Crocodile Tears and Whitney Houston

Boo hoo hoo! Boo hoo hoo!  Please spare me the drama.  

I didn't expect that Whitney would die so young!  Why didn't you?  

This is not to rip Whitney apart since she got enough of that in the past, when it was said too many of a certain group took her away from us. This is not patting myself on the back, but I did remain a loyal fan while she still had a real singing career left. Others had started turning their backs on her before that time.  

When I learned Whitney Houston had died on Saturday at an age that is a year younger than I am, the lyrics from one of her later songs popped into my head, "It's not right, but it's okay..."  

It's really sad what we humans put ourselves through and what others will put us through. I felt so sorry for Whitney, and I wasn't surprised that she would end up dead at a young age.  After all, she was in a helluva business, facing a helluva media and helluva fickle fans.  It's just so tragic and terrible.

What I want to get to is not Whitney who made some bad choices, but I want to get to the so-called devoted fans.  There sure was a lot of noise on Twitter and Facebook Saturday night.  Was the noise genuine? I surely hope so, but I doubt some of it was.  Or was this some people's way of trying to cover their tracks after tearing another celebrity down that they had lauded, got tired of, and then cast aside?  I'm just asking these questions because I remember some ugly things that were being said some time back about WH.

Whitney had one thing in common with Michael Jackson that I noted immediately on the day of her death. Black people came out in droves crying over her demise just like they did with Michael, but where were we when these two were suffering?  I remember when Whitney became very popular with whites back in the years of her movie The Bodyguard and black folks said, "We don't like Whitney no more. She's singing for the white folks." Or "Too many white people like her, so I don't listen to her anymore." Oh yeah! One of our many little dirty secrets in this society, and especially with my generation, is that we segregate ourselves according to music too.  There is white people and black people music, and never the two shall meet, especially with some of us middle aged and older folks.

Before Whitney's marriage to Bobby Brown, some people had started questioning her sexuality.  Whitney was in her twenties, but there was never any news of her being seen with any guy.  Some folks started making the assumption she was gay because of this.  There were no suggestions that she might have just been picky or being in the business she was in where there were more whites than blacks, that maybe she didn't want to date someone white and was waiting for a black guy. The ugly assumption just popped up.  No critical thinking, just getting on the road to start tearing a star who had a innocent image down.  

Now Whitney seemed to rush to marry Bobby Brown, who's career was almost non-existent after the gossip started about her sexuality.  I did feel she had made a seriously bad move marrying him, but some whites who had  supported her started saying that Whitney had turned "ghetto" for marrying crude and rude Bobby.  


I'm not going to go much further than this, but I do want to say one word, "hypocrisy."  I was still a fan of Whitney even after her heyday.  I had no problem with her and Kevin Costner loving each other in The Bodyguard. I wish they had allowed the two characters to get married.  So there! It was almost as if Hollywood was afraid to allow it to go beyond what was a very powerful crush.  I was there when Whitney was Waiting to Exhale, so I can talk.  

We pretend so much with ourselves and others.  I see no one expressing their concern for Whitney's teenage daughter who was already experiencing problems.  I feel for this young girl because growing up a teen in America is very treacherous, and for black teens it's often painfully hard and tragic.  

Whitney is gone. She died alone too.  I believe she was the good girl that went bad.  I believe she allowed herself to be swayed by ruthless people she knew and a ruthless public, and that she dropped the best things in order to fit into a system and a way of living that leads to pain, a living death, and finally the ultimate death.  

There are lessons to be learned from the death of the beauty, Whitney Houston, but will we learn them?  I doubt it.