Anna Nicole Smith

You started out Vicky, and I'm sorry that it ended so badly. This is a tale of guts, sex, love, tragedy, bad manners, and bad taste. You were a plucky girl who did what you had to do to raise a kid. You're the girl, who I think could give stripping a good name. You did what you had to do.

She married a man three times her age. Who was the fool? Did she do it for the money? Is it anyone's business but she and her man? Now everyone, except the baby are dead. What's the tragedy? The loss of a mate, the loss of a child, her dying years before her time? I think the greatest tragedy is that she was treated like dirt. Our media, our age gave her the very worst. I can still hear the tongue-clucking.

I never much knew about her until she died. I see her pictures and marvel at her voluptuous beauty. She had it in spades, but all the news stories can report is that she was born on the wrong side of the tracks in a small Texas town, that she married at 16 and had a baby at 17, that she started out as a stripper. The media don't report her grit. They don't report her determination. They don't report how she always came back, sometimes reinventing herself, but never ever giving up.

Anna Nicole, your story is all-American in so many ways. I'm touched and drawn to it, and saddened by the shabby, snarky ending so many are trying to give it. I'm counting on you to make one last, very dramatic comeback.