Party girl’s shelf life stands test of time - what Anna Nicole can teach Britney and Lindsay

There is no lifetime acheivement award for party girls, no old-timer’s day and no hall of fame. There is no future in being a party girl; just boredom between parties and a lonely life once the invitations stop coming. It may look cute when paparazzi are taking pictures of them on the red carpet rolling in the front door, but when those same paparazzi are taking pictures of them in a red body bag being rolled out the back door, it ain’t so cute any more.

No party girl in recent memory has provided better evidence of this than the recently departed Vickie Lynn Hogan, better known as Anna Nicole Smith.

Hers was a classic story. Born in a small town in Texas, her father left home when she was very young, her mother re-married a few times. She dropped out of high school by the age of 15, was married by 17, a mother by 18, and a single mother stripping for a living by 20. By 24, she had captured the party girl’s holy grail — an 85-year-old billionaire with a weak heart and an engagement ring. She then lived through a whirlwind three years in which she became a Playboy Playmate and a Guess model, ushered in a “new era of voluptuousness,” and became wife, then widow of billionaire J. Howard Marshall. She was left out of his will, but years of litigation seem to have left her about $90 million from his estate. She truly became a household name when “The Anna Nicole Show” debuted on E! in 2002. The show and its star were TV gold and, though it was canceled, the camera fell back in love with Anna Nicole when she lost almost 100 pounds and returned to sex symbol status.

When the infant became the new “must-have accessory” in Hollywood, she got pregnant. Her baby girl was born in the Bahamas in September. Three short days later, six tragic months began with her 20-year-old son dying from a combination of anti-depressants and methadone (his mom’s fridge was full of the stuff) and ended when she was found dead in her hotel room in Hollywood, Florida last week. It’s sadly ironic that while Anna Nicole chose to turn her body and her life into grist for the media-driven mill that is our celebrity and sex-obsessed popular culture, her little girl won’t have that option. She’s in the birth class of 2006 with Suri Cruise, Jayden James Federline and Shiloh Nouvel Joie-Pitt — Hollywood offspring trapped by their names.

It’s no coincidence she died the same week that Britney Spears, mother of two, drank her way around New York City (embarrassing herself and her kids) and Lindsay Lohan took a break from rehab to go out clubbing. Anna Nicole’s life is a lesson: party girls age fast.

Anna Nicole’s lone “talent” seemed to be that she was attractive enough that teenage boys wanted to masturbate to pictures of her. Britney and Lindsay, on the other hand, have decades of productive years in entertainment ahead of them. It must have been hard to grow up as a “Disney Kid” with all the pressure to be a completely and totally Ivory-clean, vanilla-bland straight arrow all the time. It couldn’t have been easy knowing all of your non-Disney friends were out partying when you were rehearsing and missing out on your teens. But that’s why the job pays such obscene amounts of money.

The most successful female recording artist in history, Madonna, has sold about 120 million albums since she started recording in 1982 and is worth more than $300 million. She puts on a great show, but she can’t sing. Britney Spears, by contrast, actually can sing, and has sold more than 76 million albums since 1998. By the time she’s Madonna’s age, there is no reason why Britney shouldn’t have sold 200 million albums. I can only imagine what she would be worth by then.

Lindsay Lohan is the red-haired Hollywood icon of her generation, a multitalented Molly Ringwald for the new century. She has been blessed with pop star pipes, a model’s face, a beach body, and skin that is both freckled and flawless. She is that rare triple-threat — singer, model, actress — and she’s way ahead of schedule.At 20, she’s been in front of the camera for 17 years and her timing and instincts reflect that experience, as does her $7.5 million salary and the fact that Robert Altman cast her opposite Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep. By the time she reaches Meryl Streep’s age, there is no reason why she shouldn’t have won three or four Academy Awards and earned $500 million.

Then again, there might actually be one reason why Britney and Lindsay don’t reach their full potential and earn about a billion dollars between them — they might get partied out before they have the chance.

If Dems were smart, they’d strike Bush while he's down - Using the "Six for '06"

The White House is in shambles. The President’s approval rating is at 30 percent, an all-time low. That means if you put three strangers in a room, two of them will talk about how little they think of the President’s job performance (the third will sit quiet, unable to defend him). The most powerful Vice President in American history is a witness for the defense, because his chief of staff lied to the Special Prosecutor. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is, for all intents and purposes, as dead as Saddam Hussein. And Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is in Western Asia trying to do the impossible — broker a peace deal between the Palestinian and Israeli governments on a deadline.

The Republican party is on the ropes. There is nobody to challenge Senator John McCain’s bid for the Republican nomination in 2008, and the only man who could potentially turn things around for the party — former Secretary of State and retired Gen. Colin Powell — isn’t running because his wife won’t let him. And the fact that Sen. McCain opposed overturning Roe v. Wade as recently as 1999 means a civil war is brewing within that party over their litmus test issue: reproductive freedom.

Assuming a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) like McCain can survive the primary, he emerges a wounded national candidate at best, and a weak national candidate at worst.

No matter who wins their nomination, the Republican party cannot counter the perception that they’ve moved in ideological lockstep with the President after giving him a Congressional free ride. What do they have that can compare to the applause lines every Democratic candidate will use at every campaign stop when he or she takes credit for keeping their word and passing their “Six for ‘06” bills in their first hundred hours? The Republican front-runner is damaged goods, the Republican party has no legislative agenda and, most importantly, the Republican President is weaker than he’s ever been. Republicans everywhere are isolated, unpopular and out of ideas.

When the President said the Iraqi government would be able to take over security by November, he gave the Democrats a clock which they can simply run out now that they’ve kept their campaign promises. But that’s not the smart play. I know Democrats are not used to thinking like this, but politics is mortal combat. When your opponent is down, you go for the jugular and you kill him until he’s dead. The Democrats can deliver a death blow to the President and his party in one fell swoop. When the Chief of the executive branch laid out his asinine challenge to the majority in the legislative branch to craft policy and explain why they think it will be effective, he essentially outsourced his foreign policy to the Democrats,giving them control over the one issue where Republicans had a reliable advantage. What the Democratic majority must do is hit him hard while they have a chance to get the one thing they need: a commitment not to keep permanent or semi-permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. So when the time eventually comes for U.S. troops to leave that country, the withdrawal will be complete.

Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can get Republican Senators John Warner and Sam Brownback and Generals George Casey and John Abizaid to go to the White House, sit down with the President and get him on record saying there will be no permanent or semipermanent U.S. bases in Iraq. He won’t want to go back to Congress to re-authorize the use of force in Iraq. He won’t want to explain how it’s a good idea for American military personnel to stay in Iraq to oversee a civil war between Iraqis. So he’ll have to compromise. Let the President call it a surge, an augmentation or “the Real World: Baghdad,” he’s already put an artificial timetable on the Iraqi government (November). There is a limit to the damage he can do before he leaves office.

It would be ironic for this President, who came to Washington calling himself a “uniter, not a divider,” who promised to “change the tone” and to “restore honor and dignity to the office” to leave behind a Democratic majority in Congress which actually united the government, a marginalized Republican party with a murky future and his Presidential legacy blown up along with an un-armored Humvee on Haifa Street in Baghdad. Getting him on the record as being opposed to permanent or semi-permanent bases in Iraq is the first step in getting our brave fighting men and women to the only place where they are truly safe: home.