Photo: Beowulf Sheehan/ZUMA Press
I didn't know Anna Nicole, never watched her TV show or photographed her, but was somehow immensely aware of her presence on the pop-culture scene. When Judith told me over dinner the other night that she had died earlier in the day I felt a deep and genuine sadness. Maybe like so many others, I was moved by her extraordinary beauty and her larger than life presence in the collective consciousness of the celebrity world.
Beyond the sadness I feel at her passing, I also feel really sad about the posthumous trashing she's taking in the media and on blogs around the world. I truly don't understand what moves people to take such viscious pot shots at someone once they're dead.
I was sitting in a little burger joint over near Paramount Studios a few weeks ago and an interview with Anna Nicole and her boyfriend came on the TV. I sat there eating my burger and fries and for the first time ever became acutely aware of how real a person Anna Nicole was. I saw and felt her grief as she talked about her son Daniel's death - I had to choke back my tears because I knew what she was feeling. Oh gawd, I almost couldn't watch it. I almost had to look away.
For however drug and alcohol addled she might have been, she was still a very real human being whose beauty beguiled me as much as it did everyone else. I'm writing about her here on my blog because I can't stop thinking about her. I'm sad that she's gone.
I'm just curious: If Anna Nicole had died of breast cancer, would the media and pop-culture pundits be as unkind as they're being now? Does it really matter how a person leaves this life?
Is compassion a dying art?
