

The new single is called “Tradin’ My Halo for Horns.”

You can hear it at Roughstock.com and on Mullins’ MySpace site.

It’s a great rocking tune that has a vintage Heart feel (and I mean that as a high compliment).

Check it out!

The full album is promised for this year (although we’ve been lied to before).

City grad advances

Carroll High School grad Rachel Berry, mentioned as a semifinalist in an Oscar-correspondent contest in this space a few weeks back, is now one of three finalists.

A representative from the Academy Awards told me last week that Berry will do some on-air work for MTV regardless of whether she wins the grand prize – but, of course, she would love to win the grand prize.

And we would love for her to win it.

Clearly, Midwestern voting has made a big difference here.

You can keep voting at www.mtvu.com/on-campus.