Movie Maven

I’m intrigued by the media clusterfuck that’s surrounded Anna Nicole’s death.

Friends of mine have expressed derision of the media coverage surrounding her death. “People are dying in Iraq,” they say (or Haiti, or Darfur or any other number of hideous places strewn with bodies.) “And this is what people care about. It’s sickening. And indeed it is. It is a truly Western journalistic ideal to care more for the sexy death of a former porn star and meth freak more than, say, the UN’s fight to stop the spread of street gangs in Haiti. But one thing I’ve noticed about the media coverage is how full of contempt it is for Anna Nicole. The words “famous for being famous” crop up a lot, laughable at least for the irony that they’re denigrating the fame of a woman that they themselves helped to establish and hold in place.

Larry King’s interviewed her friends for God’s sake.

I myself could not help from making a bet with my boyfriend- that by next season, Law and Order will no doubt bear a “ripped from the headlines” about Anna Nicole.

I’m totally going to win, by the way. But I feel a bit guilty about poor Ms. Smith. The girl was so obviously miserable. Everyone who compared her to Marilyn Monroe was most correct, in that Monroe was also a mess of a person. And I always remember something Mother Maven usually says when someone of Anna Nicole’s caliber dies.

“Oh look at her.” she says. “She was just a baby once.”

Indeed she was. Her name was Vicki Lynn Hogan. She was born in Texas. She was undoubtedly a gorgeous little girl. I know next to nothing about her past, but I wouldn’t be surprised if her childhood was miserable. Would not be surprised if she lost her innocence in some irreparable way- a way that put her on the road to being a Playboy Bunny, a model, a porn star, and a reckless drug addict. But, at some point in her life, Vicki Lynn was a baby. A child. Someone who needed and deserved love. So perhaps that’s how I’ll remember her. She was a human being, not chum for the sharks. And if nothing else can be said about her, then man, she was a beautiful dame.