Anna Nicole: Our Tragic Seduction with Fame

The eleven o'clock new came on last night with two lead stories. The first was the death of Anna Nicole Smith. The second lead in was a little boy killed in a hit and run. There are three tragedies here. One a woman who's life was wasted being famous for being famous. The second a child who never had a chance to experience more of life had his stolen from him. The third being that both events were even mentioned in the same breath.

The fact is the public has become the true paparazzi's of the world. Think about the revelation. If the public did not fuel the frenzy, Princess Diana may be alive today. If the public did not buy into Anna Nicole Smith, she might have realized how pathetic she really was. Two lives would have been saved, Anna and her son. Instead, we fed into her problems by giving her fan worship. The woman first achieved fame for being a woman and by posing for Playboy. She made and squandered millions. Anna married a man in his eighties and it wasn't for the love and sex. He just happened to have millions of dollars. Anna's big front was a false front for fraudulent diet pills. She recently had another child where men seemed to be fighting to claim paternity. How bizarre is that?This larger than life image gave her story top billing over a real tragedy. We have truly gone insane.

This morning how many times the death of Anna Nicole Smith has been mentioned before 9 am versus the poor child who was murdered is at least a hundred to one. Why are we not there for this child's family? Why are televisions stations across the country jetting reporters down to the Florida hotel Anna died in and not organizing them to hunt down this child's killer? Even worse how many people reading this far stopped to wonder what the boy's name was. For the record, Eddy Heredia was three years old and lived in Brooklyn, New York. The eventual suspect in the hit and run claimed he didn't even see the child and did not know he had hit him by accident. The driver probably already heard about the death of Anna Nicole Smith by the time he was found. He never noticed the boy. The irony here is complete.