Like any average American, I have a unhealthy obsession with celebrity. Gawker, Defamer, Fametracker, Snarkfest, and Crown Princess Marie Chantal are my regular Internet haunts for the latest drippingly juicy bit of celeb gossip. The people who run or post on these sites are on the snarky side, but rarely venemously hateful.
In a world where celeb-bashing is a national sport second to only celeb-worshipping, I must confess that I have another unhealthy obsession in my irrational dislike of Natalie Portman. By all accounts, Portman seems like a nice enough girl, has a Harvard education, is praised to hell and highwater for her looks, and is a good actress. And I dislike her intensely. Of course, this isn't something I lose sleep over (having to even make that statement perhaps reveals the depth of my obsession), and I am consciously aware that my dislike for her stems from plain ol' jealously.
I like to believe that the majority of the American population is as rational as me. I don't mean to sound self-righteous, but I have recently realized that small minorities of the population are just stupid. While browsing a forum about Natalie Portman (I know, shut up), there was one poster who went to great lengths to express his adamant, vitriolic hatred for Gael Garcia Bernal. The poster ranted on and on in multiple 500+ word posters about the supposed hypocrisy, shallowness, and homosexuality that is Bernal.
Okay, so Bernal was my first real celebrity crush, and I have a special obligation to defend him against such nonsense. This is not that hard of a task as he is an almost universally beloved actor by those who know him and there are legions of critics and fans alike to aid my cause.
I was however, struck by the absolute abandon with which the poster attacked Bernal, someone he knew only as the supposed boyfriend of Portman. Never had I seen such bitterness and animosity leap from the screen as the sharpened daggers of his words cut across cyberspace. He attacked Bernal for his choice of socially-conscious and sexually-explicit roles in Y tu mama tambien, Bad Education, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Amores Perros. Anyone who follows art-house films will immediately recognize those titles as some of the most claimed foreign language films of the last few years, yet the poster derided them as pandering to a liberally-biased critical establishment.
The issue here is not whether the poster's argument held any water, but the shocking acrimony with which he delivered it. Despite my patent dislike for Portman, I have never crossed, or even gone anywhere close to this line of total hatred. I cannot even bring myself to say I hate Portman because I do not know her personally in any way, shape or form. In fact, I cannot say I hate anyone even in real life or at least I have not sustained hatred toward anyone for longer than 24 hours. I want to say something witty about hate here, but I cannot, because I have not truly experienced it in my life. I am at once intrigued and alarmed with the poster's utter hatred of someone so far removed from his real life.
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