Rage.

Once a curse upon us Normals – the noncreative, the ordinary – that most destructive of all emotions was discovered this year by celebrities.

And how madly they raged on.

From Jerry Seinfeld’s goofball buddy Michael “Kramer” Richards’ racist rant to Our First Solo Female Anchor Katie Couric’s not-so-perky swipe at gossipers, ’06 was a year in which Bold Names lashed out at everyone, including each other – and most shocking of all, against gossip writers and you, the reader.

A few notes then, from an ongoing work, “The Life Cycle & Mating Habits of Celebrities, Chap. XCI: On Rage.”

¢ Hate speech: This year’s Ezra Pound Award for anti-Semitic, hateful diatribes by an otherwise notable artist goes to Mel Gibson, who, during a DUI arrest, launched an obscenity-filled rant, spitting out such chestnuts as: “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”

His mea culpa: ‘Twas the drink speaking. (Guess when he says sweet things, he attributes it to milk.) Which means that the Real Mel is all-loving, right?

¢ Hipster-doofus hate: The world – the “Seinfeld” fan side of it, anyway – was shocked and appalled when minor legend Richards went ballistic over two black audience members during a stand-up comedy show last month, and repeatedly used the N-word. Seinfeld’s friend said, “I got heckled and I took it badly and went into a rage.”

He was later accused of uttering anti-Semitic epithets at another show. His rep said the comedian is Jewish, which is not actually true, but has an air of truthiness, since symbolically it works, given it’s his chosen philosophy.

¢ O.J. rage: Sometimes, our righteous collective rage – yours and mine, that is – is effective: It flared mightily over the Judith Regan-edited book “If I Did It,” in which O.J. Simpson describes how he would have killed his wife, Nicole Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, had he been the one who butchered them. The ensuing outrage led HarperCollins owner Rupert Murdoch to recall the book.

¢ Book rage: Meanwhile, Regan reacted to news she was fired because of the O.J. fiasco by allegedly claiming that a “Jewish cabal” was conspiring against her. She denies saying that, and has hired celeb lawyer Bert Fields, who last week said he produced a witness who denies the charge.

¢ Fictional rage: This year’s endearingly racist, anti-Semitic, sexist pig was the fictional character Borat – created and played by Sacha Baron Cohen – in “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” which suggested that Kazakhs are racist, misogynistic anti-Semites out to corrupt Americans – frat brothers, especially – and make them act like haters.

¢ Trumped-up rage: Its sheer absurdity is enough to kill: Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump just started a celebrity death match so vile, so reckless, so cruel, it can end only in bloodshed (read: a lawsuit).

Rosie opened up the games last week on “The View” by dissing The Donald’s decision not to eighty-six Miss USA Tara Conner, who had been boozing underage (she’s headed for rehab). The Donald, Rosie said, is a “snake-oil salesman” who’s gone bankrupt.

No New York mogul can take that one sitting down, but The Donald’s comeback is way too nuke-u-lar, to borrow the president’s terminology. “The Apprentice” star threatened to sue Rosie, whom he called “an animal” and “a loser,” and told People magazine: “I look forward to taking lots of money from my nice fat little Rosie.”

Rosie has yet to respond.

¢ Rage against the servant class: For those who serve Naomi Campbell, it was a year of living dangerously. In October, the Brit supermodel was accused of scratching the face of her drug-abuse counselor. (She was cleared.) It was her third assault arrest since January, when a former maid accused her of racially abusing her and beating her with a cell phone. A couple of months later, a former housekeeper alleged Campbell threw a crystal-encrusted cell phone at her head.

Another employee, Campbell’s former assistant, alleges that she got a headful of phone back in ’98, while a former friend says the model punched her in the face last year.

Naomi’s defense? She’s “a target” for losers who want to shake her down for money.

The class wars weren’t limited to Britain: American rapper Foxy Brown pleaded guilty in August to assaulting two nail-salon workers in August ’04 in a dispute over a $20 manicure. She landed three years’ probation and anger management classes.

¢ When celebrities attack: Every once in a while, a celeb will feel mistreated, misquoted and manhandled by gossip writers. He’ll demand respect and apologies and, before you know it, has mounted a full-scale attack on the very foundations of communication.

In a mini-memoir in the New York Post, Kevin Federline, who had blamed the lameness of his music career on the media, became a bit more reflective about why the media do what they do. “It’s because they’re making a lot of money,” he shrewdly says. And as for being America’s most hated: “I didn’t realize how much people love to hate me! It’s crazy.” Yeah, baby.

Couric, still hampered by her sunny disposition (which in hard-news circles equals light, fluffy, stupid), opened up on media pundits who derided her ascension as the first solo female network anchor.

“There are a lot of circling vultures that will eat you alive,” she told Esquire. “You guys even take a shot at me. You have something in the November issue, something about how since I’ve become an anchor, you don’t know me anymore.

“You don’t know me anymore? Bite me.”

¢ Underexposed: Yes, they reproduced again this year. And while most, including Gwen Stefani, Anna Nicole Smith and Heidi Klum, gave birth the usual way, a few avant-garde stars, including Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, went off-road, producing Hidden Babies – ones who seem most alive in the descriptions of their absence.

Hence, TomKat’s revolutionary move to have Tom Cruise, the most overexposed celeb in the galaxy, put the pregnant Katie Holmes, perhaps the most underexposed, into quarantine for her captivi-, um, pregnancy.

Secluded, indeed: Tom bought his very own ultrasound machine to keep in-utero tabs on the babe. And for months after her birth in April, no one saw or heard Suri Cruise, apart from a few from the inner sanctum.

¢ Outsourcing the baby: More celebs chose developing nations for their baby needs this year, or to hide out in Africa.

Angelina Jolie, who already had adopted two children (son Maddox, 4, from Cambodia, and daughter Zahara, who turns 2 next month, from Ethiopia), retreated with Brad Pitt to a heavily guarded compound in Namibia with a massive cadre of press in tow. There, Brangelina awaited the birth of their first biological child in well-documented super-secrecy. Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was born May 27.

¢ Madonna: My turn, please: Madonna was excoriated by the tabs for her highly publicized jaunt in Malawi, where she was presented with a selection of a dozen of the nation’s best-quality orphans. The 48-year-old singer and spiritual being fell in love with 12-month-old David Banda and took him home to London.

¢ Coded rage: “The Da Vinci Code’s” PR campaign, using more hyperbolic language than all the words that the Western religions have ever spent to convert seekers, or so it seemed, bombarded us with the code of the Code: See this Tom Hanks movie or forever perish. (While some religious leaders were, like, “Don’t see this movie or forever perish.”)

¢ Futile rage: It seems that fully half the reading public and 90 percent of gossip peddlers say they never want to see or hear the name Paris Hilton again. Even so, Google says the cultural icon was its most searched news subject of the year. Some of the Top 10 terms Paris beat: cancer (No. 3), Hurricane Katrina (No. 5), autism (No. 8), and the 2006 NFL Draft (No. 9) – not to forget Mom, apple pie, God and country, none of which placed.

¢ Pedagogical rage: Proving she’s not just a sweet girl and an adequate actor, Lindsay Lohan offered the nation her education plan, in an e-mail sent to various friends, including Al Gore. Highlights from this shining hope for tomorrow, as reproduced by the New York Post:

“I am willing to release a politically/morally correct, fully adequite (sic) letter to the press,” Lohan writes. “Simply to state my opinions how our society should be educated on for the better of our country. Our people.” (She wants to help.)

“Also because I have such an impact on our younger generations, as well as generations older than me. Which we all know and can obviously see.”

Yes, we can.

Next year it’ll be time to look back again. Not, we hope, in anger.