Today, the reporter responsible for the Monday evening website dispatch, Mark Z. Barabak, teams with Robin Abcarian for a follow-up feature look at what might have gone wrong. Underscoring the Rolodex power of Schwarzenegger and Shriver, neither one of the sources tapped by these reporters for the “two distinctly different narratives emerging” about the 25-year marriage was willing to be named:

“Everyone who’s shocked by this is reacting to the fairy-tale picture that was promoted,” said a friend who has been a frequent visitor to the couple’s Brentwood mansion and did not want to be identified as breaching the couple’s confidence. The death in August 2009 of Shriver’s mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, said this friend, marked a turning point. Her father, Sargent Shriver, the Peace Corps founder, died in January.

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It’s not so much the content of the cable, though whether Anna Nicole Smith really can be credited with such an impressive amount of shifting of Bahamian voter perception is up for debate. Rather, it’s the breathless style in which the cable was written by Deputy Chief of Mission D. Brend Hardt (now posted to the Barbados).

Not since Category 4 Hurricane Betsy made landfall in 1965 has one woman done as much damage in Nassau. Lying in disarray in her wake are Doctor’s Hospital, the Coroner’s Court, the Department of Immigration, local mega-lawyers Callenders and Co., formerly popular Minister of Immigration Shane Gibson and possibly Prime Minister Christie’s PLP government.

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Anyway, we came up with a poll of other feeding frenzies. There were many: The OJ Trial, Monica Lewinsky, Jonbenet Ramsey, Lacy Peterson, Chandra Levy, Natalie Holloway, Martha Stewart going to jail and Elian Gonzalez.

Then some of our readers suggested more. Princess Diana’s Death and Anna Nicole Smith.

And then we thought of more: Terri Schiavo and Janet Jackson‘s nipple.

Did we miss one? Leave your answer in the comments…or tip box.

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According to the AP, Smith was not alone (she rarely ever was):

State department officials told AP the review involved several hundred US citizens whose passport files are flagged for extra protection because of their prominence. These people include politicians, entertainers and athletes. Accessing their files triggers an automatic record that it has been viewed.

Celebrities getting their privacy violated? Get out of town! (And don’t forget your passport!)

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Maria Shriver says she’s not going back to TV news, even after Arnold’s out of the governor’s office. The reason: the media carnival surrounding the death of Anna Nicole Smith. Shriver said:

“It was then that I knew that the TV news business had changed and so had I. I called NBC News, and told them I’m not coming back.”

FishbowlLA wonders if the media circus surrounding Katie Couric’s anchor seat also influenced Shriver’s choice.

But how about a talk show? Ted Harbert at E! has been trying to get Shriver to join the entertainment channel ever since he took over. They are neighbors, after all.

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In other ANS news:

Anna had a “childish” mind.

Anna’s doctor has a lot of explaining to do.

Her bodyguards took notes.

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Jeff Jarvis is just as pleased as punch that he was able to snag Amanda “Rocketbazooms” Congdon for those DuPont infotainmericals.(And why not? She practically gave him a lapdance in the Frontline doc.)

Since Anna Nicole Smith wasn’t available, being dead and all, Congdon must have been the next best thing. Does she have an personal experience with DuPont products? Melissa Lafsky at Eat the Press thinks there might be some ethics hanky-panky going on, but that’s silly. Congdon isn’t a journalist, and thus, has no ethics. She even said so. And besides, her HBO sugar daddies said it was okay with them.

ABC News.com, where Congdon had been playing news-ette, doesn’t seem flustered by her outside deals, according to Radar. Her producer, Jason Samuels, might think about looking for a new assignment–after 11 years at Dateline, couldn’t he do better?

Remember when she got taser’ed? That was fun, wasn’t it?

Sandra Tsing Loh has a little radio show about science. She went to CalTech. See the difference?

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Maybe it’s all that exposure from BrooWaha, but we’ve been hit with an inordinant number of MySpace friend requests. While we slog through those this weekend, the rest of you can enjoy a few tasty news nuggets from our friends around the ‘net:

LA Observed notes a new LAT hire.

Big Action! decides the entire Viacom/Google fiasco comes down to one thing: Squirrel Melts.

TMZ breaks the “story” that a judge in the Anna Nicole Smith case has ordered a DNA test of Howard K. Stern. Sure TMZ had the exclusive, but we hear Usmagazine.com has a reporter hiding out in Stern’s cheek, awaiting the actual swab.

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The Phoenix New Times has another chapter in the Anna Nicole Smith saga: her Native American son, Marshall Soto. Charles Tatum reports on Johnny Soto, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation, who claims he had a passionate affair with Smith in 2001 and she bore a son (after hiding the pregnancy). Soto has the birth certificate and other documents to prove it. But the romance had a sordid side:

“Sometimes I felt like I was being used, and it left a bad taste in my mouth,” says Soto. “But I was just as guilty as she was. The only whites I’d ever had sex with were prostitutes, and I couldn’t get enough of Anna Nicole. I fell under her spell. I did whatever she asked.”

But later, Smith’s use of drugs and careless disrespect cooled Soto’s ardor:

She kept saying she wanted me to use my ‘bow and arrow’ on her ‘ax wound.’ I told her that was no ax wound, it was the Grand Canyon!

If Soto prevails in court, he’s promised half to the Tohono O’odham Nation which would become the richest Indian nation in the southwestern United States.

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Virtually Ridiculous: Angry at the way things are going in Second Life, some “residents” have formed an army. We would’ve just turned off our computers and gone outside. But that’s just us.

And This Man Wants To Run The LAT? David Geffen gets ugly. OK. Uglier.

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While Entertainment Tonight pays Howard K. Stern a reported $1 million for his “story,” E! Online and others have their head in the sands of the Bahamas, following Stern’s battle over 5-month-old ATM, er, girl Dannielynn.

Thank goodness for the steady, staid voice of establishment print media, which would never stoop to put this scoop on A1.

Oops.

Caryn James in the NYT takes the media to task for gawking at Anna Nicole Smith — both in life and in death. Then she goes on to basically blame Anna Nicole for being too tantalizing not to watch: “Her sense of how to court attention was simply to show up, pose and practically say, ‘Come get me, use me.’”

Tim Rutten’s mea culpa in the LAT is a little better. In it, he explains how newspaper editors use the number of “hits” a story gets on their Web sites when determining story placement for the next day’s paper.

But he loses us at the end when he suggests journalists should use this case to reconsider this popularity contest approach, saying, “It’s a good moment for American newspapers to take a reflective breath to consider just how they want to play this numbers game — or, more important, whether they want to play it at all. If that were to occur, then Anna Nicole Smith would not have died in vain.”

Good point, Rutten. We’re sure Anna Nicole would have gone whistling to her grave, had she known her demise would restore journalistic integrity.

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Nope.

A tattle-tailing Access Hollywood producer alerted the bailiff to the boob-tube interloper and got his butt bounced. Our spies tell us she then called her editor and boasted, “I totally outed him to the bailiff.”

And they said journalistic competition in this town was dead.

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Timing Is Everything: Tribune Co. should have tried to auction itself into oblivion a few years ago, when the TV-buying market was hot. Now, it’s like a house in one of those “up-and-coming” neighborhoods in L.A. that never up and went anywhere.

Norman Lear For President: Seriously. We love him.

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