Anna Nicole Smith: Still Dead (And Other Observations)
Surprise! Here's a column, making the post of two days ago a complete lie. I starting sketching this column out Tuesday night, and was able to finish it in about three hours here on Wednesday. It seemed foolish to sit on it until next week; so here you go.
"Anna Nicole Smith: Still Dead (And Other Observations)"
14 February 2007
830 words
When conservatives go on about how too many Americans linger far too long over unimportant and silly things, the death of Anna Nicole Smith is precisely what they have in mind. Had you turned on the news last Friday, ignorant of the matter and blind to the screen, you wouldn’t have been wrong to guess a former president was found hanged in a bathhouse, such was the tone of the coverage. Come to find out, no, it was just Anna Nicole. What a relief. Not wanting to be altogether insensitive on the matter, I text messaged an acquaintance and asked if she’d thought enough to include Smith in her 2007 Dead Pool. (Gallows humor. Not quite to the level of, “Other than all that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” but close.)
Anna Nicole Smith had nothing inside her recommending fame or fortune. She was all looks, when she had them, and when she finally realized there was nothing else to her, she hid behind drugs and plastic surgery to keep herself from having to think about it.
Smith went from the trailer park to Playboy, to Guess jeans ads, then to the strip club (which is often par for the nude modeling course). Whilst swinging around a pole, she managed to restore some long lost feeling to the groin of a dilapidated old billionaire, and the next thing you know she’s in line for an inheritance. Shockingly, the groom dies before the bride. The billionaire’s son, sensing an old-fashioned money grab, takes Smith to court and hilarity ensues. (Not to say the son wasn’t making a grab of his own. Never underestimate the sheer will of a stuffy older child unwilling to allow his old man the luxury of fondling a much younger wife in his final years. That old man knew exactly what he was getting, and why.)
The court cases wound through several levels with several different verdicts, eventually ascending to the Supreme Court, one of the sillier occasions in that august body’s illustrious history. Between court dates, the E! network taped, and inexplicably aired, The Anna Nicole Show, whereupon viewers watched as an overweight, slurring, drug addled Smith was forced out of bed and made to perform like a circus seal in failing attempt after failing attempt to make herself appear interesting. Alongside attorney Howard K. Stern (henceforth, The Enabler Stern), a declining Smith found a new home, had said home decorated, fawned over the old man’s ashes, got a tattoo, went to a strip club, et cetera.
Season one of The Anna Nicole Show was stole right out from under Smith by a poofy, spectacularly gay (and unintentionally hilarious) interior decorator named Bobby Trendy. But in the end, not even Trendy could keep the train from veering off the tracks. Two things were made clear from the first episode forward: 1) Smith was quite unwell, and 2) The Enabler Stern controlled her every movement, either as a means of saving her the trouble or to keep Smith from making a further mess of herself.
A couple years pass. A thin Anna Nicole turned up in TrimSpa commercials, but at no point in her final years did she appear even remotely sober, except for the time she spent walking into and out of the Supreme Court. (In fact, Smith was so sober for the occasion she couldn’t even bring herself to tolerate the media throng that normally found her so stumblingly compliant.) Putting it in a roundabout way, the Court greased the skids for Smith to be awarded $480 million of her dead husband’s fortune. She died without seeing a single penny.
* * *
The only interesting aspect of all this is the ongoing battle to claim a genetic connection to the heir, an infant daughter born last fall. The Enabler Stern claims paternity but is hiding behind Bahamian law to keep from proving it. An old boyfriend claims he’s the father, as does someone called Prince Frederic Von Anhalt, married to Zsa Zsa Gabor. (Yeah, well, if I were married to Gabor, I’d be looking for young mistresses, too.) In a press conference, the prince not only stated he could be the one, but frankly said that any one of “twenty or thirty” men could ultimately prove to be the donor. But when Von Anhalt appeared on The O’Reilly Factor Tuesday night, the B.S. meter swung off the chart with his every utterance; it’s more likely he’s making a sick attempt to horn in on Smith’s death than making a real claim of responsibility.
Poor child. The swarm of media obsession swirling around the baby will die down long before she’s cognizant of her surroundings, but sooner or later she’s going to wonder whatever happened to Mommy. If she’s at all bright, the child will eventually realize she was never so much loved for who she was, but claimed because she was the vessel to a fortune. And that is the one true tragedy of this story.
Anna Nicole Smith had nothing inside her recommending fame or fortune. She was all looks, when she had them, and when she finally realized there was nothing else to her, she hid behind drugs and plastic surgery to keep herself from having to think about it.
Smith went from the trailer park to Playboy, to Guess jeans ads, then to the strip club (which is often par for the nude modeling course). Whilst swinging around a pole, she managed to restore some long lost feeling to the groin of a dilapidated old billionaire, and the next thing you know she’s in line for an inheritance. Shockingly, the groom dies before the bride. The billionaire’s son, sensing an old-fashioned money grab, takes Smith to court and hilarity ensues. (Not to say the son wasn’t making a grab of his own. Never underestimate the sheer will of a stuffy older child unwilling to allow his old man the luxury of fondling a much younger wife in his final years. That old man knew exactly what he was getting, and why.)
The court cases wound through several levels with several different verdicts, eventually ascending to the Supreme Court, one of the sillier occasions in that august body’s illustrious history. Between court dates, the E! network taped, and inexplicably aired, The Anna Nicole Show, whereupon viewers watched as an overweight, slurring, drug addled Smith was forced out of bed and made to perform like a circus seal in failing attempt after failing attempt to make herself appear interesting. Alongside attorney Howard K. Stern (henceforth, The Enabler Stern), a declining Smith found a new home, had said home decorated, fawned over the old man’s ashes, got a tattoo, went to a strip club, et cetera.
Season one of The Anna Nicole Show was stole right out from under Smith by a poofy, spectacularly gay (and unintentionally hilarious) interior decorator named Bobby Trendy. But in the end, not even Trendy could keep the train from veering off the tracks. Two things were made clear from the first episode forward: 1) Smith was quite unwell, and 2) The Enabler Stern controlled her every movement, either as a means of saving her the trouble or to keep Smith from making a further mess of herself.
A couple years pass. A thin Anna Nicole turned up in TrimSpa commercials, but at no point in her final years did she appear even remotely sober, except for the time she spent walking into and out of the Supreme Court. (In fact, Smith was so sober for the occasion she couldn’t even bring herself to tolerate the media throng that normally found her so stumblingly compliant.) Putting it in a roundabout way, the Court greased the skids for Smith to be awarded $480 million of her dead husband’s fortune. She died without seeing a single penny.
* * *
The only interesting aspect of all this is the ongoing battle to claim a genetic connection to the heir, an infant daughter born last fall. The Enabler Stern claims paternity but is hiding behind Bahamian law to keep from proving it. An old boyfriend claims he’s the father, as does someone called Prince Frederic Von Anhalt, married to Zsa Zsa Gabor. (Yeah, well, if I were married to Gabor, I’d be looking for young mistresses, too.) In a press conference, the prince not only stated he could be the one, but frankly said that any one of “twenty or thirty” men could ultimately prove to be the donor. But when Von Anhalt appeared on The O’Reilly Factor Tuesday night, the B.S. meter swung off the chart with his every utterance; it’s more likely he’s making a sick attempt to horn in on Smith’s death than making a real claim of responsibility.
Poor child. The swarm of media obsession swirling around the baby will die down long before she’s cognizant of her surroundings, but sooner or later she’s going to wonder whatever happened to Mommy. If she’s at all bright, the child will eventually realize she was never so much loved for who she was, but claimed because she was the vessel to a fortune. And that is the one true tragedy of this story.
posted by Brian S. Wise | 5:05 PM
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