Tragedy Without End

Is it possible for someone's life to get MORE screwed up AFTER she dies? If so, Anna Nicole Smith is going to pull it off:

The waterfront Bahamas mansion where the late Anna Nicole Smith lived with her newborn daughter and her companion has become their home again after the locks were changed twice at the disputed estate.

...

Not only is the paternity of the former Playboy Playmate's baby — who could inherit a fortune from Smith's late husband — in question, but so is the ownership of the mansion.

Although Stern is listed on a birth certificate as Dannielynn's father, two other men have challenged his paternity.

A former boyfriend, Larry Birkhead, has filed a lawsuit claiming he is the father. On Friday, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, announced that he had a decade-long affair with Smith and may be the girl's father.

Ahoy! Do we have a Zsa Zsa sighting? That can't be good.

So begins the donnybrook for custody of Smith's daughter--who may or may not have a nine-figure inheritance coming--and the marketing of her tumultuous life and sad end.

I completely misread the significance of this event when it happened. I thought it would be: Anna Nicole dead, autopsy finds drugs, we all saw it coming, make a couple of Trim Spa jokes and move on to the next carnival attraction. Not so. Looks like this is going to be one of those events we wallow in for some time.

So I'm thinking, "Why are we getting a public response like this?" Part of it is just that she died so young. Part of it is the tragedy that she had every opportunity that the world could offer and never found peace in this life. And I think a lot of it is sympathy for someone who's life was, largely, out of her control.

I happened to see The Queen the same week that Anna Nicole died. It reminded me of the outpouring of grief for Princess Diana when she died. A lot of that was driven by the typical gaudy celebrity worship, but I think a lot was motivated by vitriol for the Unseen Hand that controlled Diana in life and drove her to her death, be it the Royals or the press.

There's a measure of that in the sympathy surrounding Anna Nicole too. She had every advantage and caught every break, but still her life was not her own. She used other people--took advantage of her ... intangible qualities--just as much as she was used herself. But she was used, and used badly. In a society where more and more people would sell their souls to be famous (or eat bugs, or sit in a room with Donald Trump for more than a minute), the consequences of that sale still scare the crap out of them.