At this time last week, what were your thoughts of Whitney Houston?
Assuming you were in the camp that didn't ignore her problems and thought she wasted away her early successes as a singer on drug use...flash forward a day later - are you still thinking those same thoughts?
Maybe I'm just not connected to people's conversations about musicians and pop culture all that much or I'm watching/reading the wrong coverage, but everything I've heard about Whitney Houston before she died was nothing at all like the thoughts that are coming out now.
When someone with her recent problems passes on, the conversation changes from her being a talent that withered away amid substance abuse issues to forgetting about the problems altogether and just focusing on her career and positive things in life.
With my dad off of work and his habit of watching those Hollywood-heavy shows like Extra and Inside Edition on the boob tube, I could not count how many times I heard a news segment begin with "Annnnd IIIIIIIIIIeeeeeeeIIIIIIIII willllll always love youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, ohhhhh" in the past week while working downstairs. Every major network was covering this story as she had never done anything wrong.
A similar situation occurred with the death of Michael Jackson, where the simple mention of his past allegations of child molestation would give you nasty glares from many people in the room, arguably some of his fans.
I never understood why the complete story of people isn't presented when someone dies. Well, I do understand - we want to preserve a positive memory of someone as our first thought when that person's name is mentioned.
But isn't telling the complete narrative (the good and the bad) important to tell? Shouldn't it be mentioned more that the last decade of her life that saw her devolve from one of the world's greatest singers to a person with a substance abuse problem?
I'm not trying to take anything away from what she did as an artist in the 1990s, but for hardly a peep to be mentioned about the whole story of her life puzzles me. It's like the 2000s never happened.
If you were to ask someone who knew little of Whitney Houston to base their opinion of her off the coverage the past week, you'd think she was a saint her whole life.
side note: If Michael Jordan is to pass away in about 10 years and he continues to suck as an NBA owner, I believe it should be noted in the stories about him that he was bad as a basketball executive. But we all know that the Powers-That-Be would write the fluff pieces like they have always wrote about him. The only thing that media people have felt comfortable critiquing him on was his baseball experiment. You hardly ever heard anything about his womanizing or gambling for fear that a media member might lose access to the guy.
I digress.
When it comes for my time to pass on from this Earth, I'd expect people to remember me for the good AND bad of my life. Granted, the bad in my life might be limited to a few moments/time spans in my life. I'd prefer the entire narrative of my life be told, not just the good parts.
In my case, the bad moments in life were the prequel for better moments that were on the near horizon that had a "redemption/comeback story-feel" to them. Some people aren't as fortunate to bounce back from their bad moments to live and tell about it.
That doesn't mean we should ignore that it ever happened. Instead of making all of these pop stars out to be Statue-esque Idols who are above all humans and could do no wrong, let's present them as the humans that they are - a complicated blob of success and failure, littered with good and bad decisions, events and moments along the way that made them the person they turned out to be.
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