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I heard about it and went to the website to check it out. I really liked his particular brand of 20th century harmony. Consonant chords, but you never knew where they were going.
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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Especially when Wiki articles are deliberately sabotaged by folks who don't like the person being discussed. Heck, they don't even hafta do it themselves: Wikibio-sabotage is a profession these days.
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I am so sick of this already. It’s all over the news, it’s the only thing they are talking about on the radio. I can’t stand it.
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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You know you're not forced to watch the news, right?
I never understood why people subject themselves to stuff that makes them crazy, especially when said stuff is completely voluntary. Like my friend who listens to Rush Limbaugh every morning, and yells at Rush Limbaugh every morning, and mentions at every turn that he hates the guy with the fire of a thousand suns. Well then, dude, change the station!
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Storm, It's my understanding that porter believes that people who have the good fortune to be born in America have it a lot easier than our foreign counterparts. Specifically, those born in 2nd or 3rd world countries. The poorest person in the US is pretty well off by world standards. And since being born here is pure chance, none of us did anything in particular to earn this good fortune.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Well, I like that it overshadowed and killed most of the ongoing story about the astronaut lady, in the general media. I didn't want to keep hearing that either.
I'm wondering how this is all going to hang concerning her companion/lawyer Howard K. Stern. Because he's already under suspicion of aiding in the death of Smith's son in the Bahamian investigation (for actually providing him with the Methodone that he later OD'd on), and you have to wonder, then, if he provided, encouraged, or discouraged her drug usage (if that is what it turns out to be).
Sounds like sadly they were involved with a group drug culture, to an extent. Hopefully the baby will be spared that environment.
(I realize some of this is speculation at this point)
quote: Anna Nicole who? Was she the diapered astronaut? No?
There are some weeks when the weekly rags really must have a hard time picking the Headline. I suspect that the astronaut killed Anna Nichole to get out of the spotlight...
Posts: 231 | Registered: Feb 2007
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quote: It's my understanding that porter believes that people who have the good fortune to be born in America have it a lot easier than our foreign counterparts. Specifically, those born in 2nd or 3rd world countries. The poorest person in the US is pretty well off by world standards. And since being born here is pure chance, none of us did anything in particular to earn this good fortune.
You sure about this? It seems like he's saying that people in the third world deserve their circumstances. Or maybe he's saying that no one does,and he's just singling out the first world or something, and it's all in the hands of Bob. Or maybe he's saying that Americans have had everything handed to them because we live in a country protected and maintained by the FSM.
The mind boggles, really.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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You know you're not forced to watch the news, right?
No, but when the national media is so consumed in the death of a Playmate, other life-and-death issues of international significance are being pushed aside. The global warming debate has been derailed. Adult diapers are the topic of conversation on news channels, as opposed to the Iraq war.
quote:Originally posted by Counter Bean:
There are some weeks when the weekly rags really must have a hard time picking the Headline. I suspect that the astronaut killed Anna Nichole to get out of the spotlight...
Or better yet, a lesbian affair gone wrong. Lust in Space: Love Quadrangle?
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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I care that she died, and not because of a left behind baby, dead husbands and sons, or what an "unhappy" life she led. I care and am sad that she died because she was an entertainer.
From the time that she was legally allowed she has been energetically performing to the lowest common denominator. Her flamboyance and certain brand of charm have put smiles on millions of faces around the world, and warmed the hearts and crotches of some of the more desperately lonely men alive.
It is sometimes a thankless profession, sometimes a lonely one, but one that brings joy to thousands and, I hope, a kernel of happiness to Anna Nicole. Dancer, actress, model and talk show host: Anna Nicole surpassed everyone's expectations and did it with her whole self. Anna Nicole Smith knew who she was, knew what she wanted and knew that she would get it, whatever the cost, and that is deserving of my respect, at least. It was long and crazy ride, and I, for one, am very sorry to see it end.
(I am fully aware that this is almost entirely conjecture, but it is my honest feeling, as well as what I think she deserves)
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote: I think that what the vast majority of us who live in the first world get is far out of proportion to what we really deserve.
This can be taken so many ways, I have no idea what you're really trying to say, Porter.
JT is exactly correct.
I mean that even people who live below the poverty line in America have a better standard of living than 99%* of the people living on other parts of the world.
*number pulled out of my ear
When it comes to money and physical comfort, which is what was being talked about with ANS receiving all that money she didn't deserve, almost everybody on this board is phenomenally well off in comparison to a) people throughout history and b) people throughout the world.
Sure, ANS didn't do anything to deserve the millions she got from her dead husband. But I didn't do anything to deserve a childhood free from worry where I never went hungry and always had warm clothes. I didn't deserve the opportunity to go to college and get a job which pays well enough that I've been able to satisy my wife's heartfelt desire to live in the country surrounded by plants and animals.
Did I work hard to get what I have? Yes. But not nearly as hard as most people in the world work in order to live like crap.
Most people in the world have as much of a chance to acheive my current standard of living as I have of marrying a rich octegenarian who leaves me hundreds of millions of dollars: practically none.
Yes, she got more than she deserved, but so has practically every person on this board.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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To paraphrase Matt Groening, you can legitimize anything if you just compare it to infinity.
I get what you are saying, Porter, but what you are saying seems to me to be almost a straw man, if not in fact one, and can be used to shortcut almost any discussion.
Don't like the conditions in prisons in the U.S.? Well, at least they're not in ______________.
Think someone got a raw deal being beaten? Well, at least they weren't beaten and killed.
As far as that goes, many people in the world right now have things better than they did twenty, forty, 100 years a go. Should they complain, or not want what they deserve for their hard labour?
Sure, in comparison to some of the rest of the world and almost all of history, many in the U.S. are well-off, but I think that leaves the issues that have been raised in relation to Smith's notoriety and wealth unanswered. I don't believe it rebuts the concerns that I, and Strider, and others have raised.
People want what is possible. Just because others cannot have something, or don't have something, few would argue that that means that they should not have it or don't deserve it. It's contrary to human nature.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Porter, I didn't deserve it, but I didn't NOT deserve it, either. Merit had nothing to do with it, and I won't apologize to anyone for my having been born in the US. Merit comes in when we analyze WHAT people do with the situation circumstance puts them in... do they blithely accept it, or do they use their wits and wills to bend circumstance to their desires and dreams?
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quote:She rode her dna to the big time. That's her real accomplishment in life. That's what got her where she is today. I don't think she deserved what she had.
What exactly makes someone deserving of something? Isn't everything in some way attributable to chance or DNA or both?
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quote:I get what you are saying, Porter, but what you are saying seems to me to be almost a straw man, if not in fact one, and can be used to shortcut almost any discussion.
I think it's important in a discussion about how she won the lottery to remember that so did all of us, to a lesser extent.
My intent was not to end the conversation.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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No, that's cool, and I get what you're saying.
On a kind of side note, I am having one of little monthly bouts with insomnia this week, and everything I do is done through a haze of angry bees in my brain, so that I think I'm being both more prickly than usual and more grouchy. I know, hard to tell what's different, but there it is.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I don't think Porter is saying that Americans all get a first class ticket through life for free and that's unfair. I think Porter is simply acknowledging that the world is not equal, and Americans are generally on the high ebb of things, while folks on the low ebb can do all they can to work hard and intelligently for their subsistence and still be far below our "acceptable" standards.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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The Washington Post called her a courtesan. That sounds about right. Someone should write an opera about her.
Not quite respectable, but butter than a prostitute. The gray area. She is uncomfortable because she is a reminder than the much-vaunted institution of marriage is also occasionally a commercial transaction.
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She's also uncomfortable because she's a reminder that being blond and pretty can sometimes mean you don't have to be anything else.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I don't think Porter is saying that Americans all get a first class ticket through life for free and that's unfair. I think Porter is simply acknowledging that the world is not equal, and Americans are generally on the high ebb of things, while folks on the low ebb can do all they can to work hard and intelligently for their subsistence and still be far below our "acceptable" standards.
If I understand Porters point its alot simpler than that. I think he is saying that if we shouldn't begrudge this woman's success because it was due in large part to good luck. All the rest of us who live in above poverty level in the western world are all beneficiaries of good luck. We should appreciate that rather than complain about the small number of people who are even luckier.
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quote:You know you're not forced to watch the news, right?
I'll admit that I never heard of Anna Nicole Smith before her tragic death and I can't say my life would have been less rich if I'd never heard of her.
I know I'm not forced to watch the news, which is why I turn it off whenever stuff like this comes on. But still, there is news that I would like hear and I'm not hearing it because the media is obsessing over celebrity deaths and astronauts in diapers.
Please. I want to hear about important stuff. I can turn it off when this sort of drivel dominates the news day but I still don't get what I want.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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They call using a car roughly 'driving it like you stole it' I would say that applies to Anna Nicole and the way she drove her body, it is not surprising that she crashed.
Posts: 231 | Registered: Feb 2007
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In her will, she left everything to her dead son, and explicitly denied any inheritance to any other heirs.
Like that baby of hers.
quote:"I have intentionally omitted to provide for my spouse and other heirs, including future spouses and children and other descendants now living and those hereafter born or adopted," Smith said in the will, which was signed under her legal name, Vickie Lynn Marshall.
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But if everything went to the son, wouldn't it all pass on to his next of kin? I'd think that would still be the baby.
Unless his preceding ANS means the money doesn't go to anyone. She was living in the Bahamas but was an American citizen. Even if her money goes to the state, which state would get it?
Inheritences are so weird.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Counter Bean: They call using a car roughly 'driving it like you stole it' I would say that applies to Anna Nicole and the way she drove her body, it is not surprising that she crashed.
I could make a joke about air bags, but that wouldn't be appropriate, would it?
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