And so, as we sat at our laptops this year, aggressively hitting the refresh button on TMZ, we waited and watched for our icons to go off their meds, to lose their shit and to generally behave in a manner confounding, larger than life and just plain nuts. They did not disappoint.

Christian Bale

It seems like a million years ago already that the audio of Christian Bale’s expletive-rich tirade from the “Terminator Salvation” set went viral. That’s because since it first popped up in February, the debonair Brit’s apoplectic, American-accented rant at a lowly director of photography who dared to wander into his shot has become a mashup classic. It was parodied on “Family Guy,” spliced with the footage of that poor kid coming back from the dentist and, most brilliantly, turned into the dance remix of the year.

Bale, who in 2008 was arrested for allegedly assaulting his mother and sister, promptly apologized for his freakout, saying he “acted like a punk,” but we think he’s still got a follow-up hit in him. Somebody please, walk into his fucking light again.

Tila Tequila

When you name yourself after a potent alcoholic beverage, you’re probably pretty comfortable with unusual behavior. But after making serious allegations of physical abuse by her NFL-star ex-boyfriend, Shawne Merriman, the diminutive starlet went particularly coo-coo for cocoa puffs during a late-night session on Ustream. In the November clip, which apparently went on for hours (and Tequila quickly removed), she stripped, wriggled her ass and ranted that “I think a woman’s body is a beautiful thing … that’s why I’m a lesbian … I was born naked … anybody who is against that is gay and in denial.” And that her former beau was “sleeping with minors … little girls” and “don’t even support his own people” (sic).

For those of you short on time or patience with the incoherent, go directly to 2:46.

Tequila soon retracted her words, claiming the stress and anxiety from the alleged assault had sent her temporarily off the rails. She seems to have rebounded nicely — in December she announced her engagement to Johnson & Johnson heiress/grand theft larceny suspect Casey Johnson. Is she nuts? Chemically altered? “Anxious”? All we know for certain now is that like so many of us, Tequila loves to hang around at home singing and dancing in her underwear.

Susan Boyle

With one tear-jerking, ass-kicking breakthrough performance, Susan Boyle redefined the term “overnight star” last spring. Is it any wonder that the glare of swift and relentless fame took a toll on the unemployed, small-town woman with no professional experience?

After losing the top prize on “Britain’s Got Talent,” she wound up in a hospital suffering exhaustion and retreated from the limelight. Calling her sudden career catapult a “giant demolition ball,” she admitted, “I needed a rest, just to get away.” It seemed for a while she was destined to be the pop-culture blip of the month, going from fame to infamy to obscurity with breathtaking speed. But huzzah for Boyle, who told “Today” this summer that, “I’m the type of person that just couldn’t stand up for herself very well, but I got over it. I’m getting over it now.” In November her first album debuted at the top of the U.S. and U.K. charts. Dreams do come true.

Billy Bob Thornton

We’ve known Thornton had a whole heap of weird in him since back in the days he was strutting around with Angelina Jolie’s blood around his neck. But while promoting his band the Boxmasters in April, he outdid himself during an interview for a Toronto radio station. As the video of the conversation went viral, it was clear the episode had more uncomfortable moments than the entire run of the British version of “The Office.”

For an excruciating 15 minutes, Thornton stared blankly into the middle distance and intoned, “I don’t know what you’re talking about” when confronted with even the simplest of questions about how long his band had been together or his opinion of Willie Nelson.

He later explained his trip to Mars by way of Canada on “Jimmy Kimmel” by saying the DJ had “lied to me to my face,” saying “I told a DJ to kiss my ass, that’s all that happened.” And during the course of the interview Thornton did indeed take umbrage with host Jian Ghomeshi for mentioning his guest’s day job as an actor, telling him, “You were instructed not to talk about shit like that” and comparing himself to Tom Petty. (Hey, if we had Thornton’s recent film career we might not be bragging about it either.)

Yet, from the moment he was introduced on the show, the 53-year-old aspiring rock star did not appear to be in kiss-my-ass mode but closer to the flat-on-the-face zone, veering off on tangents about his childhood reading habits. But let’s take him at his word. Maybe Thornton really was just pissed at the DJ daring to not introduce him exactly the way he wanted, and punished him with sullen spaciness. Which would make him not crazy — just a raging douche.

Joaquin Phoenix

Dude, you’re supposed to walk the line, not lurch over it. At first it just looked like he was prepping to star in the Zack Galifinakas story. But when shaggy haired, slightly gone-to-seed Joaquin Phoenix took the stage on “Letterman” last February, he quickly entered the Farrah Fawcett “Late Night” Disaster Hall of Fame.

Professing that the was not going to act anymore, he shrugged and said, “I’ve been working on my music. I do hip-hop.” Then he commented on Letterman’s raggedy cuticles and stuck his gum under the desk. Things didn’t get better during a Miami “performance” in March, when he jumped offstage to go after a heckler. The skeptical have suggested Phoenix’s latest incarnation is a piece of Andy Kaufman-esque performance art, noting how brother-in-law Casey Affleck conveniently always seems to be around to film his meltdowns for a documentary they’re rumored to be making. So the actor, who did a stint in rehab in 2005, is either slumming in Crazy Town or currently residing there. Either way, we miss that smoldering Oscar nominee of the not-so-distant past.

Mischa Barton

She earned herself a DUI in 2007. Rumors of hard partying swirled around her in 2008. Then this July, the 23-year-old former “OC” star called the police to her home and wound up in involuntary psychiatric hold at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Citing a bad recovery from having her wisdom teeth removed and too much stress and pressure, she referred to the incident as a “meltdown” and “rock bottom” on a September episode of “The View.”

And as she told Time Out, “I was down in the dumps about everything there for a while … I got completely stressed-out and couldn’t handle everything, and now I feel really in control.” Hope that resilience holds: Her new series, “The Beautiful Life,” was canceled after two episodes.

Heidi and Spencer

Proving that even people who compulsively star on reality shows have their limits, world’s most overexposed couple Heidi and Spencer Pratt hit the wall in June while filming “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!” Taking the title literally, Spencer hooted, bellowed, made unusual noises and howled into the Costa Rican jungle that “I’m too rich, I’m too famous and I’m outta here.”

His bride, meanwhile, wept copious on-camera tears because her fellow contestants “completely took off all my labels and everything on my dry shampoo.” They threatened to quit. They really really threatened to quit. Then they quit, and ulcer-ridden Heidi wound up in the hospital. Did we mention that before the very publicly Christian couple hightailed it out, Spencer got himself baptized by Stephen Baldwin? They then followed up their summer of love by getting into a feud with Al Roker (Al Roker!) and shopping around a new reality series. Had enough? We’re just an innocent public. Get us out of here.

Serena Williams

Sending journalists into a frenzy of epiphanies that female athletes can be as temperamental as their male counterparts, the crankier of the Williams sisters went ballistic on a lineswoman at the U.S. Open over a foot fault. In a tongue-lashing that threatened to short-circuit CBS’s bleep button, Williams swore she was “fuckin’ takin’ this ball and shovin’ it down your fuckin’ throat. I swear to God.” She ultimately lost the Open, but won herself an $82,500 fine and a place in the upper ranks of legendary outbursts.

Courtney Love

A year without Love sticking her foot in her mouth would be like a year without Kanye West sticking his foot in his mouth. So imagine our total lack of surprise when the singer, a true pioneer in the world of online oversharing, took to Facebook in November to apply her creative spelling and punctuation to the sentiment that “britneys dad molested her, imagine the father that molested you owning you for slavery while your forced to sing songs picked for thier sexual content every night, insane right? i have it on First had authority, and fight as hard as she is and does she still didnt pull that card, its a pride thing i can relate to, However they want to play dirty, lets go, Im SO not affraid of the little trolls who hit this when i was f***** up who are called lawyers. lets GO.”

Appropriate response of the year award goes to Spears’ camp, which replied, “We’re not commenting on Courtney Love, or any aliens who might come to Earth to impregnate people.”

Orly Taitz

At its heart, “American Idol” is nothing more than a classic tale of reinvention. Each season, contestants walk into an audition room as students, wannabes or the best singer in their tiny little town — and a few months (and several million text messages later), they’re sitting at the top of the Billboard charts.

Who better, then, to judge how quickly the contestants can make this difficult transition than Birther in Chief Orly Taitz? Before she muscled her way to the head of the motley crew of loonies who believe President Obama was born in Kenya, Taitz worked as a dentist in Orange County, Calif. And a realtor. And a lawyer.  Now she’s moved on to more fame, albeit probably not fortune, shopping phony Kenyan birth certificates in official court filings and appearing on TV.

And oh, how she appears on TV. Taitz — who once yelled at a roomful of reporters because they had failed to investigate whether Obama’s mother was really dead  — would be the most entertaining “Idol” judge yet. You don’t know what she’ll say; you just know she’ll say it crazily. Picture her yelling at Simon Cowell the way she tears into MSNBC’s David Shuster here. Imagine her demanding that contestants bring their high school transcripts into the room, in order to prove they’re who they say they are. Instantly, “Idol” would go from glorified karaoke to a Fox News musical comedy. Who wouldn’t watch that?

 Joan Rivers

She may not make the next Maxim 100, but the smack-down queen has built a career puncturing overinflated celebrity ego and, frankly, that’s the kind of can-do spirit we need for the 500th tone-deaf rendition of “I Believe I Can Fly.”

But Rivers is more than cutting. She shares Paula’s total absence of filter and willingness to flaunt her own frailty — from failed marriages to plastic surgery — and she could swallow Simon’s abuse like her 10th vodka gimlet and still order another round. In a way, she’s like a linear, Catskills version of Paula: She’s hilarious, she’s off the rails, she makes us feel kind of sad inside, and her agent, believe me, is waiting for the phone call right now.

 Courtney Love

If we’re looking for someone who can actually out-Paula Paula, Courtney is our girl. She brings a large bag of loopy everywhere she goes; she pretty much patented unpredictable TV appearances and interviews. Her compelling twitterfeed proves that she is capable of dispensing shards of poetry (of Jack White: “he is like athunderstorm and made me LAUGH!”) and offering encouragement to fledgling artists (of the band Dead Sara: ” OH MY GOD! fucking second coming of a chick with pipes who can screamsing and melodic!”) Courtney also has many years of genuinely hard-earned music biz experience and philosophy to bring to the panel. As she sagely tweeted recently, “MAking great rock music is about lot of factors 1 never take yourself too seriously 2 take it very seriously. It Matters” — words for “AI” contestants to live by.

Sarah Palin

The former governor of Alaska is the dream candidate to replace the woman whose rambling, heartfelt, incomprehensible comments make James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” look like “Baby Beluga.” Palin is tanned, rested and looking for work. She would bring the highest name recognition ever to a prime-time TV show: With Palin on board, “AI’s” ratings would exceed the numbers for Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies. And her misadventures with the English language are even more startlingly advanced than Abdul’s. Imagine the look on Sir Simon’s face when Palin starts raving about Adam Lambert “rearing his head and coming into the airspace of the United States of America.” Moreover, it would be a win for Palin. The “Idol” gig – a gigantic cultural train wreck witnessed by every American citizen — would position Palin perfectly for that presidential run in 2012. 

Kate Gosselin

The ratings for “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ are tanking, and we clearly can’t stop mocking her hair. She’s used to doling out praise and constructive criticism to her eight tiny terrors. And Gosselin has made it abundantly obvious she’s happy to critique her husband. Why not let the starry-eyed fame kids be the next victims?

Peggy Noonan

She’s an intellectual Paula Abdul: Think of her breathy, loopy, possibly sedated, weirdly flirty star turns on television, whether with Charlie Rose or Chris Matthews. They have a lot of Paula in them. I can easily imagine her holding forth on “AI” performers. For example, just take what she said about George W. Bush and adapt it for Kris Allen:

“I was asked this week why Kris Allen seems so attractive to the heartland, to what used to be called Middle America. A big question. I found my mind going to this word: normal.

Mr. Allen is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. He’s normal. He thinks in a sort of common-sense way. He speaks the language of business and sports and politics. You know him. He’s not exotic. (He’s not Adam Lambert!) But if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help. He’ll help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, “Where’s Sally?” (Adam Lambert would be saying, Hey there, fireman!)

He’s responsible. He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world. And then when the fire comes they say, “I warned Joe about that furnace.” And, “Does Joe have children?” And “I saw a fire once. It spreads like syrup. No, it spreads like explosive syrup. No, it’s formidable and yet fleeting.” When the fire comes they talk. Or they sing “Ring of Fire” in a way that would make Johnny Cash squirm in his manly grave.

Kris Allen ain’t that guy. Republicans love the guy who ain’t that guy. Americans love the guy who ain’t that guy. (The guy they don’t love? Adam Lambert).”

Have we missed anybody? Blog your thoughts on who should replace Paula on Open Salonor check out the submissions here

A brief search of what is purportedly Love’s Twitter feed (though remember for both legal and moral reasons that it’s really impossible to determine who writes these things), a longer version of the hosebag comment turns up, and it goes, “stay away well well away, and etsy cant wait tos e the backof her, so goodbye asswipe nasty lying hosebag thief, now for pleasant things.”

In non-Twitter abuse, Love reportedly also wrote on a fashion site that Simorangkir is “the nastiest lying worst person I have ever known … evil incarnate, vile horrible lying bitch.”

Simorangkir filed suit against Love last week in Los Angeles Superior Court, seeking punitive damages and accusing Love of carrying out an “obsessive and delusional crusade to destroy [her] reputation and her livelihood.”

Apparently, the bad blood stems from Love allegedly failing to pay a bill, and Simorangkir refusing to make more clothes for her. But does it really matter how it started? In times of economic vulnerability and head-spinning technological advance, America craves predictability, dependability, reliability. And so we salute you, Courtney Love, and hope, as we have for well nigh 20 years, that you are getting whatever help you need.

Fox News vs. CNN, another round: The media tiff between Fox News and CNN (mainly in the form and likeness of Anderson Cooper) is getting nastier. In this week’s Television Week, Fox News ran a two-page ad mocking Anderson Cooper — though it doesn’t name the anchor, his signature gray hair is an obvious sign — by saying, “Meet the Paris Hilton of television news.” (You can watch the anchors of “Fox & Friends” mock Cooper in the video below, from Video Dog.) In today’s Page Six (also a part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire), a CNN source says Fox is just mad because Anderson has been slowly eroding the bigger audience of his time-slot competitor show on Fox, “On the Record With Greta Van Susteren,” and adds that CNN is planning to fire back: “They are preparing their answer to the Fox ad and you can expect something next week … It’s war.” (Page Six, TMZ)

No love for “Idol”: Despite yesterday’s briefly exciting reports that Courtney Love would be replacing Paula Abdul as a judge on “American Idol,” it looks as if Abdul’s job is safe for now. “Idol” executive producer Nigel Lythgoe denied any staffing changes in a statement yesterday: “Courtney Love is a very talented artist, but the judges for ‘American Idol’ are Paula, Randy and Simon. We have no plans to add to or replace any of them.” In case that left any room for doubt, Love herself wrote a denial — a rambling, badly typed denial — on her Web site Wednesday (all sic, obviously): “i woul dnever ever do that, ive never watche dthat show except once with my daughter i went to the final night, I couldnt even get ON that show nor would i wantt o and no offense to anyone who has been on that show and wantsto be on that show- i have no interest at this point in my life, im interested in putting this record out- doing films and doiung rock shows this summer and being on the road, and thats what i shall do.” (People, Us Online, Gawker)

Also:
After recent rumors about a nose job filtered through the tabs, Jennifer Aniston has admitted to rhinoplasty, though only for noncosmetic reasons: “It’s funny. I had [a deviated septum] fixed — best thing I ever did. I slept like a baby for the first time in years.” (People) … Harry Potter fans, rejoice: J.K. Rowling has announced that the final installment in the bestselling boy wizard series will be released on July 21. (BBC News) … Pretty Ricky’s “Late Night Special” debuted at No. 1 on this week’s album chart with 132,000 copies sold, followed by the Shins’ latest, “Wincing the Night Away,” which moved a healthy 118,000 copies. (Billboard) … Waxhoff.com is a strangely satisfying, yet very simple Flash game — the only object of which is to wax David Hasselhoff’s chest hair. (Waxhoff) … Texas columnist Molly Ivins — the brilliant, witty pundit who, among many other achievements, came up with the nickname “Shrub” for George W. Bush — died after a long battle with breast cancer Wednesday at her home in Austin, Texas. She was 62. (Yahoo News)

Money Quote:
“The Shield” actress Paula Garcés’ drastic — and as it turns out, unnecessary — plan to get herself mentioned in Page Six: “My husband’s plan is to dress up in drag, and we’ll go to some hot club and just start making out. People will think I’m making out with some crazy lesbian girl, and I’ll get a lot of heat in the New York Post’s Page Six! But I always back down.” (Page Six)

Turn On:
On Thursday night, it’s the series premiere of the “The Sarah Silverman Program” (Comedy Central, 10:30 p.m. EST), while over on network TV, it must be sweeps week, given tonight’s roster of cameos: Tim Gunn and Katharine McPhee appear on a new “Ugly Betty” (ABC, 8 p.m. EST), Forest Whitaker shows up on “ER” (NBC, 10 p.m. EST), and Isabella Rossellini and Paul Reubens both deign to visit “30 Rock” (NBC, 9:30 p.m. EST).

On the Talk Shows:
Larry King (CNN, 9 p.m. EST): Ruben Studdard
Charlie Rose (PBS, check local listings): Sen. Chuck Schumer
David Letterman (CBS, 11:30 p.m. EST): Bill Murray, LeBron James
Jay Leno (NBC, 11:35 p.m. EST): Abigail Breslin, Julie Scardina, Christina Aguilera
Conan O’Brien (NBC, 12:35 a.m. EST): Serena Williams, Kevin Brennan
Craig Ferguson (CBS, 12:35 a.m. EST): Henry Winkler, Zoe Saldana, Jet
Jimmy Kimmel (ABC, 12:05 a.m. EST): Felicity Huffman, Stephen Marley featuring Damian Marley
Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, 11 p.m. EST): Sienna Miller
Stephen Colbert (Comedy Central, 11:30 p.m. EST): Sen. Chuck Schumer

Get more of the Fix here.
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The release of “Dirty Blonde” is an occasion to assess, after an absence — she’s not coy about where she’s been; it’s rehab, no Mariah-style “exhaustion” euphemisms for her — where Love belongs on the topography of celebrity now. This is not to list her on the silly A-through-D high-school popularity scale that the proliferation of magazines and television shows devoted to the worship of fame have made the lingua franca, but to consider why Love provokes such a strong reaction.

Why we should care about Love’s private thoughts given her blatant lust for publicity is the more pressing question that her book raises. There are several reasons Love is a touchstone: She calls herself a feminist when it is a label many women, famous or otherwise, do not wear proudly. But feminists are reluctant to champion her, as her choices have often been embarrassing — or worse — from playing Larry Flynt’s wife in a controversial film to allegedly using drugs while pregnant with her daughter. Love also commits what amounts to a mortal sin by overestimating her own beauty, talent and achievements, believing utterly in herself in a culture where women’s self-esteem is undermined at every turn. And then there are the lingering doubts that she earned that fame at all, having been married to a man more successful than she was, and having refused to fade away graciously after his death. Instead, she has held on even tighter, trying ever harder to prove her worth through her music, her film roles and now her book.

Love is adamant in her author’s note about the fact that she “really hasn’t written a book.” She will find no argument here. This is a pastiche, an assemblage, the most Barthian of texts. Yet it is undeniably a reflection of Love’s psyche, confirming that Love’s allure lies in her glorious disarray. As they say in the South, she’s a hot mess. She is not from the starlet factory where they mint Jojos and Rhiannas and other girls who can do that sweet-yet-sexy-yet-a-little-tough thing. She comes from an era when women played their own instruments and wrote their own songs, but she’s not one of those Jewel-ish whiners or Sheryl Crow lite rockers. She’s the real deal: a grungy girl punk rock star. And she can’t quite shake that aura no matter how high her heels or how fancy her borrowed designer gowns.

Even when she tries hardest to be glamorous and ladylike, there is something askew. It may be a trick of the eye, but in the slickest photos one looks for the slipped nipple, the reddish blemish, the mascara clump (and, yes, they are all here).

The book’s inclusion of fashion designers Gianni Versace and Marc Jacobs — a picture and remembrance of the former and a personal note from the latter — is almost touching in its aspirational, please-make-me-over appeal. Just imagine Love begging them to hose her down and fix her up, commanding them to make her pretty on the outside. The first album Hole released, “Pretty on the Inside,” paid ironic homage to precisely this idea: In a culture obsessed with appearances, especially for women, who cares if your insides are ugly or angry? If you still put on your makeup and go through the motions of being a good girl, will anyone notice? Implied, of course, is that the reverse is devastatingly true: Appearing in public with your messed-up insides showing — something Love frequently does — definitely gets noticed.

She’s characteristically blunt about deserving attention, male and otherwise: “I love being famous. I fucking enjoy it so much. Why do I have to explain that? Because no one else has it. Because it’s a fight. Because its psychicly [sic, sic] charging. Hey. Because I get off on it.” She’s a fame junkie, and evidence of her ongoing habit is everywhere: In her friend Carrie Fisher’s introduction there is a jotted list of celebs who have called her that day, and in the acknowledgments (“Trudie and Sting,” “Edward Norton,” director “Brett Ratner,” etc.). To revel in being famous is unseemly, though it seems almost quaint since the arrival of the Paris Hiltons of the world — those skinny things who have become famous for just being famous, whereas Love has actually garnered critical acclaim for performing music and acting in films. Still, she is branded with the label given to those who enjoy the spotlight a little too much, derived from the world’s oldest profession: publicity whore. It’s precisely the combination of the patent enjoyment of her fame and her decision to act as if she were beautiful despite reports to the contrary — thus the title of her early 1990s zine “And She’s Not Even Pretty” — that makes Courtney Love the object of sustained scorn and outrage.

Of course, there is also the idea that she has lasted past her expiration date. Some would say she has merely parlayed a personality into a career, coasting on the coattails of her dead husband, Kurt Cobain, thus suffering the wrath of millions of Nirvana fans, who can’t (or just won’t) forgive her for his suicide in 1994. Did she merely turn her train wreck of a marriage into fodder for her celebrity? The Cobain tragedy makes Courtney hard to love. Rock stars marry models, beautiful, silent creatures, not women like Courtney Love. Being smart, reckless, drug-addicted, outraged, independent, creative — that’s men’s work, and she’s got some nerve doing it.

Their relationship does not conform to other paradigms in popular music either. Country stars who intramarry are models for their fans, smiling archetypes of working romance — or work and romance — like Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. Even if Tim left Faith for Carrie Underwood tomorrow there is no way she would drunkenly show her tits in a Union Square Burger King, something Love did during the uglier days of her drug years (and it wasn’t an isolated event). Hill is way too classy for that. She’d sing about her broken heart and appear on talk shows, dabbing at her eyes. And Is Beyoncé Knowles really dangerously in love with Jay-Z? Debatable. But if his body were found tomorrow under suspicious circumstances, Nick Broomfield, the documentary filmmaker whose “Kurt and Courtney” insinuates that Love murdered her husband, would hardly come sniffing around the Knowles’ Texas McMansion armed with a camera crew and sinister allegations. Thug life is not for church-raised, mama-styled girls like Beyoncé. No doubt Hill and Knowles love their fame, even “get off on it” in some appropriate — or even naughty, backseat-of-a-limo — way, but neither of them generates Love’s passion for fame, or the backlash against her celebrity. And can’t you just imagine their scrapbooks? Yawn.

But there was a Courtney Love long before there was a “Kurt and Courtney.” They existed parallel to each other, traveling in the same circles, as “Dirty Blonde” makes clear. There was a Hole and there was a Nirvana, and while everyone might fawn over Cobain’s natural talent, no one can doubt her drive to succeed. In the manner of people who crave and lack self-discipline, Love constantly makes rules for herself: involving smoking (stop), reading (do), eating (don’t) and, most egregiously, “Never let anyone see you be self-promoting.” This is where Courtney Love diverges from Beyoncé, completely packaged and managed by her parents, who made her the Diana Ross of Destiny’s Child and now pull the strings of her solo and film career. Or consider the ultimate pop examples of patriarchal manipulation, the Simpson sisters, Jessica and Ashlee. Their father literally controls their lives, from song choice to publicity to co-starring in their reality shows. Their images are perfectly composed, manicured and massaged. These days, when celebrity is cultivated and managed à la the Simpsons, Courtney Love’s feminist status starts to look really radical: No man has ever had that hold on her. Have we seen her be self-promoting? A million times. Have we seen her naked? Sure. But we’ve never seen her bow down to anyone or anything, including public opinion.

The afterword to “Dirty Blonde” is written by third-wave standard-bearers Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, the authors of “Manifesta.” One suspects Courtney is Cheshire-cat pleased when they call her “iconic” and laud her for telling 16-year-olds about feminism. But the afterword feels a tad awkward, like explaining to your mom, or your daughter, about Love’s significance. Or what a riot grrrl was or why “bad” sometimes meant “good.” Even their comparisons — Yoko Ono, Janis Joplin, Marilyn Monroe, etc. — are all old or dead. The song they quote from Hole’s 1995 “Live Through This, “Doll Parts,” which resonates with her body-image issues, to borrow the women’s magazine terminology. “I want to be the girl with the most cake,” Love sings.

But that, too, is a caricature of sorts. It’s a remembrance of Love past, the snottiness, the baby doll dresses, the bleached-out hair. She’s grown up since then, in her own way, beyond her new Hollywood veneer. And in doing so, she refuses to trot out her vulnerability in the way we demand celebrities do. She is a widow for whom there is blame but no sympathy, an addict who got but never came clean.

So put the doll parts away. These days, Love is sober and working on her second solo album, “How Dirty Girls Get Clean,” with Linda Perry, who has squeezed massive hits out of pipsqueaks like Christina Aguilera and Pink, girls who would not be possible without the example of Courtney Love. Their “drrrty,” mock-rebellious poses are like Precious Moments versions of the original.

Before she rushes into the future, though, let’s linger on one more moment in Love’s past. In 1999, during her lost years, Hole released its most mature work, “Celebrity Skin.” It featured a song Love wrote called “Awful,” which conjures her love of fame, her heartbreak, her narcissism and her incredible talent for self-promotion. It goes: “It’s your life, it’s your party, it’s so awful/ Let’s start a fire/ Let’s have a riot! yeah it’s awful/ It was punk/ Yeah, it was perfect now it’s awful/ They know how to break all the girls like you/ And they rob the souls of the girls like you.” It’s a song about a culture that is awful, one that takes people like her and her dead husband and “breaks” them.

But it’s ultimately about the gleeful pleasure Love takes in being awful, in her shamelessness and destructiveness. Those awful aspects are also what render her fearless, outrageous, unafraid and heedless of what anyone thinks or feels about her. The final lines of the song are: “They bought it all/ Just build a new one/ Make it beautiful.” We did. And, makeover master that she is, she has. She even arranged her old stuff — those relics of her fame and testimonials to her glory — grabbed her glue stick and made a book about it. Go ahead. Open it.