Home » Archives » March 2007 » Rest in Peace ... Or Not ...
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03/02/2007: "Rest in Peace ... Or Not ..."
Our long national nightmare is over ... Anna Nicole Smith has been buried. TV networks can now return to their previously scheduled tabloid programming, and the rest of you can all find something to do with all your newly-spare time.
Frankly, I didn't give a rat's ass for ANS when she was alive. For my money, she was just another silicone-filled, bubbleheaded golddigger who made a living out of nothing more than being herself. Now that she's gone, I for one won't miss her, while I do respect that there are those who will.
What really worries me, though, is the reaction to her death. What kind of a statement is made about Americans by our fascination with her death and the sideshow it created. Is it really any wonder that extremists might look at us as corrupt? Hell, I see us that way, and I'm one of us!
Fortunately, some see it for what it is, as did this American tourist who happened by the graveyard ...
"She's got a presidential kind of media frenzy going on," said the 59-year-old nurse from Columbus, Ohio, who happened by the scene while waiting for nearby shops to open. "I'm just incredulous at all the fuss. She was not a world figure. She was not a queen. She was not a president. She was not anything ... It's just way over the top."
Another encouraging sign is the attempt by the AP (admittedly futile) to ignore Paris Hilton for an entire week. Leave it to her to get busted just as the week ends ... 
At least someone's trying to head in the right direction ...
But the body's in the ground now, tiara and all, and the hubbub should die down. Note I say "should", not will - even as the casket was being transported to the gravesite, Smith's mother was having her final attempt to move the funeral to Texas denied. And now, the long-lost father of Smith's dead son - the one whose prior burial in the Bahamas was the primary justification for Smith's interment there - is now trying to have him unearthed and moved back to a Texas graveyard. Anyone want to hazard a guess what will happen to Anna after that?
It really is sad. Our societal obsession with celebrity - and the pathetically low standard for just what makes one - does not bode well for our long term survival. Sometimes, I feel like a Roman a generation before the fall of the Empire ... 
