Enough is Enough: Anna Nicole Smith and the Over-Coverage of Today's Media

" Where is Hollywood located?
Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the
American brain lately vacated by God."
-Erica Jong

I don't think that anyone should be surprised by the extended coverage most media outlets are granting to the death of former do-nothing Anna Nicole Smith. As we have seen countless times so far this year, from the Britney Spears crotch-shots, Paris Hilton websites and countless other short celebrity romances which increasingly take up more and more time and space on television, print and electronic news, celebrity stories are popular.

We crave a piece of their world, to catch a glimpse of their star, be it shooting or falling. There are thousands of celebrity blogs like PerezHilton.com and TMZ.com that hire whole staffs of people to follow and track even the most benign of celebrity activity. Want to know what size t-shirt Scarlett Johansson bought from a Beverly Hills boutique yesterday, just Google it and I'm sure there are several websites with the info.

It's gotten to the point that anyone who even hangs around a moderately famous person has to be covered by the media. Don't you think it's the right of the public to know who the woman was Ryan Phillipe was seen leaving a club with? Ha ha, no. I wonder if there really are lots of people out there who do care? Maybe, there's only a small group of people who go to these websites multiple times a day, enough to keep them all in business. I know people who are interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but I don't see them carrying the most recent issue of Us Weekly around wherever they go or quoting whatever celebrity allegedly was overheard dissing her supposed friend the night before.

As the old saying goes, "give them an inch, and they'll take a mile," the same applies to media coverage. Ever notice how when one type of news story (e.g. mine accidents, teacher-student sex scandals, etc.) is considered big news, you're guaranteed to hear at least one more story about a similar incident in the following week. The big media outlets are merely following consumer trends; that's what it has boiled down to, they're a business producing these images and words for our consumption. The sheer fact that you (you being the millions of average media saturated Americans) know who a particular celebrity is, what they do and at least one trivial fact about their personal life or career, means that the media is winning, and the lives of celebrities are guaranteed at least a 30 second spot on CNN, sandwiched in-between coverage of the Iraq war and President Bush tending to his ranch.

If it's not our fault, and it's not the celebrities' fault, and it's not the media's fault, whose fault is it already? Certainly, in Smith's case we could hardly blame her corpse for attention-seeking, and I'm sure that Britney's nether regions were just screaming to be photographed on several separate occasions. However, some blame must rest on the celebrities, for the press, be it good or bad, is still press. The same goes for the girl drinking her latte at Starbucks, reading the magazine our society tells her she should like. She adapts to those norms and learns to enjoy half-caf nonfat caramel macchiatos and glossy celebrity sightings. The media who propagates those norms is just as bad, because they are the ones disseminating the message in the first place. The blame is everybody's, whether we want to own up to it or not.

I'm not going to be so bold to offer any end-all solutions to the problems. This is just a reiteration of things I'm sure you've heard or at least thought of before. I'd just like you to think about this: Apparently, Entertainment Tonight paid over 1 million dollars to secure an interview with Smith's widower Howard K. Stern. According to the popular figures from Sally Struthers and her Christian Children's Fund, that money could go towards paying for at least a year's worth of food for 3424 orphans.

Enough is enough.