By: Mahatma Kane Jeeves

Save your tears for Anna Nicole Smith, ladies and gentlemen. Save them for the children dying of AIDS in Africa. Save your tears for civilians being slaughtered in the Sudan, and all the other tragic spots on our troubled globe. Save your tears for the families of young soldiers dying in Iraq. But shed not a tear for Anna Nicole Smith. At the risk of sounding heartless, it was better she ended the way she did than to survive and somehow win an ethically illicit victory, creating a false example that the lowest and crassest of values can lead to the jackpot–for what we have just witnessed is a classic morality tale of Shakespearean proportions.

The fact that a 26-year-old stripper managed to dump her husband and marry an 89-year-old billionaire, then, one year later, run around partying and screwing other men while her sugar daddy languished on his deathbed–only to be awarded a $474 million court settlement…is obscene! She wasn’t even named in the will! This ridiculous case has wound all the way to the United States Supreme Court and still is not settled. Had King Solomon adjudicated the matter, rather than grant a cash award, he probably would have ordered the woman chopped in half!

The scent of money attracted men and media to Anna Nicole. She has left a young baby with no less than three “fathers” claiming paternity, one of whom being the esteemed “Prince” (title purchased) Frederick von Anhalt, 58, ninth husband of 91-year-old stroke-crippled Zsa Zsa Gabor–herself one of the 20th century’s greatest gold diggers. So perhaps let us shed a tear for the orphaned baby, or for Anna Nicole’s troubled deceased son, Daniel–but not for the lawyers, liars and smarmy entourage this woman drew to her ample (and most likely artificial) bosom. Personally, I don’t think a person can ever find happiness while leading such an unclean life–although, with money to buy some good PR agents, she might have eventually appeared to have done so. And that is why Anna Nicole Smith did the world more good coming to a tragic end, rather than adding to the greatest of illusions: that money and fame are worth the price of one’s soul.