Anna Nicole Unto Eternity

One did not expect flags to be flown half-mast for Anna Nicole Smith — or candlelight vigils or a nationwide minute of silence. Still, it was a bit unsettling to see how seamlessly the celebrity moved from life to the great beyond. The media offered few phony tears or declarations of grief. One heard only a subtle changing of gears as her pre-mortem scandals turned into post-mortem ones.

Perhaps the comic-book feel of the former Playboy Playmate comes from our inability to pin any reality on her. Her name was altered, along with most of her early biography. She was not born in the little Texas town of Mexia, but in Houston. (Her twang was real.) Her hair wasn't blonde. Her breasts were fake, as were her lips. The Broward County, Fla., coroner had to conduct as much an archeological dig on the 39-year-old body as an autopsy. And he couldn't fix on a cause of death.

This part of Smith's bio is true: While stripping at a Houston club, she picked up an ancient oil billionaire, J. Howard Marshall, and they married. He died 13 months later. Her efforts to obtain a big chunk of his inheritance were ongoing at the time of her passing.

I'm going to give Smith the benefit of the doubt and assume that there was a human under the sandbag breasts and addiction to attention — in which case, she had to have been psychotic. In making the diagnosis, I don't count her dressing up as Marilyn Monroe or countless personal revelations. That's part of the marketing. That her weight gains and assorted antics transformed her from sex symbol to spectacle mattered not. There was money in it.

Indifference to one's children would seem the line separating standard neurosis from serious mental illness. Smith leaped over it.

This is how Mark Twain described his feeling after receiving a cable that his daughter Suzy had suddenly died: "It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunderstroke like that and live."

But less than three weeks after Smith's 20-year-old son Daniel died from a lethal combination of drugs — and after Smith had given birth to a girl — the celeb was out clowning for the cameras: Wearing a bridal outfit and holding hands with her lawyer-confidant, she leaped off a boat into the blue Caribbean.

The two were celebrating their "commitment ceremony." At that point, Daniel hadn't even been buried.

It makes you wonder: Had Smith been poor, would social services have taken her infant away?

People magazine devoted a colorful four-page spread to the mock wedding, but its writers were clearly handling the story with rubber gloves. They dryly noted that Daniel had complained to his doctor of being "depressed, bored, isolated." And the "sympathetic" second-hand quote — "She needs something now" — originated from Howard K. Stern, Smith's lawyer and "partner." The writers didn't provide it themselves.

Having so little to work with, the media can be forgiven then for not taking Smith's permanent departure to heart. The night of the day that she died, Nancy Grace and friends were on CNN laughing over her life's complexities. Grace put on a serious face only to discuss the upcoming autopsy. "The uterus is looked at," she informed the audience. And CNN legal expert Jeffrey Toobin opined on matters pertaining to her late husband's estate, including the uncertain paternity of the baby girl and the more prosaic question of her state of residence.

What the media need from Anna Nicole Smith, she still delivers. That Smith is no longer living has become a mere technicality, and that does seem strange.

To find out more about Froma Harrop, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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