Finally!

We know.

Ft. Lauderdale

Next week, The Wife and I will be heading to the Ft. Lauderdale/Miami area for a few days. We've been there before, so we're quite familiar with South Beach and Sawgrass Mills. Much to The Wife's chagrin, I plan on making a pilgrimage to the site where Anna Nicole died. Anybody have any other favorite spots to visit?

Update: Maybe I'll hang out with Ann Coulter. She owned a place in nearby Palm Beach.

Anna Nicole Smith, 1967-2007

I've avoided blogging about Anna Nicole, only because everyone else seems to be. However, I must draw your attention to Tammy Brister's post on the reality star's tragic life.

I hearkened back to Scripture and more specifically to the life of Jesus Christ to think about a couple of Anna Nicole’s in Jesus’ day. I recall a woman of Samaria who had many men in her life (John 4:1-42), a woman of the city who was characteristically known as “a sinner” (Luke 7:36-50), and a woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). Like the Samaritan woman, Anna Nicole had experienced many men in her life. Like the woman of the city, she prostituted herself for riches. Like the woman caught in adultery, she knew what it was like to be in a courtroom, being judged by others. Jesus was no stranger to the Anna Nicole’s of his day.

[HT: Justin Taylor]

Update: For a more secular view of Anna Nicole, go here.

For all her gaudy excesses, there is in some of us--or there ought to be--the urge to treat Ms. Smith gently. Hers is a pathetic story, of ersatz celebrity, dead children and the pursuit of money, sex, drugs, weight loss and validation-through-litigation. That this pursuit was so thoroughly unembarrassed is a comment not so much on Ms. Smith's personal aesthetics as it is on human folly, U.S.-style, taken to its logical extreme.