All Is Vanity
February 18, 2007
By: Sellers S. Crain, Jr.
She had fame, and possibly fortune, but that remains to be decided. She was one of the most recognized women in America. She was known by a name that was not even her own, Anna Nicole Smith. Her real name was Vicky Lynn Hogan, and that is the one her grieving mother calls her by. She died suddenly on Thursday, February 8, 2007. Though at this writing the results of her autopsy are not known, police in Hollywood, Florida reported that no illegal drugs were found in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino Hotel. There was an assortment of prescription drugs.
In one of her last interviews Anna Nicole said she always wanted to be famous. She was, but it was not for what she may have wanted to be known. A former waitress at a chicken restaurant and a former Wal-Mart employee, she became an exotic dancer which led to her relationship with an aging lawyer and former Texas oil tycoon and billionaire J. Howard Marshall, 60 years her senior. When he died, although she did not receive a large share of his wealth in his will, she claimed he promised her millions. Although the case involving her share of his estate is not settled after more than eleven years in litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door for her to continue to fight for it. Some expected her to possibly receive as much as four hundred plus million dollars.
Perhaps because of Marshall's billions, Nicole was featured in nude photos in Playboy Magazine. She had small parts in a few movies, but the fame of her idol Marilyn Monroe as an actress eluded her. For a short time, she had a television reality show that featured for all to see the downward spiral of her life. In spite of her fame, one reporter described her life as a mess. She was in the lawsuit over Howard Marshall's estate, while in the hospital having a baby, her son died in her hospital room from an overdose of several medications, she was recently named in a suit involving a weight loss product that she advertised, and there was also a paternity suit involving the two men who each claimed to be the father of her baby daughter. In recent public appearances she was obviously under the influence of drugs. Her mother, from whom she was estranged, said that she was an addict and that she had warned her about the drugs and the people she was "hanging around with." In spite of their estrangement, her mother said she loved her, and she was clearly distraught over her death.
Anna Nicole's whole life since she left home at seventeen was built on a lie. She claimed to have been poor, and that she was raised in a small town in Texas. Her mother, a retired policewoman, said she was actually raised in Houston, hardly a small town, and that they were a comfortable middle-class family. Anna Nicole was living a fantasy. One reporter said she was the most famous non-famous person in America. The fame she sought she now has, but it came at the end of a tragic life. Her life and death are another solemn reminder that "All is vanity and vexation of the spirit" (Ecclesiastes 2:11, 17, 26).
The man who wrote these words, Solomon, the third King of Israel, also sought to find happiness in the things of this world. He sought it in wealth (Ecclesiastes 2:8, 9, 18, 19, 5:10-15). He sought it in pleasure. He was a playboy who shared his bed with hundreds of women (Ecclesiastes 2:8-10). He sought happiness through power (Ecclesiastes 1:9-11; 8:4,5). He had fame, fortune, power, all the women he desired, and yet he concluded "all is vanity," a statement he uttered almost thirty times in this little book. After all of his experimentation his ultimate conclusion was to "Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment with every secret things whether it be good or evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:13,14). Don't waste your life seeking for something that can only be found in a relationship with God.
Brotherly,
Sellers
