Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

I feel nothing but pity for Anna Nicole Smith and the fragmented remains of her family. They have to deal with Howard K. Stern.

Sure, you could call Smith the quintessence of gold digging white trash, and you’d be right. Her mother had five marriages behind her. Smith herself never got past the eighth grade. She married and had a child before she was out of her teens. Luckily, she happened to be gorgeous, and made a decent career out of it, at least at first. All this without even getting into the whole J. Howard Marshall II fiasco that ruled the remainder of her life.

So in what way is this exceptionally poor decision maker and empirically stupid woman deserving of pity? More than anything else, Anna Nicole Smith was manipulated by virtually everyone around her. You can justifiably call Smith a gold digger, but the fact remains that J. Howard Marshall II decided to buy himself one last thrill before the icy hand of death claimed him without making any real legal provisions for his “wife”.

The real problem, though, is Howard K. Stern. I may be young, but even at my age I’ve seen enough people like him to know that he’s responsible for Smith’s death. Lawyer turned boyfriend? Please, tell me he’s been disbarred for that. It’s an obvious conflict of interest and a tremendous moral failing (and yes, moral failing is grounds for loss of the right to practice law).

So he was her boyfriend and had been at her side for years. This means that he personally oversaw Smith’s late-90s deterioration from a sex symbol into a slurring, drugged out joke. A talent lawyer by trade (he originally worked on Smith’s modeling contracts), Stern almost certainly masterminded the nadir of reality TV that was The Anna Nicole Show. Watch any episode of that monstrosity and tell me you don’t see a woman desperately in need of real help, or at the very least a friend, or anything real at all. How could Stern dispassionately stand by, often on camera, and let it all happen? This is the man that claims to have loved her?

The ever talkative Judge Larry Seidlin has wondered aloud if Stern was “an enabler.” Seidlin has mused, “Is he a bad guy or is he a fellow that has some form of a love for her? We don’t know.” With all due respect, your honor, yes we do. Howard K. Stern is the Devil. He wasn’t an enabler, he was an exploiter, allowing and perhaps encouraging Smith to remain in a self-destructive, drug-laden haze while he leached a fantasy lifestyle out of her dubious fortune. This is a man who, just days after Smith buried her twenty year-old son, held a farcical “commitment ceremony” with Smith on a yacht. You know those strange photos of Smith getting all romantic with the Bahamian immigration minister? Stern is the one who took them.

It turns my stomach to see him boohoo-ing on television and in court over a woman he clearly abused. The bereaved do not, as a rule, accept extravagant financial offers to appear on television and cry into their hands. It appalls me that Smith’s mother has to argue against this monster in court for the right to bury her own child.

Say what you will about Anna Nicole Smith, but I feel sorry that Howard K. Stern ever entered her life.