Gawker: and now shes dead

And Now She's Dead: Anna Nicole Smith

Choire — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:00:58 EST

Not since Cleopatra first cast her spell upon both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony has the world seen a seductress the likes of Anna Nicole Smith. Gifted with the rare combination of beauty, drive, and rapier-like wit, Smith proved that a woman could outgrow her hardscrabble upbringing with a firm sense of herself and the refusal to accept any sort of failure.

In every single way, she was the purest embodiment of the modern female celebrity.

Beginnings

Born Vickie Lynn Hogan in 1967, Smith grew up in the small town of Mexia, Texas, where she eventually found employ as waitstaff at the town's befamed palace of poultry perfection, Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken. Whilst tendering her services, she came into contact with young Billy Wayne Smith (at sixteen, he was actually a year her junior).

Thus blossomed one of the great romances in the storied history of north central Texas. Their ardor proved itself almost immediately; within nine months of their wedding, a child was born.

They named him Daniel, after the Biblical hero tested by lions.

But in 1987, just two years later, she split with Billy Wayne. Because of their bond, and possibly their inability to afford lawyers, they did not officially divorce until 1993.

Young Anna Nicole fulfilled a need to serve her country by working at a Wal-Mart. From that perch, she deigned to accept a spread in Hugh Hefner's publication Play~~girl~~boy in 1992. She was Playmate of the Year in 1993. She only then officially adopted the name Anna Nicole Smith, a moniker composed of an opaque series of extremely personal allusions.

She consented to allow Guess? Jeans to use her as a model.

Her first real run-in with the law was in 1994, in a suit against New York magazine. Offended by their disdain for the lower classes, she claimed damages of $5-million because her own depiction was used to incite hatred of "white trash."

Love and Tragedy and Law

But it was a few years before those contentious political times that Anna Nicole met the love of her life, J. Howard Marshall. In 1991, she was visiting a friend at a fine French restaurant named Gigi's, which featured dance performance. The oil billionaire was immediately smitten.

In 1994, the lovers married. Anna Nicole was 26; her groom was 89. They were married for a little more than a year before they were separated by his untimely death.

Almost immediately after his death, her spouse's son began a decade's worth of cruel litigation over his father's estate. Anna Nicole was forced to file for bankruptcy. Texas and California courts disagreed; the matter went federal.

Not since Andy Warhol's death—another artist of personality, with whom she had much in common—had such probate actions been seen.

Just last year, the Supreme Court itself was forced to intercede on behalf of Anna Nicole, affirming her right to protect herself in federal court. Through her persistence until the very end, Anna Nicole became something of a hero to women who had historically been treated so cruelly in the courts.

She fought until the very end, no matter how endlessly poorly the world treated her.

Women's Health, Strength, and Goodbyes

As a second-wave feminist, Anna Nicole was extremely concerned with women and body image issues. In partnership with a woman-friendly company called Trim Spa, she took her campaign to the streets. Her once waify model-weight increased at last to a healthy state.

She took up animal rights causes, and in 2006, stopped working as a model, citing the vagaries of a woman-unfriendly industry.

But according to a statement released by PETA today, something tragic happened. When Anna Nicole became a vegetarian, she began, dangerously, to lose weight again.

Still, she gave birth to a daughter that year, in September. Three days later, her son Daniel, then 20, died. Just a few weeks later, she was able to conduct a commitment ceremony with Howard K. Stern, in the Bahamas.

As a class-conscious statement, the commitment party was catered by Kentucky Fried Chicken.

To honor her son's memory, she sold the last pictures ever taken of him for $650,000.

That love—nor all the other love she enjoyed—was not enough. Today, in Hollywood, Florida, at the Hard Rock Cafe, paramedics could not revive her, and she died at the age of 39.

A commentator on CNN said a few hours after her death that "This is certainly an unexpected and very tragic turn of events for Anna Nicole Smith." Unfortunately, that was both true and also not in any sense accurate.

And Now She's Dead: Molly Ivins

abalk2 — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:58:00 EST

The Legislature provides us with an array of verbal treasures. During a debate on a bill to stop out-of-wedlock children from getting welfare, Bob Eckhardt said, "It is not so much the natural bastards I worry about as the self-made ones." Craig Washington, filibustering one of those idiot flag-burning amendments, said, "I prefer those who would burn the flag and keep the Constitution to those who would tear up the Constitution and keep the flag." After yet another unsuccessful effort to modify the Texas sodomy law, the authors of a successful amendment were slapping backs and high-fiving. A voice from the press box said, "Sergeant, you must go over and reprimand both those men. Because under the amendments just passed by them, it is now illegal for a prick to touch an asshole in this state." The annual Waring Blender Award for Mixed Metaphor is always appreciated, as in: "If you throw the baby out with the bathwater, it will let the head of the camel into the tent." Then there was the special time we were having Disability Day to honor the handicapped, and Speaker Gib Lewis said to those in the wheelchairs wedged up into the balcony, "And now, would y'all stand and be recognized?"

That's from Molly Ivins, who has passed away after a battle with cancer at the age of 62. Ivins was always a heroine of ours: she proved - if it needed proving - that a woman could be just as funny (if not funnier) than a man, that a Texas liberal could be just as tough (if not tougher) than a Texas conservative, and that a journalist could achieve a large modicum of fame and still remain committed to the small papers for which she started writing. There'll be a lot of talk in the next few days about her legacy as a liberal and her legacy as a woman, all of it deserved; we want to focus on her legacy as a writer. Sure, she got a little strident toward the end, but when she was in her prime (we have owned three copies of Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She? because we've thumbed through the first two so frequently that they've fallen apart) there was no one better. Whatever your political perspective, Ivins' writing was so distinctive that you couldn't help be charmed (much in the way liberals cannot deny the genius of Mencken, we know more than a few conservatives who disagreed with her politics but were unable to resist her prose). She is a voice that will truly be missed. Rest in peace, Molly.

Sometimes, You Just Have to Laugh
In Loving Memory of Molly Ivins, 1944-2007 [Texas Observer]
Molly Ivins, queen of liberal commentary, dies [Austin American-Statesman]

And Now She's Dead: Deborah Orin-Eilbeck

abalk2 — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 09:30:19 EST

Deborah Orin-Eilbeck, who spent the last eighteen years as the Post's Washington correspondent, has passed away due to complications from cancer. While we can't pretend to have been entranced by every line she wrote, she was a decent (and by Post standards, balanced) reporter who never forgot that she was writing about politics for Post readers: She tailored her analysis to fit that demographic, which is indeed a difficult skill to master. Her paper gives a fairly nice summary of her career; we hope her successor understands the size of the shoes which he or she is filling. Rest in peace, Deborah.

POST'S DEBORAH ORIN-EILBECK DIES [NYP]