At 39 Courtney should be getting it together, instead she seems to be falling apart. Is it too late? No, but it's getting close. My MSNBC.com commentary is here:

"When they get what they want,
They never want it again"
- "Violet" by Hole

I hate Courtney - I love Courtney - much as she herself does.

NO WOMAN IN showbiz has embodied the conflicting, outsized impulses of rage and need as has Courtney Love in her bratty, boisterous dozen years in the spotlight as seething rocker and affecting actress, selfish druggy and loving mother, disheveled nightmare and statuesque dream, brazen woman and little girl, self-parody and serious artist.

Love's expressiveness - as lyricist and singer for her band Hole, and as actress, especially her devastating performance in "The People vs. Larry Flynt" - is a rare talent and her greatest artistic asset, but in real life her messy jumble of self-loathing and unbridled ambition are wearing thin in the popular imagination.

At 39 years old and the mother of an 11-year-old daughter, Frances Bean, from her marriage to doomed grunge icon Kurt Cobain, Love is at a turning point in her career and life: at a time she should be getting it together, she seems to be falling apart.

Her catalog of public and private sins over just the last year is astonishing and should be acutely embarrassing, yet her powers of self-deception seem to be boundless - despite ample evidence to the contrary she recently denied having a drug problem....