Let Anna Nicole Smith rest in peace
Posted: Thursday, February 22, 2007 1:50 PM by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
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Grab bag
We've just witnessed an ugly example of what big money can do for you: It can take away your peace, even after death.
If Anna Nicole Smith hadn't married J. Howard Marshall, a billionaire 63 years older than she was, the cable news networks might have actually had to cover the Iraq War today. Instead, we were treated to a spectacle so ludicrous you had to laugh out loud, and then shake your head, embarrassed that you were finding humor in a woman's death.
In Logical Land, there should never have been a doubt about where Anna Nicole should be buried. Sure, at 39, she was probably not thinking about her final resting place, but once her 20-year-old son Daniel died shockingly early, and she (or her companion, Howard K. Stern, or her entourage, or whoever) decided to bury him in the Bahamas, that should have been the end of it. Naturally, a mother, especially one who, according to Stern, rarely left her room and was certainly never the same after her son's death, would want to be buried next to her child.
Her mother wanted her in Texas? Her mother hadn't seen her in person in over a decade, although boyfriend Larry Birkhead said that when pregnant, Smith cried out for her mother.
Smith wanted to be near her idol, Marilyn Monroe? That's easy to believe, but that was almost surely before her son died, and his burial place was set. Family trumps movie-star idols, at least in Logical Land.
But we don't live in Logical Land, we live in Crazy Currency Land. If there's money involved, someone will put up their dukes and fight for every last penny, no matter how unseemly the circumstances. Thankfully, it appears that the judge's decision will allow her to rest next to her son, but did it really take such a big circus to get here?
If we make this big of a fuss over a woman who idolized Marilyn Monroe, it's lucky for all of us that the real Marilyn is already gone. Were she to die today, the ensuing craziness would make the uproar over Princess Diana's 1997 death look like a quiet day in church.
Bury Smith in the Bahamas, next to her son. And if it were up to Logical Land, someone would stop the battle over Marshall's billions and donate them all to charity.
If you believe, as I do, in judgment after death, there are a lot of people who will have more than a little explaining to do about how they've acted, chasing the almighty dollar. A lot of people will have to explain how they ruined a five-month-old girl's chances at a normal life. And a lot of people's motives are going to come up wanting.
"Rest in peace" shouldn't be just a carving on a tombstone. It should be an inalienable right, for plumbers or for Playmates.
