The Anna Files

(JIM RUYMEN/AFP/Getty Images)

Of course, one of the cheapest journalistic tricks going is to get a piece of a mindless, tawdry media frenzy by denouncing it. The writer gets to wallow profitably in whatever gutter has everybody's attention while still being wry and high-minded. The readers get to join the fun without losing their self-respect. It's a win-win sort of arrangement for a certain knowing-wink-and-sly-nod wing of the media culture.

The centerfold, the gold digger, the demimonde redneck. Anna Nicole Smith is a smorgasbord of easily classified metaphors, each with plenty of "girl gone wild" B-roll…It was news as an episode of "House" or "CSI" or even, given the whiff of hangers-on thrust into commentator roles, "Ugly Betty."…it was all, somehow, as breathtaking as lamentable, because you expected the lamentable part.