Whtney Houston drowned in her bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 11, 2012.
The cause of death: Coronary artery disease—and cocaine use. She was 48.
Ever since, reporters and commentators have repeatedly used the word “tragedy” to describe her fate.
But there are tragedies that are brought on by events beyond human control—and tragedies that are self-inflicted.
Consider:
Julie Andrews: Whose four-octave soprano voice has delighted audiences for decades on Broadway (Camelot, My Fair Lady) and movies (Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music).
In 1964, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress (for Mary Poppins).
Her performance in The Sound of Music made it the highest-grossing film of 1965—and won her a second Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.
Julie Andrews, in her best-loved role as “Mary Poppins”
In 1997, she underwent surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center to remove non-cancerous nodules in her throat. The nodules were removed—but so was her ability to sing.
Her husband, Blake Edwards, was widely quoted as saying that Andrews’ voice hds been all but ruined: ”If you heard it, you’d weep.”
Whitney Houston: Blessed with beauty, charm and a golden, intense singing voice that can turn even the almost-unsingable “Star Spangled Banner” into a rousing anthem.
As a beloved, internationally-recognized vocalist, she enjoyed even greater fame and wealth as a movie star (The Bodyguard, Waiting to Exhale).
Whitney Houston
Meanwhile, she took on increasingly deadly habits. She chain-smoked cigarettes. And marijuana—“a lot.” She dove into alcohol, pills, cocaine.
During a 2002 interview with Diane Sawyer, she denied using crack. Not because it’s lethal, or because it would destroy The Voice that she believed was God’s gift to her.
No, it was because “I make too much money to ever smoke crack. Let’s get that straight. OK? We don’t do crack. We don’t do that. Crack is whack.”
Crack cocaine
In 2006, the National Enquirer ran an interview with her sister-in-law, Tina, who charged that Houston spent her days locked in her bedroom “smoking crack, using sex toys to satisfy herself and ignoring personal hygiene.”
Then, in 2009, appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s season premiere, Houston finally admitted that she used drugs with her ex-husband, Bobby Brown, who “laced marijuana with rock cocaine.”
In other words, crack.
So, apparently, crack wasn’t whack.
Over time, the once-magnificent instrument that was your voice started to change noticeably. She could no longer hit high notes, or hold one the way she did in her immortal hit, “I Will Always Love You.”
Her voice now sounded hoarse, raspy.
In 2010, she embarked on a “Nothing But Love World Tour.” It was a disaster. In Brisbane, she paused during singing to take a drink of water.
A critic said her performance in London was marked by a strained voice filled with coughs and wheezes.
Fans felt cheated—especially after paying $165 for a ticket—and reacted with jeers and boos. Some walked out in mid-concert.
On the night before her death, Houston become belligerent and almost duked it out with singer Stacy Francis at the Tru Hollywood nightclub. Her boyfriend, Ray J, had to step in to prevent a fistfight.
Houston was seen leaving the club drunk, with scratches and blood-stains on her legs.
* * * * *
Whose tragedy was genuine—and which was self-inflicted?
The ugly truth is that Whitney Houston’s singing career ended long before her life did.
When people remember her monumental hits like “I Will Always Love You,” they’re recalling a time more than 20 years ago.
Another ugly truth is that each of us is responsible for our own actions.
Attorney and talk-show host Nancy Grace blamed Houston’s doctors for her death. She argued that they had kept writing prescriptions for “America’s songbird” when they knew she was an addict.
But Houston was the one who requested that they write those prescriptions. And she was the one who administered them.
The same chain of events occurred in the Michael Jackson case.
Jackson wanted his drug-of-choice: propofol, a hypnotic sedative used for general anesthesia. And he got it.
He paid his private doctor, Conrad Murray, $150,000—a-month. For a salary that large, Jackson clearly expected to get more than the standard: “Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.”
So he got what he wanted—and it killed him.
Houston, for all her charm, was also used to getting her own way. Once. on an airplane, she tried to light up in the bathroom. When the pilot warned that she could be fined $2,000, she offered to write out a check that moment if she could have her smoke. The pilot refused.
No matter how famous, talented, beautiful and/or wealthy you might be, in the end, you remain a mere mortal. Even if you are allowed to flout the laws of man, you will be held accountable by your own body for bouts of deadly excess.
That, in the end, is the real legacy of Whitney Houston. And Michael Jackson. And Elvis Presley. And Marilyn Monroe. And a great many other now-dead celebrities.
Sadly, it is a truth that both celebrities and their worshipers must re-learn—over and over.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
ABC NEWS, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, ANNE FRANK, AP, AS I LAY DYING (BOOKK), BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BELOVED (BOOK), BEYONCE, BILL O'REILLY, BLACK LIKE ME (BOOK), BLOOMBERG, BLUESKY, BOOKS, BRAVE NEW WORLD (BOOK), BUZZFEED, CATCH-22 (BOOK), CBS NEWS, CENSORSHIP, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL (BOOK), DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (BOOK), DRACULA, ERICH FROMM, ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM (BOOK), FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FLORIDA, FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (BOOK), FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (BOOK), HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUFFINGTON POST, INVISIBLE MAN (BOOK), KILLING JESUS (BOOK), KILLING REAGAN (BOOK), LADY GAGA, LES MISERABLES (BOOK), LIBRARIES, LORD OF THE FLIES (BOOK), MEDIA MATTERS, MERRIMAN-WEBSTER’S ELEMENTARY DICTIONARY, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NATIVE SON (BOOK), NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OPRAH WINFREY, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT, RON DESANTIS, SALON, SCHINDLER’S LIST (BOOK), SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE (BOOK), TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (BOOK), THE ATLANTIC, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOM X, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE FOUNTAINHEAD (BOOK), THE GUARDIAN, THE GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS, THE HANDMAID’S TALE (BOOK), THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (BOOK), THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE WINDS OF WAR, THE WINDS OF WAR (BOOK), THINKPROGRESS, THURGOOD MARSHALL, TIME, TONI MORRISON, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, X
CENSORSHIP: IT’S THE REPUBLICAN WAY
In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 16, 2025 at 12:12 amRepublican Governor Ron DeSantis likes to refer to his state as “the free state of Florida.”
But for those who cherish the right to read whatever they want, Florida’s legislative agenda offers anything but freedom.
Among those books pulled from public libraries—temporarily or permanently—are John Green’s “Looking for Alaska,” Colleen Hoover’s “Hopeless,” Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Grace Lin’s picture story “Dim Sum for Everyone!”
Florida’s Martin County school district removed dozens of books from its middle schools and high schools. Among these: Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Beloved,” James Patterson’s “Maximum Ride” thrillers, and numerous novels by Jodi Picoult.
Ron DeSantis
Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox News host, staunchly supported Florida’s book ban laws enacted by DeSantis. Then two of his own books—Killing Jesus and Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency—were temporarily removed from the Escambia County School District.
Suddenly, O’Reilly changed his mind.
“It’s absurd. Preposterous,” O’Reilly told Newsweek. He threatened to “find out exactly who made the decisions … [and] put their pictures on television and on my website … and I’m going to ask them for a detailed explanation of why they did that.
“When DeSantis signed the book law, I supported the theme because there was abuse going on in Florida. There were far-left progressive people trying to impose an agenda on children, there’s no doubt about it.”
So O’Reilly believes it’s OK to censor books promoting a “far-left progressive” view. Censorship is wrong only when it condemns his books to oblivion.
Bill O’Reilly
Bill O’Reilly at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.jpg: World Affairs Council of Philadelphiaderivative work: Karppinen, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Under Florida’s HB 1069 bill, affected titles include dictionaries, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl.
A partial list of the 1,600 books banned in Escambia County, Florida, includes:
Nazi book burning
All of which means: If you want to read something forbidden by the State and can’t meet the high prices of bookstores, you’re not going to read it.
At least, not in Florida.
In 1969, the Young Rascals sang:
All the world over, so easy to see
People everywhere just wanna be free.
But this ignores a grim and fundamental truth: Many people don’t want to be free. And they don’t want you to be free, either.
Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm noted this in his 1941 bestseller, Escape From Freedom.
Its thesis: People who can’t accept the dangers and responsibilities that come with freedom will probably turn to authoritarianism.
Democracy has freed many people, but it also makes others feel alienated and dehumanized. Many Germans turned to Nazism for a sense of belonging and purpose.
Many people hold a twisted concept of what accounts for freedom. They accuse their enemies of being tyrants, while fiercely supporting a dictatorship of their own. A favorite marching song of Hitler’s SS went:
Clear the streets, the SS marches!
They will take the road from tyranny to freedom!
Such people fervently believe that they are being persecuted if they aren’t allowed to persecute those they hate.
Thus, during the Presidency of Barack Obama, millions of Republicans believed themselves victims because they weren’t allowed to
(1) discriminate on the basis of race or sex; and
(2) deny medical care to millions of poor and middle-class Americans.
The same holds true for the followers of Ron DeSantis.
Share this: