Jerry, we loved you; now you've bumbled it

In a mere matter of weeks, after an incessant buzz of promotion, Jerry Seinfeld went from beloved icon to full-blown pest, a stinging pain in our collective sides, deserving of swatting and an industrial can of insecticide.

In launching his itsy-bitsy Bee Movie, Seinfeld wore out his welcome at the picnic, joining the legion of obnoxious Jerrys - Springer, Lewis, Falwell and Bruckheimer.

How does a celebrity erode more than a decade's worth of overwhelming goodwill in a little over a month?

By nonstop shilling for a $150 million movie - that's $1.6 million a minute - to the point where he appears downright greedy.

The comic is worth several hundred million dollars, according to Forbes, profiting from $60 million in annual residuals.

On his sitcom, Seinfeld appeared unassuming in his untucked shirt, too-white sneaks, and cereal diet.

Then again, one should always be suspicious of a man who owns 30 Porsches, which screams inadequate in so many ways.

Seinfeld has been everywhere promoting and, then defending, Jessica Seinfeld's cookbook, Deceptively Delicious. The Mrs. brilliantly piggybacked - or is it beebacked? - her book to his movie, meriting two Oprah visits in one week, less 21 pairs of shoes as a thank-you, and a straight shot to the best-seller list.

Meanwhile, Jerry has played both sides of the dinner table, extolling the glories of healthy eating while incessantly hawking McDonald's.

In this way, he wants to have his spinach brownies and sausage McMuffin, too.

When Jessica was criticized for extolling recipes similar to those in The Sneaky Chef by Missy Chase Lapine, Jerry let loose with a snarky jeremiad in his wife's defense. He told David Letterman that Lapine was a "wacko" while suggesting that Mrs. Jerry didn't have to write this book because, as everyone knows, we're insanely rich.

Prior to Bee Movie's Nov. 2 opening, Seinfeld commandeered the airwaves of NBC, his network home from 1994 to 1998, with "TV Junior" spots that proved unerringly unfunny.

The same held true of his Oct. 4 appearance on the incomparable 30 Rock where Seinfeld played a dyspeptic, arrogant version of himself not particularly well - though, we suspect, this may be precisely the person he has come to be.

Seinfeld made more money navel-gazing than possibly anyone in history. Where he was once funny, he now sounds impossible.

"As a single person, I was always exploring the world," he confessed in one interview. "Now I've lost some interest in the world. I'm more interested in my wife and kids."

In Australia this week he said, "To me, the funny thing about being single, I had married friends and I wouldn't visit them . . . because I thought their life was so pathetically depressing. Now that I'm married and I have single friends, I feel I don't really like to be with them now 'cause I find their lives trivial and meaningless. And I think in both cases I was correct."

Oh, go back to your hive, Mister.

To Bee or not to Bee, that is the question? The more Jerry buzzed, the more we knew his movie wasn't destined to be among our favorite things.