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(Insert Celeb Here) is Dead


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QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Feb 12, 2012 -> 09:40 AM)
Entirely her own fault for being with him and doing f***tons of crack. One less crackhead out there.

 

 

Her sobriety had been a matter of public concern since the late '90s. A common public misassumption had been that if she ever got out from under the sway of husband Bobby Brown, she would be all right. "He was my drug," she told Oprah in 2009, two years after their divorce, after apparently cleaning up. "I didn't do anything without him. I wasn't getting high by myself."

 

Whitney Houston remembered at Clive Davis's pre-Grammy gala

 

But more recently, it'd started to look like her ex-husband was no longer the sole driving force of her substance abuse, if ever he had been. Last May, a Houston rep acknowledged that the singer was involve in outpatient rehab for ongoing drug and alcohol problems.

 

That was right around the time Houston and her daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, made the news for getting a little too boisterous in the front row at a series of Prince concerts in L.A. Although Prince's reps later denied there was any dispute, it was reported at the time that Prince was so fed up with Houston's behavior and requests to get up on stage that he supposedly banned her from coming to the rest of his run.

 

All that was just a couple of months after the March 2011 edition of the National Enquirer that featured a double-page photo spread of Bobbi Kristina allegedly snorting lines of cocaine at a party (albeit with her mom nowhere in sight).

 

The tabloids also reported last year that Houston's fortune had run out. With no new albums on the horizon, her best hope for career renewal was the movie Sparkle, in which she played a supporting role as Jordin Sparks' mom. The film — her first since The Preacher's Wife in 1996 — was shot late last year and will come out in August, accompanied by a soundtrack that includes two new Houston tunes.

 

Otherwise, Houston didn't have much of a career going at the time of her death. Her should've-been comeback album, 2009's I Look to You, sold about a million copies in the U.S. — far from a shameful number, but also far from the 13 million copies for which her 1985 debut had been certified. The most embarrassing factor was that none of the singles from the album rose above No. 70 on the Hot 100. (Houston's only top 10 single of the 2000s was a re-release of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in the patriotic days following 9/11.)

 

Whitney's life in photos

 

Houston's only major tours in the last decade were overseas, far away from the critical eyes of the American media. In September 2009, she did a short comeback concert for "Good Morning America" in Central Park. The blurring of the line between entertainment and news on morning shows became apparent as hosts Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts lauded Houston's performance on their show, even as every other media outlet was reporting on how the voice of a generation could no longer handle the demands of even an abridged show, clean or not.

 

The reports of ongoing trouble for Houston never served her image the way they might have, say, Amy Winehouse's. America never wanted to think of her as a bad girl, just a perhaps more grown-up version of the Girl Next Door who'd seemed so wholesome wanting to dance with somebody who loved her. But with the chops as well as the image failing her, there wasn't much left to make a thriving recording or certainly touring career out of.

 

In recent days, one solution for returning Houston to the limelight without subjecting her singing voice to harsh scrutiny had seemingly been arrived at. Rumors had been floated — and published by the Hollywood Reporter — that she was up for contention as a judge on "The X Factor." Simon Cowell told Piers Morgan that Houston had not actually been approached, but that in response to the news reports (which he implied might have been instigated by Houston's camp), his team had planned to have a meeting about considering her on Monday.

 

Bobby Brown breaks down

 

But getting in that public scuffle Thursday night with Stacy Francis, an admirer who was one of the Season 1 "X Factor" finalists, might not have done Houston any favors, had she lived to come up for contention with Cowell and his producers this week.

 

Even in as high-profile a period as Grammy week, Houston couldn't seem to shy away from small acts of self-sabotage. Her fans can only hope it's the years when pride predominated that ultimately define her legacy.

 

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QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Feb 12, 2012 -> 08:14 PM)
Her sobriety had been a matter of public concern since the late '90s. A common public misassumption had been that if she ever got out from under the sway of husband Bobby Brown, she would be all right. "He was my drug," she told Oprah in 2009, two years after their divorce, after apparently cleaning up. "I didn't do anything without him. I wasn't getting high by myself."

 

Later on in the same interview, she attempted to sell her some prime beachfront property in Iowa.

Edited by Swingandalongonetoleft
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QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Feb 12, 2012 -> 10:52 PM)
Later on in the same interview, she attempted to sell her some prime beachfront property in Iowa.

 

 

Hey, Sioux City, the Quad Cities and Des Moines have some beautiful lakefront and riverfront properties.

 

You have to interpret the term "beachfront" very loosely, though. Certainly not pristine white sand beaches like the Maldives, Philippines, Thailand or Malaysia.

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QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Feb 12, 2012 -> 03:02 AM)
Thanks for posting that. I have read that players in that game call it the best National Anthem they have ever heard. That's pretty intense, RIP Whitney.

You almost got the sense from that rendition that the song wasn't grandiose enough for her...that she could sing that without much effort at all...

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