Just the Latest Tragic Candle in the Wind
America has long been fascinated by its Anna Nicole Smiths-peroxide blond sexpots whose fame hinged more on outsized physical assets and ambition than talent, and whose adventures with men, money, and scandal seemed destined for tragedy. So it should have come as no surprise that many of us were riveted by news of Smith's death in a Florida hotel room or that cable channels rolled out coverage rivaling that afforded a dead president.
Smith, 39, was, after all, an archetype and a caricature: At nearly 6 feet tall, with a mane of cornsilk hair and a centerfold body, her breathy persona harkened intentionally back to that of Marilyn Monroe. "Like my body?" Smith, seemingly drugged, vamped in her Texas-tinged baby voice on a video played repeatedly after her death.
Her calamitous life was tailor-made for the tabloids-and she served it up to the public like just another episode of her reality television show. There was the epic court battle over the estate of her billionaire husband who died at 90-one year into their marriage. The struggle to control her weight. Modeling, plastic surgery. And, most recently, tragedy: Her son died in the same hospital where Smith had recently given birth; the legal battle continues over who fathered the little girl: Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband is the third to claim paternity.
Sniff if you will at the coverage, but the Anna Nicoles of the past got similar treatment. Now, however, instead of one screaming tabloid headline a day and a Walter Winchell column, the report is continuous, accompanied by video, and echoed from Larry King to Yahoo! to Fox and the blogs and beyond. Get used to it. Smith's story is drama, tragedy, and trash. But faced with a diet of stories with no end-war, terrorism, partisan bickering-it had an arc: a beginning, a middle, and a finale (though lawyers and lovers will battle for years). So for a while, we were mesmerized just as the media conglomerates knew we would be. It's probably exactly what Anna Nicole Smith, Miss Republic of Cuervo Gold, 1998, would have wanted.
This story appears in the February 19, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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