Anna Nicole Smith died a couple days ago.
Now, I'm not going to say that I liked anything about the woman. I only ever saw one movie she was in, and she made me cringe during the Hudsucker Proxy - a fucking cameo. I won't say that I liked her show. I thought she was a hideous woman (even when she was thin and "hot"), and had the kind of personality that'd make me run screaming into the night if I ever met her in person.
She was also a mother who, shortly after giving birth to a baby girl, walked into a room and found the corpse of her son. She stayed there, trying to resuscitate him until the doctors took over. She tried pushing on his chest to get his heart to beat, and she tried breathing into his mouth to get his lungs to inflate on their own. That'd rattle some of the most centered, sane people I know, and I cannot imagine what it did to her. My distaste for the woman evaporated overnight, not because I somehow liked her, but because she went through one of the worst experiences anyone could ever have. Now one baby girl's never going to know much of her mother beyond what we've seen over the last ten years, and while that's definitely part of it, it's an ugly part. I don't doubt that she wasn't a good mother, just like I don't doubt that she really did love her son, and would have loved her daughter. That's gone forever, and people are dancing on that corpse.
She wasn't a good person. As someone on the above-linked thread pointed out, nearly 50 US troops died in Iraq that same day, and I'd say odds are pretty good that any one of them was a better human being than she ever could have been. In a sane world, we could mourn them properly, but the government and media conspire to keep them statistics instead of people. I cannot grasp the magnitude of Iraq - hundreds of thousands dead, parents, children, husbands, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends. I offer no excuses personally for not giving them the respect they deserve compared to ANC, either. All I can say is that we all mourn how and when we can, and I'm not a good enough person to mourn the faceless, so I mourn a woman I viewed as an irritation and a waste. Even she deserved better.
In my life, I haven't lost anyone really. Pets. One of those kids in junior high who's a friend some days, a bully others. A kid killed himself a couple days after picking a fight with me once. An uncle I don't remember. I chatted in IM today with someone who's still recovering from a loss nearly a year old, and it's easy to see how much it's affected her. I don't know if it's sad or not to say this, but that all-too-brief conversation is the closest I've ever felt to death. In 33 days, I'll be 30, and odds are fairly likely that I won't yet have to grieve for anyone I've ever really known personally. My rather cushy life has led me to rant and bemoan what's tended to be minor issues.
If you can't find compassion for Anna Nichole Smith, I won't think less of you. Her contributions to society were negligible, with the possible exception of her Supreme Court case. Just remember that there's a little girl out there who'll have to get by on porno, tabloids, and second-hand accounts just to know the first thing about her own mother, herself a woman who probably died feeling very, very alone.
That last bit, at least, I can wrap my head around. It's the most terrifying thing I can think of.
Now, I'm not going to say that I liked anything about the woman. I only ever saw one movie she was in, and she made me cringe during the Hudsucker Proxy - a fucking cameo. I won't say that I liked her show. I thought she was a hideous woman (even when she was thin and "hot"), and had the kind of personality that'd make me run screaming into the night if I ever met her in person.
She was also a mother who, shortly after giving birth to a baby girl, walked into a room and found the corpse of her son. She stayed there, trying to resuscitate him until the doctors took over. She tried pushing on his chest to get his heart to beat, and she tried breathing into his mouth to get his lungs to inflate on their own. That'd rattle some of the most centered, sane people I know, and I cannot imagine what it did to her. My distaste for the woman evaporated overnight, not because I somehow liked her, but because she went through one of the worst experiences anyone could ever have. Now one baby girl's never going to know much of her mother beyond what we've seen over the last ten years, and while that's definitely part of it, it's an ugly part. I don't doubt that she wasn't a good mother, just like I don't doubt that she really did love her son, and would have loved her daughter. That's gone forever, and people are dancing on that corpse.
She wasn't a good person. As someone on the above-linked thread pointed out, nearly 50 US troops died in Iraq that same day, and I'd say odds are pretty good that any one of them was a better human being than she ever could have been. In a sane world, we could mourn them properly, but the government and media conspire to keep them statistics instead of people. I cannot grasp the magnitude of Iraq - hundreds of thousands dead, parents, children, husbands, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends. I offer no excuses personally for not giving them the respect they deserve compared to ANC, either. All I can say is that we all mourn how and when we can, and I'm not a good enough person to mourn the faceless, so I mourn a woman I viewed as an irritation and a waste. Even she deserved better.
In my life, I haven't lost anyone really. Pets. One of those kids in junior high who's a friend some days, a bully others. A kid killed himself a couple days after picking a fight with me once. An uncle I don't remember. I chatted in IM today with someone who's still recovering from a loss nearly a year old, and it's easy to see how much it's affected her. I don't know if it's sad or not to say this, but that all-too-brief conversation is the closest I've ever felt to death. In 33 days, I'll be 30, and odds are fairly likely that I won't yet have to grieve for anyone I've ever really known personally. My rather cushy life has led me to rant and bemoan what's tended to be minor issues.
If you can't find compassion for Anna Nichole Smith, I won't think less of you. Her contributions to society were negligible, with the possible exception of her Supreme Court case. Just remember that there's a little girl out there who'll have to get by on porno, tabloids, and second-hand accounts just to know the first thing about her own mother, herself a woman who probably died feeling very, very alone.
That last bit, at least, I can wrap my head around. It's the most terrifying thing I can think of.
coriander:
Speaking of dying, people were being roasted alive at my job before I was voted off the island....scary stuff 
