Truth is, they can't have it both ways. She did everything humanly possible while alive to be a headline grabber and the media spent over half of her life making her a millionaire and convincing the public that she's really someone you should be interested in. Unlike Steve Irwin, she didn't die at the height of her popularity, she died at the height of her media coverage. Unfortunately for all those involved, it was a whirlwind of legal paternity, the death of her child, the battle over money, etc. As stated above, nothing you'd wish on someone... but if her having a mystery baby to someone was such a big headline, it only seems natural that a mysterious, untimely death would be even bigger.
Plus, it's not just celebrity status that deals out the coverage. Every day you read that someone famous has died, it's just depends what they're famous for. I think age has alot to do with the public's reaction to someone passing. Tony Randall passed and it was a blip one day. Alot of people today would say "Really? He died? When?" Hell of a nice guy, award winning actor and comedian, decades in the business, but no one was offering five figures for his autopsy photo. Younger celebs usually garner more sympathy for being "cut down in their prime too soon".
Her life was a trainwreck in the latter stages and she was fortunate enough to still make a living off of it, but bad as it was, she still has family and friends that love her and will miss her. None of us will cry over not hearing her whine about money and seeing her as a drunk dipshit making public appearances, but that was only the televised portion of her life. This will continue to be the story of the year until they A] find out what she died of and B] find out who her baby's father is. And she'll be dragged behind the wagon until the litigation of paternity is finally resolved. Then you won't hear about her again till her boyfriend has another girlfriend in three months.
My twenty-year-old cousin died of leukemia Sunday, same age as alot of you here. He won't be a national headline, but to my family, it was every bit the tragedy that Anna Nicole is. Death is the great equalizer. It shows us that despite what you accomplish or how many people in the world see you doing it while you're alive... you're going out feet first naked in a bag. Saddam Hussein was a billionaire dictator and ruled millions of people for decades, and in the end, he shit himself like everyone else does.
And with that, I'm done. I don't feel compelled to post a RIP message to a dead celeb in a tickling forum so that you all can see how compassionate I am. No one here posts when members of their family die, and you people actually care about each other. So making a bigger deal out of someone more famous and feeding the media frenzy is something I'd usually pass on, but some of the comments here combined with the fact that I, too, slept with Anna Nicole and am probably the baby's father, forced me to respond.