How Will She Know?

A lot will be written and said about Whitney Houston in the coming days and weeks, and nearly everyone will agree - fan or not - that she was blessed with one of the most amazing voices of all time, and how tragic it is that beauty, talent, success, and more money than many small countries possess just weren't enough. And I agree with that, so far. I was never a fan. Though I could certainly appreciate her vocal skill, there was always something cold and calculating about her music, with the exception of "Saving All My Love" which is by far my favorite of her songs. My ambivalence toward Ms. Houston was shattered when The Bodyguard and that song were, suddenly and without warning, everywhere. I started to actively dislike her. That dislike made it easy for me to be amused when her seemingly charmed life began to fray around the edges. The "opposites attract" marriage to bad boy Bobby Brown, the rumors of drug use (remember when we could convince ourselves they were only rumors?) which began to seem more and more plausible. Whitney's descent was slow, but it was steady. Then the photos of a bathroom in her zillion dollar house cluttered with drug paraphernalia, the gaunt meth-addict look she began to display in public, the erratic behavior and the cancelled shows made it impossible to deny that something terrible was going on here. Now, I'm a big proponent of personal responsibility even if I struggle with the concept in my own life. Whitney may have had a truckload of bad influences pushing her down the wrong road, but ultimately she's the one who got herself addicted to who knows what. But I can't believe that a world famous celebrity with a monstrous fortune and influential friends, I can't believe nobody was able to step in and help her. Maybe her friends and family and agents tried and we just don't know about it, but come on, the world saw her spiral down into the depths of hell and nobody seemed to lift a finger to stop it.