Celebrity

This morning, February 23, a full two weeks after the death of Anna Nicole Smith, and still I turn on CNN to find full coverage of the court battle over her remains and her most recent child. I mean this in no way to disrespect her or her family and in no way to be insensitive to the tragedy of her death... however, I can't help but question our plight to follow the family's every move... I can't help but question our obsession over a life and death that provided the whole of our society with no more than a "present day Marilyn Monroe"... a model, an actress, a weight-loss campaign... a sex symbol.

Why is it that more than two weeks after her death we are still bombarded by pictures and stories of her life when, day after day, more and more soldiers are dying on the frontlines of the war that we sent them into and I have not heard of a single story of the life that they once lived, the family that they have left behind, or the tragedy of their death? Instead we are given numbers... five soldiers today, fifteen two weeks ago, thousands on the whole... thousands of stories, of sons, daughters, fathers and mothers... thousands of names and pictures that we have never seen but that we have lost forever.

The question of why seems simple to answer... we are being distracted... we are being allowed to forget about the guilt that we might otherwise feel for sending such innocent men and women into a battle that we know could not be won... into a battle that we know is so unnecessary. However, the question of why no one cares is one that I cannot shake. Why do we allow ourselves to continue to let such trivialities of fame, wealth, and sex manipulate our realities? The realities created by publicists and directors are not the ones that we live and not the ones that will shape our futures or touch our hearts. Instead, we can share the realities of the lives lost, and yet, those realities are the ones that we allow to be forgotten.