the apocalypse has arrived in the form of anna niciole smith coverage!!

Starman · Feb 10, 2007

MertWindu said:

LiveStrong said:

wow. she's like obi-wan. more powerful in death than i ever could have imagined.
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The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be ... unnatural.
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Is it possible to learn this power? :

Ben_Hecht · Feb 10, 2007

A national embarassment.

Barnum was right . . . but you already knew that.

cougargirl · Feb 10, 2007

I'm curious to see how many papers ran Anna Nicole's death as an A1 story as opposed to an A1 refer.

ondeadline · Feb 10, 2007

Oz said:

Still a stepson. And a court battle.
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Didn't the stepson die shortly after she won in the Supreme Court?

Oz · Feb 10, 2007

ondeadline said:

Oz said:

Still a stepson. And a court battle.
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Didn't the stepson die shortly after she won in the Supreme Court?
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I think so -- June 2006. If that still goes to court, who gets the money when one side or the other wins?

ondeadline · Feb 10, 2007

Probably the baby, which means whoever is determined to be the father of the baby.

ifilus · Feb 10, 2007

Birdscribe said:

And here's the wonderful kicker to this question.

Now, you have media outlets covering the coverage of this story as their hook to justify talking about Anna Nicole Smith in the first place. For example, I'm driving to work this morning and listening to the all-news blowtorch here in L.A. -- KNX -- for traffic reports.

They have Robert Thompson, the media and pop-culture critic and pundit from Syracuse U on. The topic? Why is the media covering this story the way they are? And Dave Williams, the anchor, admitted this was their hook for talking about it and the reason Thompson was there.

At that point, it becomes a media, tail-chasing, circle-jerk: "We're covering the coverage of this so we can cover it...."
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Of course, one of the cheapest journalistic tricks going is to get a piece of a mindless, tawdry media frenzy by denouncing it. The writer gets to wallow profitably in whatever gutter has everybody's attention while still being wry and high-minded. The readers get to join the fun without losing their self-respect. It's a win-win sort of arrangement for a certain knowing-wink-and-sly-nod wing of the media culture.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-rutten10feb10,1,4184250.column?coll=la-news-columns&ctrack=1&cset=true

Trey Beamon · Feb 10, 2007

While the cable news coverage is total overkill, it should -- hopefully -- die down by the end of the weekend.

The Insider, um, not so much...

ondeadline · Feb 13, 2007

Look at these sad numbers for cable coverage last week:

Nice to see that the Smith story doesn't even make the newspaper graphic:

These numbers are from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

EE94 · Feb 13, 2007

shockey said:

JR said:

Shockey, I'm probably older than anyone here (except Spinited) and I just think it's just the insatiable appetite for salacious gossip..
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jr, my prehistoric brother -- i understand today's insatiable hunger for gossip. i get why brangelina and tomkat, etc., draw so much attention. agreed.

guess my issue goes back to this: i know why folks "gossip" or are intrigued by legit celebrities. always have been.

but what in tarnation put anna nicole smith into the stratosphere of celebrity to be worth all the buzz? seriously, i'm confounded by this. can anyone explain this phenomenon? she couldn't sing, wasn't a movie or tv star? wtf? i am absolutely stupefied on this one.
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because she had stupendously immense breasts and was not shy about showing them off.
Sadly, that's pretty much it

Pringle · Feb 13, 2007

ifilus said:

Birdscribe said:

And here's the wonderful kicker to this question.

Now, you have media outlets covering the coverage of this story as their hook to justify talking about Anna Nicole Smith in the first place. For example, I'm driving to work this morning and listening to the all-news blowtorch here in L.A. -- KNX -- for traffic reports.

They have Robert Thompson, the media and pop-culture critic and pundit from Syracuse U on. The topic? Why is the media covering this story the way they are? And Dave Williams, the anchor, admitted this was their hook for talking about it and the reason Thompson was there.

At that point, it becomes a media, tail-chasing, circle-jerk: "We're covering the coverage of this so we can cover it...."
Click to expand...

Of course, one of the cheapest journalistic tricks going is to get a piece of a mindless, tawdry media frenzy by denouncing it. The writer gets to wallow profitably in whatever gutter has everybody's attention while still being wry and high-minded. The readers get to join the fun without losing their self-respect. It's a win-win sort of arrangement for a certain knowing-wink-and-sly-nod wing of the media culture.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-rutten10feb10,1,4184250.column?coll=la-news-columns&ctrack=1&cset=true
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Also the premise of shows like VH1's "Best Week Ever" or "The Daily Show." People get to learn about celebrities or politics while fooling themselves into believing they're still above the fray.

Double Down · Feb 13, 2007

I thought the Washington Post's take on her was the most interesting. It was sympathetic, almost, and makes an interesting point about "courtesans" throughout the history of literature.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020802435.html

Poor Anna began her climb to fame and riches as a stripper, and in the end, she was a stripper again, seemingly uncontainable by ordinary clothing. She spilled out of her tops, she spilled into the tabloids, she was a mess. Her death gave you whiplash: Time to feel sad for a woman who was never supposed to be more than a source of amusement. Her final notice was never intended for the front page, just a few inches, 40 years hence, at the back of the obits, reminding us of the bombshell who married well . . . and was forgotten as her beauty faded.

"Courtesan," which in a different age is probably what she would have been labeled (even though she was married), is a category we don't have much use for anymore. The woman who makes sexual alliances for money, who was less than a blushing bride but not so fallen as a prostitute, was once a vigorous cultural type, at least through the 19th century. Courtesans were the essential heroines of our greatest operas. They offered up their bodies, in various states of undress, to painters from Caravaggio to Toulouse-Lautrec -- and too many others to mention. It was a courtesan who set in motion many of our greatest novels, not least of them Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" -- which begins with the love of a man named Swann for a "great courtesan."

But the idea of the courtesan has all but disappeared, and with it much of the nuance about our analysis of sex and marriage.

Our continuum of sexual alliances runs from the happy marriage of loving equals, on one end, to prostitution -- the pure exchange of sex for money -- on the other. The trophy bride, the marriage of youth and beauty to age and power, is the closest we have to the category of the courtesan -- but it involves the collective pretense that it isn't only about money. To see the old category of courtesanship in operation today, you have to travel to poor places around the globe, where sex, love and sometimes marriages are negotiated between wealthy westerners and local girls without either party acknowledging the idea that the exchange is commercial.

The courtesan was rich but not on her own terms, an object of scorn but not completely disreputable, a living reminder of an economy of sexual exchange that we like to pretend doesn't exist. When Anna Nicole Smith, a voluptuous 26-year-old Playboy Playmate, married an octogenarian oil-rich billionaire, she crossed a line, assuming too high a place in our supposedly mobile society. After her elderly husband died a little over a year later, she stood to inherit $474 million (still in legal dispute), and her name became shorthand for marital opportunism. Her husband went down in the books as the most ridiculous of old goats -- but he was dead and beyond the reach of our scorn. Anna had her second and third acts, on television and shilling for diet pills, but none of these chapters ever did much for her dignity.

Society took its revenge, confining her to gossip magazines and scandal sheets, foreclosing her appearance in the black-and-white party photos of respectable magazines, where trophy brides appear smiling and dazzling with their balding, sagging, tremendously rich husbands.
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the apocalypse has arrived in the form of anna niciole smith coverage!!

Starman Well-Known Member

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the apocalypse has arrived in the form of anna niciole smith coverage!!

Starman Well-Known Member

Ben_Hecht Active Member

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ondeadline Well-Known Member

Oz Well-Known Member

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ifilus Well-Known Member

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ondeadline Well-Known Member

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