Anna Nicole Smith

Molly Ivins, a nationally respected, even beloved, journalist and civil rights advocate, dies. Two weeks later, Anna Nicole Smith, a busty blonde and former Playboy “Playmate of the Year” dies. Which death gets more media coverage? By far, Anna Nicole Smith’s. Does this make sense?

Well, yes, but we shouldn’t fret about it. Society is not going to be dragged down a rathole by media attention to Anna Nicole Smith. It’s just the media codes at work, and in all of human history, whenever it has come to the codes of Sex vs. Writer, Sex has triumphed every time.

It’s sort of like Madonna, who for a long time was the ranking media codes expert among women celebrities. This is how expert she was: when a person, doing something else while the TV was on, heard the name, “Madonna,” that person would reflexively glance at the TV. Why? Because Madonna had conditioned people to wonder, “What has she done now?” That media code is called Novelty, which is impossible for people, who are naturally curious, to ignore. Madonna cultivated Novelty to a science.

Anna Nicole was no media expert, and she couldn’t cultivate crabgrass. She just took off her clothes and posed for Playboy, and let her considerable body do the rest. That’s all she had to do to become famous.

Famous enough, anyway. Sex is the oldest media code in the human book, and millions and millions of people, including millions who wouldn’t want to admit it, have given more than casual attention to pictures of Anna Nicole Smith’s body. But if you polled the population, you might find 10 million people who loved Anna Nicole enough to tape all the coverage and swoon over her baby and the paternity battle, which as of 30 minutes ago was six claimants.

Taken as a percentage of the American population of 300 million, 10 million is 3.3 percent, meaning 96.7 percent of Americans aren’t glued to cable TV’s “Anna Nicole Watch.” Some of it splashes into the general media, because of the power of the Prominence media code (“big names make news”) and giving the impression that the audience for this fare is bigger than it actually is.

It’s only 10 million, but enough to make ANS famous. Ten million sets of eyeballs was enough for cable TV to sell advertisers on an ANS reality television show that was nothing more than cameras following her through her day. Yes, I know, something like that does sound like a scream that the end of civilization is nigh. Just remember what the other 96.7 percent were doing, and even the 3.3 decided in only a couple of years that they had seen enough (the death knell for any television series, whatever media codes it employs) of Anna Nicole’s reality.

All of television – and all media, actually – is an exercise in the power of small numbers. A prime time sitcom with a Nielsen rating of 17 will make big media news and millions in ad revenues, even though 83 percent of the “television universe” was doing something else. It’s silly to think that “we” are being devalued as a civilization because of anything Anna Nicole Smith did, even dying. “We” is the most misused word in the media-public debate. The New York Times did a story about renewed interest in a book about ANS titled “Great Big Beautiful Blonde,” as if readers coast to coast were lined up around the block. The new printing: 15,000 copies.

It’s sad that Anna Nicole died at the age of 39. She didn’t do anything to anybody. She just gave the 3.3 what they needed, and if the rest of us fussed about that, it was good publicity for her. Among the 96.7, I think our sighs at the news were genuine, a legitimate reaction to yet another media code. Then we went on to something else.