There is nothing like a tragic D-list celebrity death to send the media into a frenzy. Last week, America’s favorite stripper, Anna Nicole Smith, died under mysterious circumstances. The story became fodder for the 24-hour news channels, which are quickly devolving into a sort of extended version of “Entertainment Tonight,” a tabloid spectacle of overindulgence and tackiness.
Larry King eulogized Smith is his patented crazy manner, calling her “not the brightest woman in the world,” and comparing her with Marilyn Monroe, presumably because they both had blonde hair and big breasts. A plethora of Associated Press stories were available on Yahoo News, including one headlined “Candle in the Wind.” As tactful as it might have seemed to draw parallels between Princess Diana (the most recent recipient of Elton John’s insipid eulogizing song), who donated her time to charity and was a symbol of refined class, to a functionally illiterate woman-child who took her clothes off for money and then married a decrepit billionaire and ghoulishly waited for him to die, this was probably not the aptest headline. “Our long national nightmare is over” would have been a more fitting headline.
I’m not saying that Smith was a bad person, or that she did bad things, or that her death is unworthy of sympathy. Death in general is not funny (unless it is the result of autoerotic asphyxiation, which, let’s face it, is pretty hilarious). But it’s also not terribly newsworthy. While watching Anna Nicole Smith in life – drunkenly ambling from one series of events to another, slurring for the cameras – it became apparent that something was wrong, or as her mother said recently on Good Morning America, “I think she had too many drugs.”
Thank you, Dr. Obvious.
Smith remained another American jester, whose addled existence was broadcast into our homes for our amusement and bemusement. Her life was so humorously melodramatic that it resembled a soap opera – from her hardscrabble upbringing, to her modeling career, to her notorious marriage to an aged oil baron, to the recent mysterious death of her son and the paternity tests resulting from the birth of her daughter. The coverage of this death is not, however, a new low for journalism, facilitated by the rise of the Internet and new technologies capable of tracking the readership/viewership of stories, as some commentators have opined. Quasi-journalists have always been fascinated with the private lives of semi-public figures. The William Randolph Hearst newspapers of the 1920s revolutionized it, and his papers usually just made stuff up. There are still awards and scholarships with Hearst’s name attached.
It’s far too easy to carp and complain about the “dumbening” of American journalism, elements of which have always catered to the prurient interests of the gossip-starved masses. Although the Internet hasn’t fueled this trend, it has made it more obvious, magnifying, for example, the differences between domestic editions of magazines and their international counterparts; a recent American edition of “Newsweek” featured Paris Hilton and Britney Spears with the splashy text “Girls Gone Wild,” while every foreign market received a different, less tabloid-y cover story.
The positive aspect of the “new media” is that it cuts through the sanctimonious self-importance of the mainstream media. For years, the media portrayed Anna Nicole Smith as a joke; suddenly, she dies, and the same media lionize her and cast a jaundiced eye at the Internet community, members of which are not taking the death seriously at all. Eric Auchard, a reporter for Reuters, wrote an article in which he covered the less than serious reactions to Anna Nicole Smith’s death.
“The occasion gave free rein to the pseudonymous savagery which passes for informed commentary on the Web,” wrote Auchard. “Such cruelty contrasted with the tone of respectful shock used in blanket coverage of her death on cable television.”
Should people treat Anna Nicole Smith any differently in death? If anything, the online reaction to Anna Nicole Smith’s death is critical reaction to how the media expects us to feel, and their insincere coverage in general. The death of America’s favorite stripper has illustrated how hollow, self-important and pandering the media can be. Smith’s death isn’t funny in and of itself, but the media’s coverage of the death leaves us with little choice but to respond with snarky comments.
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