There is no defined way to do what you want.
You may be better off writing your own custom view where you can control every detail of how things are drawn. In general, Apple's controls are "as-is" and unless they provide an explicit way to control behavior or mention that you can custom an object in some way, don't count on being able to do it easily (if at all).
I would also suggest heading to http://bugreport.apple.com and making the enhancement request - it would be best if you attached a sample application demonstrating the behavior.
EDIT: You could also try out the NSCollectionView to see if it might work for you.