The Endless Fall of Anna-Nicole

I'm all for honoring the dead. But when we idolize the life of someone who propagated a lifestyle filled with drug abuse, alcohol, and pornography, what kind of message are we sending? What kind of life are we celebrating?

Anna Nicole Smith, nee Vicki Lynn Hogan, died yesterday in what many speculate as an overdose. Ironically, or perhaps on some level intentionally, the self-proclaimed Marilyn Monroe wannabe emulated the sickly life and death of a woman who loved everyone and everything, with the exception of herself. But enough about Marilyn - Anna lacked the class and innocent vulnerability that made us love Monroe.

Hour after hour of news programming is devoting too much time to air the wasted life of this conflicted individual. We are supposed to mourn this woman who married, at 26, an 89 year old for what some speculate as a money-hungry move. She gave birth to a son at 17 and showed him that it's okay for mommies to take off their clothes for money. It's no wonder the kid was screwed up. And frankly, it's no wonder he died of a drug overdose, seeing as his role model - his mother - was always high herself.

Her show, creatively named after her own fake one, was a terrible embarrassment. She stumbled around, in her puffy, alcohol and drug-ridden body, trying so hard to look and sound important. But rarely could we make out the incoherent jargon she stonily slurred out, and two seasons later the show was kaput.

She represented, in effect, everything that is wrong with this country: our fascination with the disturbed, our inclination to ogle over family feuds, money-digging mongrels, weight battling, pill-popping depressives who hate themselves so much they plasticize their body and soul to fit into the mold of Playboy posers and trashy talk shows.

When her own trashy show was yanked, and her body no linger fit into the emaciated Hollywood model, she popped even more pills to lose the bulge with as much artifice as she had gained it. She promoted and proliferated the deranged notion that the "miracle" of weight loss can and should be found within a bottle. Whatever happened, I wonder, to diet and exercise?

She was an archetype for short cuts and short-change in a society so confused it couldn't help but watch and wonder. Anna-Nicole never was and still isn't worthy of our short attention spans. And unfortunately, she left behind a little baby girl without a father - at least, that is, a father that she knows about. For Anna, in her dizzying day-to-day stupor, couldn't remember which schmuck she screwed last, and, upon her death, left it in the hands of court-ordered blood tests to see who will ruin her as-of-yet innocent offspring.

The life of Anna-Nicole was as wasted as her death. It's time for the media to shine the spotlight on mothers that matter, on material that makes a difference. By devoting so much time to the denigration of our race, broadcasters are just as guilty as Anna-Nicole in giving us a reason to live fast and die young. That is, after all, the crash course to fame. Is this what we want to teach this generation? I hope not. And I hope the frenzy dies out before more young women star in a similar, sad story.