The recent mass-hating on Katherine Heigl has gotten us thinking about scapegoats past: those women who, for a few days, have been the recipients of disproportionate amounts of cultural hatred.

We're not talking, here, about the Sarah Palins, the Paris Hiltons, even the Kate Gosselins - women with whom people might conceivably have a philosophical grievance based on their actions. No, these are the public figures whose crimes, in the public mind, seem far greater than anything they've done, who somehow become projector-screen scapegoats. And they're always women. When I took a poll, my fellow editors and I realized that, with a couple of inviolate exceptions (Meryl, Reese, Cate) almost every big female star has been the target of levels of bile totally inconsistent with their actions. (The "we" in that headline, I should say, is not specific to the editors on this site.) And while a male star might be condemned for his couch-leaping, drug-shunning antics, a female star is often damned for being "annoying." Or outspoken. Sure, then we find anecdotes and rationales to back up the hatred, but let's face it, it's usually based on... a feeling. At left, a few notable examples.