RIP, Anna

Talk about prophecy. When I wrote in yesterday’s post that the media’s obsession with Lisa Marie Nowak would last only as long as it took for the next juicy tale to splash across the wires, I didn’t foresee it would involve Anna Nicole Smith.

Although, if I’d given it much thought, her death could have made my top twenty.

Sure enough, Lisa Marie was only a blip on the radar by this afternoon’s news cycle. And I’ll bet a lot of people out there are thinking, what the hell? Why should this two-bit, drug-crazed, golddigger’s premature passing command so much coverage?

Well…I have a couple theories. First, there are the usual culprits−fame, fortune, beauty, and dying young. You can hardly beat that combination, really, for public fascination. Then, there’s the mysterious death of her son, the muddied parentage of her new daughter, not to mention the legal challenge that’s reached the highest court in the land.

Still…why should we care?

Okay, you may hate me for my answer, but here it is in its unvarnished state: I think we all feel, deep down, a little glee. Oh, not that we believe anyone deserves to die−I think we’d all agree she was a pretty harmless human being who probably didn’t hurt anyone (unless reports of her daughter being born a methadone addict are true).

But isn’t there just the smallest part of us that says, see? All that fame, fortune and beauty…? Look what happened to Elvis! Look what happened to Marilyn! (And yes, I just equated Anna Nicole with two people arguably much more talented, but it’s all the same in the end.) Demons clashing with too much. Too much of everything.

We peons sit back, smug in our average lives, and congratulate ourselves that what happened with Anna will never happen to us, because we’re comfortably ordinary.

And we remember that once upon a time, Anna Nicole Smith−excuse me, Vickie Lynn Hogan−was ordinary, too. Just like us.