I admit it. I watched portions of the Anna Nicole Smith “custody
hearing” last week. Not, mind you, because I intended to, but
because I’m in the habit of keeping a muted TV set turned on in
case some real news might intrude on the daily gossip roundups and
grave reports of snow in February. After reading somewhere about
the odd conduct of the judge in the case, when Fox News went to
live court coverage, I decided to see for myself.
Usually, contact with network or cable television fare leaves me
merely disgusted, but the sounds and sights of the goings-on in
this case produced in me a profound state of sadness. Not just for
Smith herself or her family, or the sorry cast of shysters,
finaglers and hangers-on that modern wealth and fame seem to
produce; but for our country. In a way, her piteous saga is a
microcosm of much that is wrong in our once blessed and morally
prosperous society.
Smith’s is a modern-day American success story. She saw what she
wanted and went out and got it. A sugar daddy, a new body and her
own reality-TV show; in short, everything the new all-American girl
could want. The price? Not too expensive when you consider that sex
is today’s currency. It’s not a new story either; in fact, it’s one
of the world’s oldest.
The practice of using sex appeal as a lure dates back to
Biblical times. However, just as in the past we were cautioned that
“crime never pays,” so too was the mantra that “good girls don’t” a
reminder that sinful behavior has consequences harmful to society
in general. And for most of our history as a nation founded on
Judeo-Christian values, it served us well; but those days are fast
disappearing.
The introduction in the early 1960s of the Pill, “liberated”
women from the dreary task of having and raising children when
inconvenient, and separated the sexual act from its naturally
designed purpose. Shortly afterward, legalized abortion and the gay
rights movement further demonstrated that bearing children had
taken a decidedly unimportant backseat to a kind of sexual
recreation; devoid of responsibility and thus any real fore or
afterthought.
Those who decried these happenings were (and are still) told
that what goes on behind closed doors is nobody’s business. Except
now, it’s America’s business; and one which constitutes a huge
industry dedicated to the cult of unbridled sexual gratification,
and one in which its exercise extends even to practices and drugs
that may put one’s health or life at risk. A maxim for the Third
Millennium might just be the old line from the '60s: If it feels
good do it, and if it does good, feel it.
And so the coverage of Miss Smith’s life, death and apparently
unending afterlife sadly reflects the times. Cable news cannot
resist running constantly looping clips of her various photo ops
which only short years ago would have been classified as soft porn.
Heartbreaking images of a human being put through her paces like
some sort of performer in a sexual dog and pony show turn ever more
minds away from thoughts of love and the protection of women to
their mere objectification. The results are truly
soul-stealing.
Adding to this brutal modern tragedy are the oh-too-obvious
depredations on marriage and parenthood. Smith — herself the
daughter of woman married five times — and her lawyer Howard K.
Stern held what is odiously called a “commitment ceremony” only
weeks after the death of her 20-year-old son and the birth of her
daughter whose parentage remains a mystery. In a true sign of our
times, a friend of Smith’s took to TV to proclaim her doubts that
Stern was the father because Anna told her that she’d wanted a
blonde, blue-eyed child to “match” her son Danny.
That the drug overdoses which allegedly killed Miss Smith and
her son are so often referred to as “medication” is not so much a
reflection on them, as on a society in which the predictably
disastrous effects of lax morals are simply dosed away as if they
were merely symptoms of the malady and not the cause.
A punctuation mark to this tragic tale was the sideshow act of
Florida Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin. His court — which was little
more than a setting for a pathetic screen-test — produced a
weeping opinion that “We all come with some broken suitcases”; a
wretched substitute for the justice our system used to guarantee to
all Americans.
So the next time images of Anna Nicole Smith roll across your TV
set, mourn not only the death of a beautiful woman whose choices
were mostly her own, but the fact that she was doubtless also a
victim of a society where all of the above is hailed as
“progress.”
