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Whoever coined baseball as the national pastime clearly didn’t know what they were talking about. There is more effort and economy, more business in the business of being a hater than anything else our culture has ever come up with. It’s in our blood - ever since the first caveman scrawled ‘ZOMG T REX SUX’ on a wall, through our hallowed histories (Churchill, Byron, Franklin, Twain - all OG haters), right up to TMZ trying to figure out how to drive a bald-headed Brit-Brit into even more mental anguish to lift their numbers and a vice presidential candidate who’s friends with a crack dealer and parent to a knocked up teenager calling into question the moral fiber of her opponent - we’re all haters to the core.

Know why? The answer is simple, really. Because it’s fun.

Hating (aka “hatin‘ “) finds its way into every aspect of our culture: television (Family Guy, The Soup), music (rap alone provides copious examples. Ice-T is an icon of sweet, sweet hating), movies (Michael Moore, Spike Lee), business (the marketing campaigns for Jack-in-the-Box and Mac speaks for themselves), and everyone has done the equivalent of gossiping at the water cooler (you know who you are, you filthy bitch. Don‘t try to deny it!). Why else would we tolerate people like Speidi or Sanjaya if not to have someone to make fun of? We pay to go see standup comics mock people, we all root around in our brains for clever comebacks. The “I’m rubber and you’re glue” snappy retort has been permanently replaced by “yo mama” (hey - she learned it from your mama. All I’m saying). Mama may have said that bullies are all hollow inside, and that hating comes from insecurities, but I’m here to tell you that mama was wrong. Hating comes from a place of comedic shrewdness, of an ability to call a cracker a cracker and know that if it bites you in the ass, well, you’ve got vd so sucks to be the biter.

The sixties may have been the summer of love, but now, my bitches, now is the cold, hard winter of hate. And I don’t mean hate in a white-supremacist-Taliban-Mel-Gibson way, but the you-may-be-my-friend-but-your-hair-still-looks-like-a-blind-retard-cut-it way. What else would you expect from a people forced through the 90’s machine of sensitivity seminars and politically correct-isms like ‘sobriety challenged’ (Lindsay), ‘crack enthusiast’ (Amy) or ‘supaf*ckin mental case who shouldn’t have locks on her bathroom doors’ (sorry, there isn’t an appropriate politically correct term for Britney). It’s just like all the other survival stories - when put through a trauma, we find a happy place to retreat to. We find coping mechanisms - which often includes throwing somebody else under the bus so we can haul ass to safety.

But the true beauty of hating is that it renders us all equal, all completely mockable. Stupid, ugly, bitchy, uptight, close minded, useless, worthless, narcissistic, whore - and that’s just Spencer Pratt. We all have something that makes us suck - just a little - no matter how hard we may try. Finally, after slavery, after bigotry against immigrants and any number of religions, there is something that brings us together - the beauty of a cutdown so perfectly put together that it’s art. Think I’m exaggerating? Watch Chelsea Lately - a skinny half-Jew half-Mormon with a midget fetish who pisses herself every time she laughs too hard - and is one of the most brilliant comedic talents around, her show completely built on hating. Or check out the entirety of the website Cracked. TMZ, of course, still runs the hating 24-7, and every one of these organizations pays.

So lets go through the checklist - bankable? Yep. Culturally acceptable? You betcha. Make you look better than you are? Of course! And, most importantly, is it fun? Definitely. So cave, sinners. Give in to the urge - you know you want to. Find the douche bag at work who has been giving you so much trouble, the friend who routinely pisses you off, the downstairs neighbor with a sherection for Robert emo-the-sparkle-vampire Pattinson and let them know how you feel. Hate on them, until you feel fulfilled. Because in the end, damn, it feels good to be a hater.