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In This Issue

• Scandal Pol Denies It All
• Hipster Ironic Since Age 14
• Baby Names May Be Lame
• AIDS Continues Dance Marathon Win Streak
• Jeff Sachs, Meet Anna Nicole
• Tales of the Inexpressible: Plumbing
• Iraq Gets Improbably Pale Spring Break Vacationers
• Compare, Contrast.
• Pics Worth 978 Words
• A Primer for the Primaries
• SEXILED: The Board Game
• Online Dating Adventures
• Well Bread
• Men Secretly Letting Their Hair Down and Asses Up
• Anthropomorphism
• Lerner Hall: Time to Take Out The Trash
• Fed Bash, Fed Bash, Fed Bash

Barnard president Judith Shapiro announced yesterday that recently-deceased model, actress, and plus-sized ho Anna Nicole Smith will be posthumously awarded an honorary degree in economics, with a concentration in women’s studies, by Barnard College.  Justifying the award, President Shapiro noted that Smith was “the embodiment of a strong Barnard woman” and also that the degree “will embarrass Columbia, since their name also goes on the diploma.”

Anna Nicole, née a hickier Vickie Lynn Hogan in Mexia, Texas in 1967, learned from an early age about the economic principle of sexual capital.  Her mother, Virgie Mae Tabers Hogan Hart Thompson Sanders Arthur, taught Anna by example about how to sell her body for Cheetos, cigarettes, and most importantly, a marriage proposal.  Virgie, who accumulated five husbands over the years, is also rumored to have a stockpile of cheesy snacks worth $450,000.

After failing out of ninth grade, Anna Nicole realized that book learnin’ was not for her, and decided to get out and see the world.  She landed a job at a fried chicken restaurant, where she not only met her first husband, Billy Wayne Smith, but was also allowed all the fried chicken she could eat.  That netted the blonde beauty the voluptuous frame for which she became famous.  She gained even more weight when she got pregnant and had her first child, Daniel, a year later.

Anna soon left her husband for bigger and better things, working in fast-food restaurants Houston.  As an uneducated woman, the natural economist saw that her greatest asset was sexual capital, and her trailer trash husband her greatest liability.  Much market research led her to the conclusion that 88 percent of men (13 percent of men at Columbia) prefer women with “a cute face, small waist, and a big behind.”  Consequently, she made the bold decision to start stripping and get a divorce.  Soon after, she sent her picture to Playboy magazine.

Ms. Smith’s investments in fried chicken finally paid off when, in 1992, she became Playboy’s Playmate of the Month, and then Playmate of the Year in 1993.  She was renowned by men across America for her winning combination of classic pinup-girl looks and a naughty reputation.  “She was like Marilyn, except you could actually bend this one over in a seedy motel for $50 and a plate of nachos,” said Marilyn Monroe historian and regular Anna Nicole–boinker Edwin A. Covington III.  She knew how to sell her sizable assets.

In 1994, the buxom blonde achieved her greatest feat when she married billionaire J. Howard Marshall, who conveniently died a year later.  After a long court battle over his will, Anna’s convincing nature and natural intelligence, along with a two-hour session under the judge’s bench, won her the case and more than $450 million dollars.

Shrewd economist that she was, Anna knew that greater proportions would bring greater profits.  In that spirit, she decided to invest some of her newfound fortune in a 400-pound shipment of Hostess snack cakes.  However, she overestimated market demand for her size, and she quickly ended up with no modeling jobs and a surplus of 150 pounds.

Determined to return from that setback, Anna Nicole decided to take advantage of America’s love of disastrous drug addicts when she followed in the tradition of The Osbournes and signed on with the E! network for The Anna Nicole Show. In order to keep ratings up, Anna frequently appeared on-screen drunk or high, and she got even chunkier.  She even disguised her natural wit and eloquence, favoring a speech-slurring, superficial, dim-witted television persona.  Her ploy worked, and an intrigued American public kept her on the air for the better part of two seasons.

After her show’s respectable run, Anna decided to use her body once again for economic gain, signing on with TrimSpa as a spokesperson for their weight loss products.  Soon losing a reported 69 pounds, Anna Nicole made diet pills even sexier than they had been, with her famous tagline, “It’s TrimSpa, baby!”  She lost an additional 30 pounds with the birth of her daughter Dannielynn on September 7, 2006.

Economic success could not protect her from personal tragedy, however, when Smith’s son Daniel died three days later of an adverse drug interaction while visiting her in the hospital.

While she attempted to escape her pain with a commitment ceremony to long-time lawyer and companion Howard K. Stern and an extended trip to the Bahamas, Anna ultimately turned to other outlets for her suffering.  On February 8, 2007, the star was found unconscious in her Florida hotel room, and she was pronounced dead at a local hospital soon after.  Her official cause of death remains unknown… but heroin is a pretty safe guess.

Following this tragedy, President Shapiro and the Barnard community mourned the death of this fine example of a strong, successful woman.  She managed to achieve what all Barnard women strive to do: marry rich and pop out a few babies.  With her honorary degree, Anna Nicole Smith now joins the ranks of Martha Stewart, Joan Rivers, and Jamie Gleicher as a strong, sexy Barnard graduate (or attendee, in Gleicher’s case).  The school hopes that her story will serve as an inspiration for many to come—besides the early, tragic death part.