America has placed a ban on burying dead celebrities.

James Brown grew up in a brothel in Augusta, Georgia.  Convicted of armed robbery at 16, he started a band with other prison inmates and earned the nickname, “Music Box.”  After a stint as a pro boxer and baseball player, he exploded onto the music scene in 1956.  Over the next 50 years, he became known as “the hardest working man in show business” and was probably the best live performer in modern music history.  He was a political and social force throughout his career and a lightning rod of controversy.  He was married three (or possibly four) times, the last time to Tomi Rae Hynie under suspicious circumstances.  He died on Christmas Day 2007.

Anna Nicole Smith leveraged her body to become the icon of overblown America.  Born Vickie Lynn Hogan in Houston, she was an eighth-grade dropout who worked a string of jobs at Jim’s Krispy Fried Chicken, Wal-mart and Red Lobster.  She married a cook and had a son at the age of 18.  Her transformation began with breast implants and a job at a strip club in Houston.  From there, her career took off as she became Playmate of the Year, Guess Jeans spokes-model, and bride (and soon after, widow) of billionaire J. Howard Marshall, in the space of four years.  She moved on to drug and alcohol addiction, legal battles (which went as far as the US Supreme Court), weight gain, celebrity infamy and a mysterious death on February 6, 2007.

James Brown’s body was taken to the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and then to Augusta for an all-star celebrity extravaganza.  Since that time, Brown’s heirs and Ms. Hynie have been squabbling over where the great man should be buried.  So his body is being kept in an undisclosed (presumably cold) location.  No one knows how long the legal battle will continue.  Smith’s remains, meanwhile, have become the center of a full-blown media circus with three (or possibly four) men filing paternity suits to prove they are the father of her child (and therefore in line to get some of Mr. Marshall’s cash).  No one knows how long these legal battles will continue.  Today, the bizarre lead item on most of the news channels will be the surreal legal decision on whether Miss March 1992 should be embalmed or not.

Here in America, we love our celebrities to death.