Tough. My opinion. My blog. Deal with it.
Whitney Houston is dead. Another magical voice stilled way too early. I couldn't help but note that she lived about one year longer than Judy Garland and that led me to all the other similarities between those two. Most notably the uniqueness of their voices, their tortured lives, and the fact that both of them went buns up in the can. Note to any other 40-something female singers with great talent: you might want to stay out of the bathroom.
But I digress....
Houston's death became official on, gasp, my birthday when she did her best impression of Captain Nemo in a Beverly Hilton bathtub. One would argue that she died years ago, like one of those bugs whose head comes off but still walks around for a while. Photos of her last night out on the town showed someone careening down a winding road and, at least, we can be thankful that she didn't take any innocent folk out in her certain collision with a Smart Car driven by the Grim Reaper. Like Michael Jackson, folks were totally surprised by the news. Like Michael Jackson, I was shocked she lasted this long.
But, unlike Michael Jackson, Whitney's family chose not to turn their mourning and subsequent memorial services into extended editions of Don Kirshner's Midnight Special. The Houstons tried to do it with class, while the ultra lowlife Jacksons rented out the Staples Center and, oh, by the way, in between tributes, hot dogs are available for sale at nearby concession stands. Nope, Whitney's relatives did it with decorum...or as much dignity that one can muster up in downtown slummy Newark, New Jersey. Of course, Whitney's aunt, Dionne Warwick, knows something about professionalism. Another God-given voice as long as you ignore the fact that she stole millions and millions of dollars from innocent schlubs who joined her Psychic Friends Network.
But, I digress again...
The outpouring of grief for Ms. Houston has been intense. Okay, from everything I ever heard about her, she was an absolute scumbag of a person. But that should not take away one iota from the immense joy her singing gave many. There's tons of hand wringing about her demise. A great deal of it naturally coming from the Black community.
Hell, the wrong Reverend Al Sharpton called for a national day of prayer in Houston's honor. Of course, this is as fraudulent as it is laughable. But, then again, who ever listens to anything that fat felon has to say? Oh, wait, he's got his own nightly show on MSNBC and that should be enough evidence for the FCC to strip them of their broadcast license and end that nightmare of a cable network once and for all.
Oh, there I go digressing again...
It's the mea culpas from the Black community that has me giggling. Poor, poor Whitney, they lament. We will miss you so.
Yeah, right. There's some long term memory loss at play here.
Because I remember vividly when Whitney's career first skyrocketed. There was nobody hotter. There was nobody that could touch her talent. There was nobody...well, nobody else.
Except the buzzing from the Black community was a little less than welcoming. I remember it. Don't you?
Whitney was acting too White.
She was nothing but an Oreo cookie.
What's she doing in a movie with that White lunkhead Kevin Costner? By the way, "The Bodyguard" might be the only movie where Costner isn't the worst actor in the cast. Yet, beyond that, Whitney was very much ripped apart like a rag doll by her own folks. And why?
She wasn't acting Black enough.
We'll never know if this criticism is what started Houston on her slippery slope downward. But, it might have been what propelled her to start keeping company with Ultra-Black dude Bobby Brown. But, that match wasn't one approved by Gene Rayburn. Beyond long, Whitney became nothing but a punching bag for this complete fuck-up of a human being. And when she wasn't taken one across the kisser, she was snorting up anything she could find in his pant pockets.
If Whitney was embracing her heritage more, she certainly was doing it...no pun intended...in spades.
Career over. Life over.
In all the tributes the past week, nobody recalled this controversy. But I certainly did. And when I saw that gospel choir at the funeral service on television singing so soulfully about their sister, I couldn't help but recall that, not longer ago, the same idiots were trying to disown her.
Dinner last night: Italian sub from Jersey Mike's.
1 comment:
Whitney Houston's death/suicide means nothing to me. Why should it? I never met her, saw her, bought one of her lousy albums.
My friend Bill is a songwriter and we used to laugh whenever one of Whitney's overproduced, too-much-by-half hits jumped out of the radio. What schlock!
She would have never made it out of Newark without the molding of music's Dr. Frankenstein, Clive Davis. He invented her as much as Quincy Jones invented Michael Jackson as a solo. Look it up.
I've lost all sympathy for rich junkies like Houston and Jackson who could've cleaned up and lived. They were deluded, self-indulgent dopes. Perhaps victims of toxic fame, but nobody forced the drugs down their golden throats.
My favorite Whitney story took place at a Dolly Parton concert. After a moving version of "I Will Always Love You", a tune she wrote, she accepted our applause and added, "That's the way it's done, Whitney."
Right on.
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