On the issue of judging others: Whether we like it or not, judging others is an inherent part of our nature and it’s served us pretty well overall. It’s instinctive, often subconscious, and something everyone does not just of other people, but of situations, propositions, and so on.

You may argue over how qualified you or I may be to judge another, but then that’s never really stopped anyone from being judgmental. I’m sure I’m judged by every person who stops by this site. Some folks are impressed, some are repulsed. I’m less concerned with the average person passing through than I am with the people I know and care about.

In other words: You might find to be a dick, but that only matters if I give a shit what your opinion of me is.

I’m sure if she were alive Anna Nicole Smith wouldn’t care in the least that I think she was a white trash gold-digger. For all my opinions about her, she’s done much better for herself than I ever have so why should she care what I think?

I knew nothing about her when she was living.  I saw a short micro-bio of her on the news and realized that I hadn’t missed anything by not knowing of her.

Anna who?
Next.

elwed, you must be not watching the same channel I’m not watching…

Sadie: Well, she did support animal rights, and just for that I have a modicum of respect for her.

Smith’s choice of the organization to reflect her support of “animal rights” (PETA) seems just as pathetic to me as her other drug-fueled decisions.

PETA raked in nearly $29 million last year in income, much of it raised from pet owners who think their donations actually help animals. Instead, the group spends huge sums on programs equating people who eat chicken with Nazis, scaring young children away from drinking milk, recruiting children into the radical animal-rights lifestyle, and intimidating businessmen and their families in their own neighborhoods. PETA has also spent tens of thousands of dollars defending arsonists and other violent extremists.

PETA claims it engages in outrageous media-seeking stunts “for the animals.” But which animals? Carping about the value of future two-piece dinners while administering lethal injections to puppies and kittens isn’t ethical. It’s hypocritical—with a death toll that PETA would protest if it weren’t their own doing.

PETA Kills Animals

Penn and Teller: The Truth About PETA

Sadie: Has anyone else noticed that this thread has generated an inordinate amount of comments? Even us intellectuals...here at SEB can’t escape the cult of celebrity, it would seem.

I think the opposite is true. I think the bulk of our comments suggest a distaste of the cult of celebrity.

What KPG said.

This

Even us intellectuals...here at SEB can’t escape the cult of celebrity

Brock:

Thanks for the Penn & Teller link.  I can add a thrid thing, besides a good chicken salad and our solidarity against ugly shirts, upon which we agree completely. 

I checked my inbox today and whoa! Lotsa comments.

Patness: is a statement I don’t entirely agree with. First, because there’s not a lot of definition (and a whole lot of speculation) on what a conscience is supposed to be; at least not that I’m aware of. I’m in Alonzo‘s camp, if I’d have to hazard a guess at it. I figure that there is some distinct cultural pattern to what we consider moral or immoral that has a material, factual, external basis. I think that all human cultures and societies have reasons to discourage certain kinds of conduct.
Besides, we use reward and punishment of various strains to control actions - your moral makeup is part of your trained behavior. Is this what you meant by conscience?

I personally try to break away from trained behaviour and the expected cultural morals, I make an effort to question to myself (in the isolation of my mind) whether there is anything inherantly wrong with something, if not, no reason to have a problem with it, even if everyone else does.

Society does use rewards and punishments, but that need not necessarily shape your individual opininons, it just creates consequences that need to be factored into account when deciding how to act - It doesn’t change right or wrong, just what is and isn’t part of the deal for acting on it, you just accept the consequences before deciding. If you steal you accept that you may go to jail, but that doesn’t inherantly make that instance of theft wrong.

When you deal with morals on an individual scale, you ideally question, and only forward into your conclusion, issues that actually affect it’s position on that scale, and break free from general public perception. When this is removed, you only have your own reflection, and the only deciding aspect I can see to that is concience. When nothing else can make something right or wrong, this is all that’s left.

I won’t pretend I could say what part of the brain causes concience, or how, or why, but we do observe that from somewhere there is a fundamental negative feeling when we unjustly hurt someone, we generally don’t want to see people hurt if it’s not, in our opinion, deserved. Though concience may be a deep emotional feeling, like all feelings, there are subconciously shallow ways of satisfying them. In this way doing something good only to feel good is selfishly motivated. If you were OK with something giving you a bad concience as part of the deal, you would automatically be OK with the flexibility of the morals of the action, and therefore know your reasoning and not develop a bad concience towards it anyway. How strongly your concience reacts is a measure of how much work you need to do to be more comfortable with something, and therefore be more ethically apathetic, which you need to be to some extent to see all sides of things, as they are.

And the news of the day…

Anna Nicole Smith......Still Dead.

Brock - what Consi said.
Damn! I had to agree with him ... again.

I’ll bet that Lady Astronaut is happy about the timing of Anna’s death. The media was well on the way to frying her diapered ass 24/7 for a week. Now Anna is taking NASA’s place,The Bush administrations rating also caught temporary break from the media. It is like a Holiday for some I suppose..

I have watched “The Anna Nicole Show “ several times. It reminded me of the show “ Mary Hartman Mary Hartman “ in the late 70’s.

There are lessons about her life and death. She is an example of what not to be like, or do for that matter.

Anna did make her own money.  Unlike Paris. 

I thought she was pretty hot in her Playboy days.  Then I saw her reality show and realized she was batshit crazy.  When she lost the weight, I thought “Good for her” followed by “Wait, she’s still looney”.

Some the last pictures I saw of her, she was starting to look haggard.  I don’t think she would have aged gracefully.  She did die young, and she’ll likely end up some kind of legend, but I’m not about to put on the tinfoil hat and say she did it on purpose to go out with her looks.  Or any of the other conspiracy theories.

Anna did make her own money.  Unlike Paris.

I don’t know if that’s saying anything, Ragman. Drug dealers and hit men make their own money too. Nicole sold tits and ass and it’s the only commodity she seemed to place value in. She was sex on two legs, a cosmetic surgery addict and a drug-addled bimbo. She taught her son to be a drug abuser and she promoted the bubble-breasted empty-headed blond bombshell image that some men find alluring.

She personified every empty value to me and I guess my disgust is apparent. She was a pathetic role model who cultivated her image carefully and passionately. I doubt she regretted, in any way, the pathetic persona she was representing as valuable to impressionable young girls and boys.

I didn’t wish her death. I wanted her to get a clue or two first.

Paul: It reminded me of the show “Mary Hartman Mary Hartman“ in the late 70’s.

Noooooo.
MH2 was very funny, clever, sharp satire.
It was the best & funniest thing to come outa the USA since ... since ...
I think it was the best bitta satire ever to come outa the USA … mainly cos there was NO laugh track. 
Consider, the extension of the laugh track - a fucking crying/boohoo track during dramas … or, da-da-da--da-di-da, dramatic tension music whilst watching baseball. 

I consider the best piece of satire to come out of the US to be The Sopranos, but over the years I’ve come to realize the only people who get the joke are me and David Chase.

Hey, Paul and LJ- good to hear I’m not the only fan of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman!  I heard that the writers came up with subplots for the entire first season, but used them up in the first month of programs, which goes a long way toward explaining the frenetic pace of the show.  I see that it’s available on DVD.  Sigh- probably another unavoidable purchase…

So far, the only TV series we have on DVD are the first season of Charmed (my posslq is charmed by it) and Twin Peaks, which is my favorite American series.  Having not lived in the States since 1982, though, I’ve probably missed some good stuff.

I suppose I should weigh in on this, just because....

As far as ANS death and all...To quote the late, great Lloyd Bridges: “They say no one really appreciates you until you’re gone.  Well you’re gone now, and we really do appreciate it.”

She started out with only her two enormous talents, then she ended up being famous for being famous.  In between she gave us many many examples of how few brain cells it actually takes to allow the body to continue living.  For women’s liberation, she proved that no matter how lofty your goals are of how difficult a road you have, you can make it with a Marilyn Monroe hairdo and big tits.  For charity, she sent no less than five families of plastic surgeons on truly decadent vacations when they might have otherwise only have made it to Tahiti or Hawaii.  She subsidized the drug and clothing industries through her perseverance, and although she increased the risks of carpel tunnel syndrome in young male adults, her contributions to their imaginations more than made up for it.  We will miss her.  We will never forget Wanda… er… Andrea?  Betty?

...screw it.. I’m hungry..

Brock, I was making more of a jab at Paris from a previous comment comparing the two.  Agreed, it’s not saying a whole lot, but Paris didn’t have to do a thing for her wealth.  Paris would have to WORK at losing her fortune, Anna (I’m sure) had a better idea of what was at stake. 

who cultivated her image carefully and passionately.

You give her more credit than I.  I’ve always wondered when that phrase is used to describe someone just how much planning goes into the image as opposed to the ego trip.  My theory is once batshit looney gets their 15 minutes, it’s not hard to keep if you wig out on occasion. 

I do think there are many who plan carefully, but I have doubts about Anna doing it a whole lot.  After her Trimspa weight loss, it looked like she was getting a clue and working on her image. 

Sometimes it seems Paris cultivates her image, othertimes it seems like spoiled immaturity.

What Swordsbane said, Anna had two big assets.  I’m not big on Paris b/c the media keeps insisting that Paris is hot, but she lacks the “assets” that Anna capitalized on.  I find her to be average looking, attractive with that one good “Glamour Shots” angle at the right time.  She seems to adhere to the theory that if you repeat something enough people will believe it. 

I really didn’t mean to go into a whole Anna/Paris deal, but wanted to “attempt” to clarify my thoughts.

A special coffin for Anna Nicole Smith

I’m just a little creeped out by the hagiographic spin that’s been put on ANS’s life by the media. She’s suddenly being presented as this example of the American dream, pulling herself up from chicken shack worker to multimillionare on the basis of nothing more than the gleam in her eye and the bleach in her hair. And that’s just creepy. The woman led a sad, wasted life which ended badly, and the absolute best that could come of it is for her to be forgotten.

If Anna Nicole Smith did something profound for society, you wouldn’t likely know about it because she had big tits, bleached blond hair, and such a knack for squeezing herself into the stereotypical dumb blond box. People you have never heard of became critical components in the making of your heroes, those whose contributions were far more obvious. So, in reality, you aren’t judging the value of her life. You are judging her value for you. There is a huge difference.

Apparently the coroner does know:

Anna Nicole Smith Autopsy Released

Go figure.  The Media goes crazy with stories of Anna’s addiction to pain meds and shit, and it happened to be and accidental overdose…

Apparently the coroner does know:

Anna Nicole Smith Autopsy Released

Accidental???!!!

Maybe accidental in the sense that she probably didn’t want to die, but mixing a sedative with NINE other perscription drugs?  That’s like hitting a piniata filled with nitroclycerine with a stick until it “accidentally” goes off.  That takes a special kind of stupid.  Of course, I don’t suppose this comes as a surprise to anyone either.