Back in April, a loud-mouthed acquaintance of mine admitted to having spent the evening hanging out in a Brooklyn bar with another acquaintance and — wait for it — Matthew Broderick. As a New Yorker, I wasn’t too blown away by the fact that she’d been hanging with someone famous. I was a little impressed that she met Ferris Bueller himself — the War Games kid. After all, I was the age Broderick pretended to be in all his early movies. I grew up with him. But as a cynic — and I am, above all else, a cynic — I asked the obvious question: So is she banging him? “I don’t know,” my acquaintance said, but I decided that I did. Why would Broderick be hanging out in an anonymous Brooklyn bar with a superhot 20-something if he wasn’t banging her? I mean, doesn’t he have, like, famous friends or something? Or at least a wife and kid to go home to? I took this information and did what any red-blooded New Yorker would do:

[Read the rest of this article, and get to the good stuff.]

Absofuckly nothing. Who am I to judge or squeal? She’s an average New York woman, on the overall scale: smart, fun, smokin’ hot, although a little on the thin side, if you (sniff sniff) get my meaning, which, if it’s true, distinguishes her from the rest of the riff raff — or the rest of the hoi polloi — not a bit. And isn’t she, like, a struggling actress, or something? At that age where the day gig threatens to overtake the dream? Girlfriend, if you can parlay an affair into a career move I will personally give you a high five and let you buy me a whiskey. Hell, I’d do just about anybody for a book deal. Show me the dick and I’ll suck it. But the thing about sleeping your way to the top—you’re better off getting a leg up before you actually, ah, lift your legs up. Take a page out of Golan Cipel’s book. Get the gig before you get on the casting couch.

Last week, Star magazine put out a story outing Broderick as a cheater. As usual, the details were slim, the locations were nonspecific, the description was limited, the sources were not disclosed. There are a ton of possibilities as to how this story broke—maybe the affair-ee was in love with the Brodster and needed a way out (rumor has it she skipped town), maybe one of her broke-ass frenemies sold her out, or maybe they just got spotted on the street by an average citizen with a soft spot for old SJ. We’re living in dangerous times, and information is the most lethal weapon of small-scale destruction.

But what interests me are the reactions. I’ve been sniffing around on some of the blogs and sites that have referenced this story, and most of the reactions are the same: “This story must be a lie, Broderick is way too nice”; “I hope it’s not true, that’s so sad, they are such a happy couple”; “If it is true, Broderick is a pig.” This is the kind of shit that tilts me. (tilt: in pinball parlance, ruins your game.) These are exactly the kinds of things you say to your spouse/partner/lover when leaving a dinner party, having just found out that one of the other couples at said dinner party is breaking up because one of them had an affair. “But he’s such a nice guy.” “They’re such a great couple.” These are the kinds of things you say about people you KNOW. BUT NONE OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS KNOW MATTHEW BRODERICK FROM ADAM. Sorry to say. They’re just actors. He is NOT Ferris Bueller. He is NOT the guy you saw on stage at “The Producers.” And S.J. is NOT Carrie. (Although, actually, I saw her at a opening night party once for the new season of “Sex,” and just from standing next to her for five minutes I came to the conclusion that she A) really is horsefaced, too skinny, and just not attractive and B) a screaming bitch. But that’s me. I’m way too judgmental. Guilty!)

Listen, kids, you don’t know these people. You don’t hang out with them, you don’t run in their circle, and even if you did, no one ever knows what a relationship is really like unless you’re in it. Broderick might be a total pig, who knows? Or he might be the nicest guy ever who finally broke after years of marriage with an insufferable bitch. Chances are it’s neither, children. Most PEOPLE are more complicated than bitch/angel or pig/gentleman. Most people are some mixture of the two. And speaking as someone who has, at one time or another, fucked around when I had a girlfriend, fucked girls with boyfriends, fucked married women, etc., etc., I certainly would never cast the first stone. And as incapable as I am of having much real sympathy for a couple of people who could buy and sell my ass a hundred times over, I do know what it’s like to be caught up in this kind of relationship drama… and then have it compiled by the other assholes in your life running around town TALKING about it. Imagine if all that talk were being published worldwide? Hee-larious. As long as it’s not happening to you.

Gossip is human nature. Just like pooping, everyone does it, whether they admit to it or not, whether they enjoy it or not. Everybody loves to talk shit about other people — usually people they know. Friends, coworkers, that bitch Sally who stole your boyfriend…. What never ceases to amaze me is the absolute volume of celebrity gossip that has literally come to choke the airwaves. Remember when E.T. was a show of its own? Now there’s a dozen such shows, and a hundred magazines, and a zillion websites… and still celebrity gossip bleeds right over into prime time network news. Ok, there’s just no stopping it — people love to gossip, and since celebrities are, ahem, quote-unquote “public figures,” (cough), of course we will gossip about them. But I maintain that it is the very people who are lacking gossip in their own lives who suffer from the overwhelming need to feed on the drama of the overly-exposed.

Maybe it’s because I live in New York, maybe it’s just my winning personality, but there’s always plenty of drama in my life. If it’s not me, it’s one of my friends. Somebody breaking up with somebody, somebody cheating on somebody, somebody mad at somebody for some bullshit and not speaking to somebody else. I simply don’t have the TIME to keep up with the celebrities. And so I reach out to you, America. Please. Find the drama in your own life. GOSSIP about it. I bet half of you Star-readers are secretly cheating on your man and talking smack about poor Matt Broderick just to tune out the guilty screams in your own head. Find the love, people. Find your inner 12 year-old girl and get off on the drama in your own life. And talk about it. Behind someone else’s back.

Kiss kiss,
JDX