And today I feel like pondering the people we love to hate, and the people we hate to love. We all know what I'm talking about... those people who inspire such intense emotion in us, that we can't help indulging in it, bathing ourselves in it, marinading our minds in delicious, often scandalous, thoughts... Yes, we all fall in love-to-hate, and hate-to-love, at some point in our lives.
Some examples of those we love to hate could be...
Dictators and just plain evilness, such Robert Mugabe... Osama Bin Laden... Saddam Hussein...
Celebrities like Lindsay Lohan... Justin Bieber... Donald Trump (all because of that hair, and the fact that he's married to a near-immortal Supermodel)...
Politicians. (Full stop. Most politicians, no examples needed.)
Then you get the people we hate to love... the people that, in spite of ourselves, we cannot help liking...
Bands and musicians are my biggest hate-to-lovers... Take the BeeGees for example. I'm so very embarrassed to admit it, but I love them. And I hate that, but I can't help myself.
Then there are people who are extraordinarily unique, in that they swing both ways... you love to hate them, and then you hate to love them... and then you love to hate them again, only to come to hate to love them in due course. These people are few and far between.
One such person that I have this struggle with is a certain young radio DJ, Gareth Cliff. He's a household name in South Africa, and most of you reading this (in South Africa) will know him as SA Idols judge, or the award-winning DJ who holds the prime spot on 5FM's morning show.
My personal love-to-hate relationship with Gareth began in his first season as judge on SA Idols. I, along with many fellow South Africans I'm sure, found him rude, arrogant, repulsive, mean-spirited, cocky and just plain full of... er... it. Full of it, yes.
It was then in 2009 that I started to grow weary of the radio station that I was listening to at the time, and I decided to give 5FM a try. The music was far better suited to my preference, and the presenters talked less rubbish, and so I decided to endure Gareth's annoyingness (for lack of a real word), for the sake of more enjoyable music.
It was one unfortunate morning, on my way to work, that Gareth and his team crossed the line. I had missed some part of the show, and caught the tale end of a sound clip of what sounded like a young boy describing his spiritual encounter with the Lord... Gareth and his team proceeded to mock this boy mercilessly, which I found quite unnecessary and offensive. This was the point at which I went from simply disliking Gareth Cliff to falling in love-to-hate with him.
After that morning, I switched back to the arbitrary radio station that I had previously escaped, and so began a rather dull patch in my daily routine. After about 18 months of uninspired pop music and thoughtless nattering, I switched my radio over to 5FM in sheer desparation. It went quite well for some time until, after a few months, Gareth and his team dredged out that very same sound clip, the young boy with the spiritual experience.
I could scarcely believe it - how could these DJ's be so juvenile as to resurrect this whole thing again, when it wasn't even funny in the first place? Seems that I wasn't only offended listener, as very soon after, a young gentleman called in and complained about the DJ's attitudes towards this sound clip, and their seeming intolerance of Christians. Gareth Cliff took a moment to explain to the caller (and to me) what the history was behind this 'religious' sound clip...
This 'young boy' was actually a woman, and she considered herself a prophet of sorts. People from her circles would turn to her for guidance, spiritual enlightenment... and among some other horrifically twisted ideas, this 'prophet' had told one of her friends to "look at the sun for a full minute, and you will see the face of Jesus". Her friend is now blind. Permanently blind.
It was not an intolerance for Christians, or even religion, that inspired such hostility from the 5FM morning team, but rather an intolerance for... hypocrisy?... Lunacy...? Maybe just plain stupidity, I don't know, but it all made sense then.
Having forgiven the 5FM team of this little indiscretion, I've been listening to them ever since, and funnily enough, I've grown more fond of Gareth Cliff. He's still a cocky bugger, but in the last year, he's started to display certain characteristics that could perhaps be attributed to maturity. He's positive. He's down-to-earth. He discourages drinking ad driving. He openly ridicules Julius Malema. He supports charities. He does great voice-overs in the weekly Award-Losing soap opera, Days of Our Mornings. What's not to love?
And let's not forget that he cried. SA Idols competitor, Dave van Vuuren (who later won the Idols contest), sang a song that reduced Gareth Cliff to tears, big ol' softie. And so I, along with many other South Africans, fell in hate-to-love with Gareth at that moment.
So much so that I am even considering paying good money to purchase his book, which seems to be an autobiography, or a collection of random thoughts, I'm not entirely sure. However, what I am quite sure of is that at some point in the book, Gareth will undoubtedly have written something offensive, and I will likely come to love-to-hate him once more. Who knows.
But for now, Fellow Inhabitants of this Planet, today being Gareth Cliff's own "No Negativity Wednesday", here's to those we hate to love, and love to hate - they make our existence so much juicier!
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