Redneck high culture

Stand aside, barber of Seville. The life of Anna-Nicole Smith is about to become an opera.

"It is not going to be a horrible, sleazy evening," Elaine Padmore, Covent Garden's director of opera told the Guardian. "It is not going to be tawdry; it is going to be witty, clever, thoughtful and sad.

In other words, everything she was in life, the opera won't be. Everything she wasn't, short of sad, the opera will be.

Next in line: Joseph Fritzl, the opera. Supposedly featuring an uplifting story, the opera is going to be performed out in the open, and people will be able to come and go as they like.

/JP