There are good reasons why "Questions couples should ask (or wish they had) before marrying", a two-month old New York Times article, is still hanging in near the top of the Most Emailed table. It's an intelligent15-point checklist that appeals to the married and the undecided alike. Valentine's Day is next week. And it's no coincidence, either, that the most searched-for term today on NYT.com is "anna nicole smith". ("Global warming" is number two.) Taken together, they tell you a lot about who Americans are and who they aspire to be.

Getting rich is, unashamedly, a part of the American dream. Getting rich quick, however, is a different matter, and you can't get rich much quicker than marrying a multi-millionaire 89-year-old when you're 26. Many Americans take marriage very seriously - the groom interviewed for this week's Vows column tracked his dates on a spreadsheet - and quietly long for their patient efforts to find the right mate to be overcome by blind infatuation. Smith went the other way.

It's fair to say that Smith and J Howard Marshall II didn't ask themselves many of the questions on the New York Times' list, most particularly the one about having "a clear idea of each other's financial obligations and goals". Smith said he promised her half his estate. Marshall's son, who died last June, thought differently. Her efforts to obtain the money to which she believed she was entitled have engrossed millions of Americans ever since, not least because she did such a poor job of disguising the fact that she had leased her young body to an old man in return for future financial security. This was the grotesque, awful opposite of a Faustian pact. Smith was prepared to give up her youth and freedom now and reap the benefits later.

Her fame, for all her efforts to increase them, was never really about her own assets. It was about what she aspired to become. Smith's existence, and her fame, made Americans wonder whether it was possible to become famous simply by virtue of wanting to be. Britain discovered that it was some time after the first series of Big Brother. But America got there first.

So comparisons with Marilyn Monroe, though tempting for lusty picture editors, are way off the mark. Monroe was at the height of her beauty and charisma when she died. Smith never really got there, and now she never will.