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Anna Nicole is gone, yes--but so is Sgt. Frazier

Death of a celebrity, and a hero--Anna Nicole Smith and Sgt. Frazier

Date published: 2/20/2007

ENID, Okla.--Joshua Frazier died Tuesday. His death went relatively unnoticed, particularly when compared with the media frenzy that followed the untimely demise of Anna Nicole Smith.

That is understandable, of course, since Smith was, if nothing else, famous.

She might have been famous simply for being famous, but her name had become a household word.

Smith's fame seems a testament to the cult of celebrity that grips this country. We love celebrities, or, at least, we love to scrutinize every aspect of their lives.

We hang on every juicy detail of their love lives, from the first blush of romance to the wreckage left strewn in the wake of their breakups.

We want to know where they live, how they live, with whom they live, and what substances in which they indulge to help them get through their lives.

We love them when they succeed, we envy them when they are at their sleek, beautiful, sexy, talented best.

But we take guilty satisfaction in their downfall, as well. We can't look away when they gain weight, get arrested for drunk driving, shame themselves by spouting racial epithets, or slide into the morass of addiction.

In return, celebrities crave our attention. Without the public, they would have no career. But after a time, all try--largely without success--to hold the public at arm's length, to submit to the relentless scrutiny of adoring fandom only on their own terms.

It never works. In the world of celebrity, there is no having your cake and eating it, too.

Joshua Frazier was no celebrity. He was a 24-year-old kid from Spotsylvania.

He was, by all accounts, a good kid. When a friend had a death in the family, Josh would sit up with them all night, if need be. If someone he knew, even casually, was in the hospital, Frazier would spend hours visiting them. When he was home, Josh Frazier even slept with a teddy bear, one given to his mother when she was pregnant with him.

No one ever saw fit to base a reality series on his life. If they had, they would have focused on a young man who would party on Saturday night, but was always up for church on Sunday morning.

Josh Frazier collected guns and was a huge fan of Spider-Man.

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Date published: 2/20/2007