Wall Street soldiered on Friday as a distraught nation grieved over the mysterious death of its apparent favorite daughter, Anna Nicole Smith. Trying to make sense of it all, the news media pandered non-stop, offering us a minutely detailed recapitulation of Ms. Smith's final days, of her most trivial trials and tribulations, of the sadness that evidently haunted the famously fey blonde voluptuary until her final breath. The former Playmate of the Year's legacy remains unclear at this time, since the legal question of whether she was one of the richest women in America when she departed this world has yet to be settled. But even if it turns out that the iconically buxom Texan went penniless to her grave, blonde bimbos, gold-diggers and binge-dieters everywhere will be forever in Anna Nicole's debt, since no one before her had ever made sheer tawdriness look like so much fun. If bimbo-dom's apotheosis was nigh, investors seemed too glum to be cheered by the prospect. The Dow Industrials closed off 56 points, notwithstanding the fact that a couple of minor players from the Fed were in the news with cryptic statements that on any other day might have been construed as dovish. But not on Friday, when there were only distressing reminders of the unfillable void that Anna Nicole's untimely passing will leave in our lives: a bunny flag at half-mast over the Playboy mansion; a 50%-off sale on lace bras at Victoria's Secret; an apparent commitment by the news media to honor Anna Nicole in death as in life ' i.e., with a relentless stream of tabloid bilge that seems likely to persist until each and every one of us has been eliminated as the possible father of her baby. Given that the news media's obsessive coverage of Anna Nicole's death
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