Anna Nicole's Toxic Motherhood

I'm about to violate my mother's edict about not saying anything if you can't say something nice. I bet your mother had the same edict, but somebody has to say this. And it's about mothers:

Little Dannielynn is better off without hers.

It's a horrible assessment, I know, and, offered so close to her mom's death, I'm sure it's in the worst of taste. But it's true.

We all know somebody not cut out to be a parent. Anna Nicole Smith was in that category, and despite the money she'll inherit, her daughter was just a member of the unlucky sperm club.

And who knows, maybe her future just changed for the better.

To put it bluntly, mom was a glamour-seeking druggie in a world of misfits and wannabes.

Disagree? I defy you to take a look at the cast of characters parading on "Entertainment Tonight" and show me someone close to her who looks normal.

Her son was already a victim of that world. Maybe the baby would have been next.

It was all so predictable. Smith's reality show showed her in a constant stupor, barely able to speak. The tabloids reported that Smith had been recently found floating face down in the swimming pool of a house where she was staying. People who saw her in the days leading up to her death said she was boozing hard.

She was a falling-down drunk with a five-month-old little girl.

How harsh, you may think. I can hear you saying that Smith was like others who get caught in a tragic state because of losing a loved one, in her case, her 20-year-old son, Daniel. "There but for the grace of God go I," right? But hold on.

A friend of Smith's, Laurie Payne, has been quoted as saying that Smith had taken methadone and other drugs while pregnant. But Daniel died three days after the baby was born - meaning that any drug use during the pregnancy was not the result of grieving for the loss of her son.

And it also means Anna was not suited for motherhood.

Here's hoping the child comes out of the money-grubbing paternity circus that's already started in the hands of a court-appointed guardian who can remove her from an environment where old geezers marry porn stars with inflated breasts, where methadone and Slim-Fast are more plentiful in the fridge than orange juice, and where the question of "Who's your daddy?" requires more work than the 9/11 Commission.

And speaking of daddies, they look like slim pickings. First there is a Howard K. Stern (love that middle initial), who allegedly flushed down the toilet two pills that spilled from Daniel's jeans after he was found dead. Then there's Larry Birkhead, a freelance photographer, and Alex Denk, Smith's chef-turned-bodyguard who joined the paternity party on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, there's speculation that the sperm which created Dannielynn came from J. Howard Marshall II, the Texas billionaire, after his death. (He married her hooters, she married his wheelchair - and his bank account.) Finally, there's Prince Frederic von Anhalt, who's married to somebody who could have been from "Green Acres." I think maybe it's Arnold.

It's a world ill-suited for a five-month-old to be a part of, and a young woman to grow up in.

But such is the world that "celebrities" like Anna Nicole Smith wander in these days, where you're famous for being famous.

It doesn't matter that Britney can't sing or Paris can't act, because news is what happens when you stumble out of a nightclub at 4 a.m. It's the state of American celebrity, baby.

One that Dannielynn is better off staying away from.