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Just when you think that the news media had sunk about as low as it could go, they ratchet up the sleaze-o-meter another notch. Never one to shy away from exploiting the death of anyone, nobody, short of tabloid newspapers, does it better than the TV news.
Those vultures all seem to have a sixth sense when it comes to spotting a soul in trouble. When they see that a celebrity is about to fall, they are first on the scene and hover above waiting for them to drop so they can begin to pick the carcass clean.
The feast of the last week has been Anna Nicole Smith. For quite a while, as she went through the trials and tribulations during the death of her twenty year old son, they hounded her relentlessly. This, coupled with the fact that she had given birth to her daughter three days before, had to have raised her stress levels through the roof. Giving birth is tough enough to go through, but to lose a child at the same time is unimaginable.
Celebrity is a tough taskmaster, but Anna had courted that master all of her adult life. While at times she appeared to be annoyed or put off by the attention she attracted, I’m afraid that goes under the heading of “be careful what you wish for.” Unfortunately for her, she never garnered the accolades she wanted in life that she is now receiving in death.
That is one of the things that I am finding the most frustrating about this circus of death swirling around her passing. The fact that everyone in the TV news media is presenting her as though in her brief life she offered something to the entertainment industry or mankind. In reality her contributions, if you can call them that, were considered a joke.
The same people who lambasted her while she was alive are now holding her up as though she was Mother Theresa or Katherine Hepburn. If you look at her biography and film/TV resume, her antics during her bizarre lifestyle is five times longer than her film/TV credits. To put that in perspective, she was more famous for being famous than for her acting and modeling abilities.
What does her “extensive” resume consist of? Let’s see, she first came to everyone’s attention by taking her clothes off for Playboy. She appeared in seven movies in which her performances were universally panned, one of which has yet to be released. She had three bit parts in TV shows, and of course she starred in her own reality TV show that was cancelled after two seasons. Oh yeah, and she married an old rich guy who met her while she was working as a stripper in a Houston strip club. With talent like that I can see why she warrants all of the attention she has received since her death.
The continual comparisons to Marilyn Monroe are flat out insulting to the memory of Monroe. The media, in their attempts to add some validity to a career that they spent years trashing, locked on to the photos of Smith posing as Monroe and created the myth that she was potentially Monroe’s successor. In truth, in the acting department, Smith wasn’t worthy of holding Monroe’s bra. You see Marilyn had talent and could act, the only thing Smith could act like was herself.
The only things they had in common were blond hair, an addictive personality when it came to drugs and alcohol, a disastrous personal life, Playboy, and of course an early death. Well that and what appears to be a growing cottage industry of anything pertaining to them after their deaths.
Oh yeah, the media are not the only ones out to profit from the death. Those packs of jackals on the internet have wasted no time in throwing up everything they own on EBay to make a quick buck before her body is even in the ground.
Signed pictures, poker chips with her picture on them, t-shirts, posters, coffee cups, and bobble head dolls are all awaiting your bids. Playboy, her former employer, is selling off its last copy of her Playmate of the Year issue, last bid $1,000. If you are really looking to make some serious bucks off of her death there are web page domain names for sale. One you can purchase is AnnaNicoleSmithPhotos.com, for a mere $2,550, at last bid, as of this writing, which I am sure is a steal if you are looking at a long term investment.
The continual bombardment of news coverage is doing in a week what it took the Monroe Estate years to do. Which is a pathetic and morbid joke on the state of the public’s fascination with anything celebrity. Especially considering that this celebrity has, as of this writing, not even been buried yet it is six days after her death.
And why hasn’t she? That would be because her “loved ones” have been fighting over her remains. Those loved ones would include her boyfriend/lawyer, her boyfriend before that, Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband, and her mother, who to put it mildly, Smith hated.
Why do they want her remains? Could it be because they loved her so much and want her to have the finest funeral they could provide? Or could it be the possibility of getting a share of her estate that has the potential to be worth a half a billion dollars? I’m no expert, but my money is on the money.
Considering the legal quagmire that Smith left behind her, no will, the fact that her boyfriend/lawyer is the executor of her estate, and that everyone in this morbid money hungry circus has a lawyer and are using them like a gun, this story won’t be leaving the airwaves anytime soon. I’m sure the folks at Ebay, Entertainment Tonight, and the National Enquirer are absolutely giddy over that fact. I’d buy that bobble head now if I were you. It may be that quick and easy retirement plan you’ve been looking for.
And if you are a hardcore Anna Nicole Smith fan and, as I have been accused of in the past, treaded on your sensibilities, all I can say to you is, get a life.
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