If you watched television yesterday, more than likely you were bombarded with the funeral coverage of R&B and pop singer Whitney Houston. You heard glowing interviews about how wonderful a person she was, and how she touched people in her life. Quite frankly.....It was a load of crap and it disgusted me on every level.
What I saw on television, was the celebration of a very shitty person's life, who managed to do some good things during her moments of lucidity. People who grew up in Newark NJ during the late 70s - 80s[like myself], know the real Whitney Houston. She was born in East Orange NJ to a family that was fairly well off. She was related to Dionne Warwick who was plugged into the black R&B scene at the time. Her life was not a hard one at all. People want to blame Bobby Brown for getting her addicted to drugs, but she was into drugs well before she met Bobby Brown. Whitney and her group of suburbanite friends, would go down to the ghettos of Newark NJ to score drugs. She was a wild child from the suburbs looking to live dangerously in the ghetto. This goes back to her teenaged years. I PERSONALLY know drug dealers who sold to Whitney before she got famous. I've heard stories of things she use to do to cop drugs when she didn't have any money. I've heard the stories of her mom having to come drag a coked up and cracked out Whitney out of trap houses in the middle of the night. Her mother was well aware of her drug problems, but she was too busy being the relative of a famous person, and hanging out with Dionne Warwick's famous music industry friends to care.
Fact of the matter is, Whitney Houston would have never gotten a deal if she was not related to Dionne Warwick. No record label exec in their right minds would have taken a chance on her given her very well known drug issues. Sure, she recorded some great songs, but so did Rick James who was also known for his legendary drug use. In some ways, Whitney Houston is the female equivalent of Rick James. When she met and married Bobby Brown, she was already a full blown cocaine and crack addict. She was the one who introduced him to the hard drugs like heroine, crack, and cocaine. When she got involved with Bobby, it seems like her drug related antics just intensified because now she had a willing partner to go on drug fueled binges with. By now, her drug related issues were well known to the public at large. It got so bad, that she was openly mocked in the media, reflected upon in podcasts and on the radio about her drug usage, and relentlessly parodied in cartoons, tv shows, and movies.
Parody of Whitney Houston & Bobby Brown in The Boondocks
Comedian Joey Diaz reflects on selling Whitney Houston & Bobby Brown coke
And what's even more funny, or pathetic depending on how you look at it, is that Whitney and Bobby Brown saw other people making money off them being high, so they figured "why can't we make money off us getting high?". And so the Whitney & Bobby reality TV show was born. The whole premise of the show was them being coked and cracked out of their heads while doing stupidness while high.
And what really really gets me, is that the same people who mocked, and joked, and laughed about her the day before she died. Saying how her life had become worthless and a joke, are the same ones who are like "Show some sympathy..." "Don't be like that towards Whitney..." "She was just the best person ever...". And to that I call BS on. She deserves no respect, no sympathy, nothing. She was handed EVERYTHING on a silver platter, and she pissed it all away. While I don't agree with Bill O'Reiley's comment that she was trying to kill herself, she wasn't doing a whole hell of a lot to ensure that she would stay alive either through her actions. Her life, ultimately had become meaningless to her aswell.
So to that end, I leave with this....
So long Whitney Houston, you will not be missed. It's hard to miss a person when they were gone a long time ago. It's also hard to care about a person when they never cared about themselves.