Anna Nicole Smith, or Peace in Palestine?

Quote of the day:
“It’s not meant to be funny. It just is.”
--Last line of theme song to the Anna Nicole Smith TV show.

Quote of the day no. 2:
“[T]here was something appealing about Anna Nicole, too. She was a survivor—you don’t make it from Jim’s Krispy Fried Chicken to Hollywood semi-stardom without working every angle you can find. She may have married poor J. Howard Marshall for his money. After all, she did kiss him on the cheek after they exchanged wedding vows, then left immediately for a modeling job in Greece.

“But she knew what she wanted, and she got it—and he seemed perfectly happy during the 13-month marriage, which ended in his death at age 90. You could sense how desperately she craved fame, how much she wanted to leave behind poor, uneducated Vickie Lynn Hogan (her given name) and morph into something fabulous. And she did. Who cares if her version of fabulous was trashy.”
--”Why We Liked Anna Nicole Smith,” from February 8th Newsweek online.

Quote of the day no. 3:
“Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas have signed a deal to form a national unity government.”
--BBC Online’s lead story, February 8th.

Initially I was sanctimoniously aghast at the death of Anna Nicole Smith dominating news coverage, pushing “real” news down the food chain. Surely, anything about an agreement between rival Middle East factions is more important.

Yet the Anna Nicole Smith story is in the lead. It is the story that most interests and fascinates us.

I am now much calmer. The above item from Newsweek is onto something. Her story was at least a bit more than an empty celebrity tragedy. Smith came from a poor background and made no bones about exploiting her looks or anything else to achieve success.

She wasn’t nuanced or subtle about it. What she was doing was abundantly clear at every turn, whether it was constructive or destructive to her, and however we may have felt about her actions.

This makes her pursuit of the American Dream a much, much more interesting story than that of the typical celebrity. And certainly in a different league than the incessant chattering about the silver-spooned, attention-seeking, talent-challenged Paris Hilton and her ilk.

What an annoying ilk.