The Bent Pin

THE air is thick with high-minded complaints that the Anna Nicole Smith story dominated the news and distracted us from what C-SPAN junkies reverently call “the issues.” Media figures are even complaining about themselves for covering it so obsessively, and now they need to rationalize why they did it. The talk-show schedulers will round up the usual pundits, who will furrow their brows and explain that fame itself, like fear itself, does the most damage when it is ubiquitous. Therefore, analyzing the condition known as “famous for being famous” and its impact on the 15-minute birthright bestowed on each of us by Founding Father Andy Warhol was the motivating principle behind their wall-to-wall coverage.

Not even close. What fascinated them and us about Anna Nicole Smith was not Smith herself, but the other woman, the one she killed off. It was this woman, not Smith, who finally got buried. It is she, not Smith, who will be missed because she really was famous, not just for the brief span of one lifetime, but for centuries. She was a cultural archetype of the Christian Western world who went on to become a cornerstone of sexual psychology when the Victorian era replaced the medieval witch with the prostitute. I’m talking about the beloved infidel of Central Casting, the stock character in our collective subconscious: the Whore with a Heart of Gold.

THE air is thick with high-minded complaints that the Anna Nicole Smith story dominated the news and distracted us from what C-SPAN junkies reverently call “the issues.” Media figures are even complaining about themselves for covering it so obsessively, and now they need to rationalize why they did it. The talk-show schedulers will round up the usual pundits, who will furrow their brows and explain that fame itself, like fear itself, does the most damage when it is ubiquitous. Therefore, analyzing the condition known as “famous for being famous” and its impact on the 15-minute birthright bestowed on each of us by Founding Father Andy Warhol was the motivating principle behind their wall-to-wall coverage.

Not even close. What fascinated them and us about Anna Nicole Smith was not Smith herself, but the other woman, the one she killed off. It was this woman, not Smith, who finally got buried. It is she, not Smith, who will be missed because she really was famous, not just for the brief span of one lifetime, but for centuries. She was a cultural archetype of the Christian Western world who went on to become a cornerstone of sexual psychology when the Victorian era replaced the medieval witch with the prostitute. I’m talking about the beloved infidel of Central Casting, the stock character in our collective subconscious: the Whore with a Heart of Gold.