Day six in a post-Anna Nicole world, and only now do I finally feel like things are starting to get back to a fragile sense of normalcy. For instance, this afternoon I turned on the TV, and they were talking about some dude with a beard named Mahmoud something or another. I didn’t catch the name. Long names make me sleepy. Anyway, he seemed angry.
I’m not sure if you noticed last week, but Anna Nicole Smith died, an event that was covered on the cable networks with slightly less liveliness than they might exhibit if Jesus Christ flew in to join the Police’s reunion tour. (On the plus side, it provided a welcome breather for all those weary of hearing all the bad news coming out of Iraq.)
Her death, which I was surprised to learn was untimely, came at the age of 39, and created the kind of post-mortem frenzy I haven’t seen since Barbaro, who died several weeks ago and was, apparently, a horse. (Incidentally, yes, I know I’m like five days late on this, but frankly, Smith died on a day that was very inconvenient for my writing schedule).
Oh, come on. You can’t joke about this? Of course you can joke about this. First of all: It’s been like a week, which in this tweaked-out blog world equals about a hundred comedy generations. Second of all: She’s Anna Nicole Smith, and in case you didn’t catch her reality show or that time she went to the Supreme Court to get her nonagenarian ex-husband’s fortune, it’s not like she’s Strawberry Shortcake. I don’t exactly enjoy speaking ill of the dead, which is why I won’t do it for several more paragraphs, but someone please e-mail to tell me why a scary tabloid burnout who is alive is reliable comedy fodder, while a scary tabloid burnout who is dead becomes the automatic de facto heir to Marilyn Monroe. Number of spirited nominal News Alert e-mails I got when Smith died: 3. Number I got when Bush announced the surge: 3 less.
There are very few things as grating and pointless as penning a column about the wretched state of American fame, which is why only 4,000 other people did it, but as I said, I’m late to the party, so I’ll try not to. But by 6 p.m. last Thursday, the AP wire was a veritable kegger of Smith news: there were Commentaries, Updates, Columns and WriteThrus (a WriteThru is an updated version of a story, and it usually moves when something new has been added. Three hours after the news first broke, AP had moved 10 WriteThrus. By noon the next day, there were six more. And that was before the rumors that her baby’s daddy was Zsa Zsa Gabor).
Now, frankly, I’m not sure that were I running the boards at Fox News I’d have handled things different. What is this story missing? Autopsy? No. Drugs? A larger, redder no.
The ever-present memory of having seen the victim naked many, many, many times? Sweet raisin danish, Nancy Grace isn’t gonna sleep for months. JonBenet Ramsey is just gonna have to find her own killer for a while.
Was Smith’s life tragic? Maybe, but it’s hard to use the word “tragic” when talking about someone who derived a good deal of her income from her grandpa/husband, and who appeared in the vast bulk of her movies without a shirt. When asked once what her greatest talent was, she replied, “I have no idea.” So I guess, yeah, that’s tragic.
Jeff Vrabel is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, Playboy, Billboard, No Depression and PopMatters. He can be reached at www.jeffvrabel.com.
