Your author must apologize for a rather late entry. Just as with American society and the big media machine that reports on it, he too has lowered the standard with opining of the day’s events. The reader should not be remiss for after a break your author has returned to the forefront.

The Anna Nicole Smith ‘story’ (there is no story) has become the media machine’s version of hard news. This didn’t stop the media from bombarding the viewing and reading audience with regular updates following the aftermath. While her death was predictable, in your author’s opinion, a train wrecking waiting to happen; it was the media’s obsession that surprised your author. There was probably 7-10 days devoted to the death of former President Gerald Ford, yet it has been nearly a month and the media is still giving you the reader updates on what will be a long and drawn out court battle that will mediate over her daughter’s paternity and the millions her estate stands to inherit from the suit brought by her against the family of the late billionaire J. Howard Marshall. If it wasn’t for Marshall, Smith would still be an aspiring Playboy model and stripper, gyrating at the same dive when Marshall became smitten with her.

As we all know the oil tycoon Marshall died at the age of 90 in 1995. The marriage was brief and Smith inheritance was contested by Marshall’s late son E. Pierce Marshall as she stood to gain close to $500 million. During the court battle, which would be ruled and appealed numerous times, Smith took up an interest with her lawyer Howard K. Stern. Her lawyer was eventually faced with a choice-sever his relationship with Smith or be dismissed from his law firm. He chose to engross himself in her roller coaster lifestyle, which was briefly documented in a reality television program and set up shop in a Santa Monica apartment, operating a talent management called Hot Smoochie Lips, Inc. and boasting one client-Smith herself.

Anna Nicole Smith gives hope your author supposes to those who only wish to grab on to some amount or degree of fame, fifteen minutes or otherwise. This is the only explanation your author can conjure up to explain the big media machine’s obsession with her. It was quite obvious, if physical behavior and speech are in any sign, that at least for the past several years and until her death that Anna Nicole Smith was under the influence of narcotics. In fact allegations of methadone use have been levied to explain her often erratic behavior. Methadone was among several drugs found in her son Daniel’s body following his untimely death in September 2006.

Additionally there was her attorney Stern who violated ethical protocol when he decided to become her defacto entertainment manager. Your author feels comfortable believing those multi millions she would receive from the Marshall estate allowed him tolerance for her behavior. And in the end several supposed suitors will battle it out to determine her daughter’s paternity, a child that stands to gain more money than all of these characters combined can fathom.

There have been many comparisons between Smith and the late Marilyn Monroe. Their shared physical features that of the buxom blond bombshell, are obvious. Unlike Monroe, Smith did not have a remarkable film career. Smith’s films border on T&A cupcake cinema. However being used and at the end of spent, dying in a wake of drug abuse and controversy is their saddest shared characteristic.

The legacy of Smith and others of similar backgrounds should not be used as fodder for established news services, at least not the devotion it has been allotted. However when one considers the desperate ratings game many of the big media machine pursue and a sample of an obvious target audience; it is no wonder the popularity of such coverage.