Women I Love to Hate

This morning I watched a documentary ("Headliners and Legends") about Betty Broderick. I hate her. I know this because I have seen that same documentary almost a dozen times. I have seen the Meredith Baxter/Stephen Collins made-for-TV movies about Betty over and over again, too. I even read a book about her case. Which is how I know I hate her. To the uninitiated, Betty is the dumb, self-centered bitch who in 1989 shot her ex and his new wife as they slept in their beds, and somehow still claims she was "abused." She is an insult to abused women everywhere, women whose exhusbands are deadbeat dads who don't pay their former wives tens of thousands of dollars every month, who threaten their wives' safety, instead of the other way around. Self-destructive, whiny narcissist has the chutzpah to present herself as some sort of feminist martyr. My blood pressure is rising as I write this. I hate her.

I also hate Kathie Lee Gifford. She is so goofy, so self-congratulatory, such a schmaltzy throwback to another phonier time, that she literally makes my teeth hurt. Yet I am transfixed every time one of her segments comes on The Insider.

I hate Madonna, too. She is less an artist than a savvy marketer, reinventing herself regularly to make a buck. Her product is as sincere and as expressive as a $3 bill. The bisexual leather-wearing dominatrix who sang about "hanky panky, nothing like a good spanky" somehow became a Burberry-clad children's book author with a faux English accent. Shudder.

I hate Angelina Jolie. I am strictly Team Aniston. Angelina is our generation's Liz Taylor. Except back in the 1950s, Liz proudly and boldly was what she was -- a man-eating carnivore. None of this, "Love me cuz of my work with poor" shit for Liz. I believe that Brangelina spend so much time in Africa to avoid the paparazzi and to try to rehabilitate their tattered images. (Damn you, Brad, you were supposed to be Jen's lobster!) Liz and Dick had the integrity to decadently throw around scads of cash on diamonds and yachts. (Though I am gratified to see that Brad Pitt has belatedly discovered that there are poor people here in the States, too.) Also, back in the 1950s Liz was more beautiful and a better actress that AJ.

I read about these women, I watch TV coverage about their antics. Just so I can hate them.

But you understand it, don't you? It's the same impulse that forces you to keep sticking your tongue into your cavity, even though it kinda hurts.