Did 'This Week' Snub Anna Nicole?
February 13, 2007 1:56 PM
Sometimes the so-called high road is a dead-end.
Every Sunday morning, "In Memoriam," a regular feature of ABC's resurgent "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," lists famous figures, as well as members of the American military, who died during the previous week.
But on last Sunday's broadcast, the "In Memoriam" list included no mention of Anna Nicole Smith, whose figure was nothing if not famous and whose death had, of course, sent the tabloid and mainstream press into predictable feeding frenzies (it would be even more predictable to lament the excess coverage,
so why bother?).
Maybe Ms. Smith doesn't meet "This Week's" standards for newsmakers, but it seemed callous, churlish and snobbish not to list her among the departed. She had seemed in life poignant as well as grotesque, and her passing ought to have been noted as a matter of record.
We'd hate to think "This Week" was developing a New-York-Timesy kind of haughty self-importance, especially when topical jokes from TV comics are featured at the end of every show.
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Comments (1)
I'm just one viewer, but by Sunday morning, after four days of wall-to-wall coverage for a person whose death seemed to only really affect her child's mysterious father, it was nice to see her presence absent the show.
In a time when a former model's horrifying decent eats up more of the news cycle than our very own servicemen dying in Iraq it just might be time for a little haughty self-importance.
Posted by Rick | February 13, 2007 5:04 PM