Larger Editorial: Why Whitney Houston’s Death Isn’t a Story I Can “Get Into”

As perhaps even polar bears in Alaska know, one of the most emulated singers in contemporary pop music, Whitney Houston died this past week. Ever since has been a formidable flash flood of press coverage. Twitter has blown up, Facebook has exploded, CNN won’t shut up about it, and one day I checked Yahoo and no less than five of the top ten searches were for Houston-related topics.

Now I understand that Houston was a once-huge entertainer before a pop cultural landscape that offers a new mega-star every week and if there’s anything the 24-hour news cycle loves to cover, it’s a celebrity death story. After all it has all the essential elements of a mainstream news story: it requires NO actual effort to gather the news, no troublesome complexity because it’s sad and no one can say otherwise, and no time at all to explain “Famous. Singer. Dead.” But, to me, all of those things are what make it such a one-dimensional story, a sad one, sure, but not much else to it than that. [This is why there’s not much “commentary” on your typical obituary.]

I realize I might get some serious flak for saying this, but Whitney Houston dominating the press coverage this week shows exactly everything the media does wrong. They ignore someone for years who is obviously struggling with drugs (my great grandmother could watch five seconds of Houston’s reality show and tell that Houston had a problem) and then when they die and it’s too late to do anything for them, they act like they gave a shit in the first place. All so they can fill time and have something to talk about for a week instead of going out and doing stories on education, the rise of prescription drugs (whose makers buy ad time on the networks), and drug users to prevent the thousands of “Whitney Houstons” that die every year but no one cares about because they aren’t famous.

And I also have to say that some of the emotional outpour has a hint of phoniness to it. I mean, when is the last time someone really bought a Houston CD or truly thought about her as a talent with a lot left to give? Probably years ago if anyone is being remotely honest. Whatever huge reservoir of talent Houston started out with was slowly chipped at by time and quickly burned through by drugs (apparently she was living on advances from record companies having written NONE of her own songs, not collecting any residual checks, or having any money left over). But she dies and it dominates people’s attention like they didn’t stop caring about her a decade ago. Houston is an extremely gifted singer who died from drug related issues the same as almost all gifted musicians—-from Michael Jackson to Amy Winehouse to Kurt Cobain to Elvis—-seem to and most of them are much younger than 48 years old.

I think it’s just a fundamental difference in the way my brain is wired from that of most “reporters” (whether they’re on big television or small blogs). I don’t know that I feel as bad for the superstar that has everything and blows it as I do the person who never had a chance and goes nowhere because of drugs. In that way, my sympathies seemingly run counter to most people’s, as they would sooner spit on a “smelly bum” drug addict asking for a dollar but actually cry because a mega-star like Houston wastes every opportunity given to her and is “gone too soon” in very late middle-age.

Every time something like this happens (from Marilyn Monroe to Amy Winehouse), the stock line comes out “Fame killed them,” as if people don’t overdose on drugs and die of alcohol poisoning every single day in this country and a lot more poor than not poor. Followed by the next stock line of “It’s so hard being famous.” Well you know what’s really hard? Not being famous.

For all these reasons and more, I just can’t “get into” a celebrity tragedy story that is a tabloid’s dream. And even though I know the large majority of readers will really disagree with me here, I think they would probably expect me to react this way, and I don’t think they’d have it any other way.