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By Anthony L. Hall

I’m embarrassed to say that when I heard the news that Whitney Houston had died, I was almost as shocked that she was still alive as I was that she had just died.

Anthony L. Hall is a descendant of the Turks & Caicos Islands, international lawyer and political consultant - headquartered in Washington DC - who publishes his own weblog, The iPINIONS Journal, at http://ipjn.com offering commentaries on current events from a Caribbean perspective

Mind you, nobody was a bigger fan than I. It’s just that I’ve been commenting on her demise for so many years that I had long since forgotten that she had a voice so good it sent chills up and down my spine when she sang something as mundane as the US National Anthem:

Who would have thought when Whitney married Bobby 13 years ago that she would rival him in bringing public disgrace and humiliation upon their family?

Yet, it is undeniable that -- despite Bobby’s record of bad behavior -- Whitney’s diva tantrums, public displays of dementia, and drug-induced anorexia have been the prevailing features of their doomed marriage. Now she seems determined to match Bobby’s frequent arrests by being repeatedly committed to drug rehab.

Can anyone even remember that heavenly voice and beautiful face that descended among us like an angel in the 1980s? Now juxtapose that with her drugged-out renditions of gospel spirituals during her wacky ‘retreat’ to her ‘homeland’ (Israel) last year. And, just look at how she’s deformed God’s brilliant construction of her face, making her look like a cross between a woman wacked out on crack and an anorexic?

Still, as a firm believer in redemption and the power of prayer, I pray Whitney recovers from her drug addiction and recaptures just a little of that magic she had before things went so horribly wrong.

Good luck Whitney!

(“Whitney Houston: crack is wack … and back!” The iPINIONS Journal, March 25, 2005)

Alas, it was not to be -- as all of the people who were forced to walk out of her dazed, confused, and cringe-worthy concerts in recent years will attest.

Indeed, virtually every one of her “comeback” performances only exposed the fact that drugs had so damaged her voice that her last album, I Look To You (2009), had to have been nothing more than a triumph of technology over talent. Not to mention all of the canceled performances and interviews, as well as the public displays of intoxication, that made her fall from grace such a sad, pathetic public spectacle.

This is why, unlike those who are showering her with praise today, I have only lamentations. But I see no point in belaboring them. Especially since the road she travelled to perdition has been traveled by so many other superstars: Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse being only the most recent casualties.

Of course, listening to the eulogies you can be forgiven the impression that it was just last year when she performed her iconic rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner and made her star-is-born movie, The Bodyguard (featuring her incomparable version of I Will Always Love You); whereas that was 1991 and 1992, respectively.

Meanwhile, who can deny that singers like Mariah Carey and Jennifer Hudson had more than filled the void Whitney left all those years ago? But I appreciate that not too many people want to hear this … with her funeral still pending for tomorrow.

All the same, I am constrained to note that it’s entirely in keeping with her despairing, diva personality to upstage last Sunday’s Grammys by killing herself the day before.

After all, instead of her having to watch wistfully as the music industry heralds the rise of the likes of Adele and honors the longevity of the likes of Bruce Springsteen, this show was obliged to feature the industry’s biggest stars falling all over themselves to sing not just her praises but her songs too (and far better than she ever managed to do over the past decade or so). Which is why I vowed that I would not be watching the Grammy or writing my annual post-show commentary.

Then again, if the fact that her voice could no longer keep her living in the style to which she’d become accustomed were compounded by reports that she was facing imminent bankruptcy, it might be that this was just Whitney’s way of saying, “Calgon take me away”....

I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone’s shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can’t take away my dignity

(Lyrics from the Greatest Love of All)

You were so right Whitney; they couldn’t take away your dignity. But you gave it away.
My heart goes out to her parent who fought so heroically to get her back on the right path, complete with an intervention that required police support.

Whitney was found dead from a suspected drug overdose in the bathtub of her hotel room in Beverly Hills last Saturday.

Curiously enough, she may have telegraphed this fateful end a mere 48 hours before she died by binge-drinking herself into a boisterous and self-destructive mess at a nightclub, where she made herself the center of attention for all the wrong reasons for the last time. She was 48.

Farewell, Whitney.

NOTE: I pray potheads like Rihanna take heed. For, as Whitney herself confessed, marijuana is just the gateway drug....

Related commentaries:
Wack on crack...
The Grammys: a postmortem

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