Web reaction swift and brutal to Anna Nicole death

San Francisco, Feb 9: Minutes after word of the death ofstripper-turned-celebrity Anna Nicole Smith, the blogosphere began theautopsy of a life lived in the headlines, and the verdict wasn't at allpretty.

From different corners of the Internet, commentators who onceconsidered Smith worthy only of off-color jokes purported to seek outthe deeper cultural meanings of her death. Most came up brutally short.

Instead many observers reveled in jokes about the size of theformer Playboy model's breasts or the extent of her drug problems --topics thought to be fair game in the world of celebrity gossip.

Blog search site Technorati.com showed mentions of Anna NicoleSmith spiked fivefold yesterday. Still, at little over 44,000 mentions,Smith measures only one-tenth the blog star power of pop musicsensation Britney Spears.

The occasion gave free rein to the pseudonymous savagery which passes for informed commentary on the Web.

Such cruelty contrasted with the tone of respectful shock used in blanket coverage of her death on cable television.

''Anna Nicole Smith's condition downgraded to dead,'' one writeron news commentary site Fark.com coldly noted. Thousands of visitorshad posted remarks within hours of her death.

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2596842Fark commentator ''LikelyCulprit'' posted a photo of a beached whaleentitled ''preliminary autopsy photo.'' A little over an hour afterword of Smith's death at age 39 was splashed across CNN television, amemorial open-discussion about her was created at http://www.annanicolesmithdies.com.

A player at a macabre celebrity death pool site called http://www.derbydeadpool.co.uk won double points by predicting Smith. Other picks for 2007 included Fidel Castro and horror film actor Christopher Lee.

TMZ.com, a celebrity site that shot to fame with revelations aboutactor Mel Gibson, bemoaned how Smith's last movie, ''Illegal Aliens,''set to be released in April, may now be in doubt.

http://www.tmz.com/2007/02/08/anna-nicoles-last-film-in-doubt/.

AOL, the parent company of the celebrity dirt-digging site, http://us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mode=1&pmmsid=1840030 was quick to provide a trailer of the film.

Reuters>