I think this is an important point. If this is part of an interview strategy, it would be important to delineate what's "asshole" behavior and what's merely brusque or blunt (which would be an interesting document to read).

I come from a culture where directness and argumentation are valued over deference to seniority or authority. In some contexts, or by some people, this can be mistaken for rudeness, when really it's just a mode of solving problems.

It's important to know what culture you're dealing with and act appropriately. I might bite my tongue or code-switch if I know I'm dealing with a very conservative/authoritarian culture where it's less important for me to be myself or solve a problem than it is to have people like me. But having other candidates like you rather than solve problems is not usually the main point of a job interview, so creating unwritten tests like this with parameters involves some deceit.

It also goes to the WASP distaste or disdain for the Jewish style of discourse. Historically, someone at IBM saying a candidate was brusque could quite easy be code for saying they were Jewish.