f13.net

She is dead at age 48 (http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/11/showbiz/whitney-houston-dead/index.html?hpt=hp_t1).  The cause of death is, so far, unknown.  I suppose the only shocking thing about this is that Bobby didn't go first.   :oh_i_see:


That's a lot of albums. 

My guess is it will be heart failure due to crack usage.

My wife just told me this and I immediately asked her, "Drugs or Bobby?"

Then I felt bad.

Don't feel bad, the only other reasonable option would have been a vehicle collision. She had a nice voice, even recently. We saw her here at Blossom right before her meltdown with some tickets a friend gave us. She was obviusly fucked up on something and kept dragging her kid on stage.

Anyway, locking yourself in a bathroom with pounds of crack and a pile of dildos and refusing to come out even for food is a wake up call that you need to get rid of everyone in your life except your kids and start fresh. She kept them all around and went right back to being fucked up.

It's no suprise and no tragedy that she died. Fuck her, she made her choices and they were blatantly bad ones.

What's this about a pile of dildos?   :ye_gods:

Because you know who is really great at looking at their lives and making great decisions? Drug addicts!  :why_so_serious:

Jesus Bob. Does your douchebag routine have to extend outside Politics?

Here (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2099347/Whitney-Houston-emerges-nightclub-looking-worse-wear.html) are some of the last photos of Whitney.  I wonder what was getting ready to come out of her mouth in this one  :why_so_serious:

(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/02/10/article-2099347-11AB13F5000005DC-622_634x928.jpg)

All those dildos she had locked up with her in the bathroom?

Crack.  Its a hellva drug.

Apparently it does, since it's not a "routine". If saying that it's not sad or suprising that a crack addict died an early death after an over the top, decades long crack binge makes me a douchebag, then I'm a douchebag. Boohoo. If you want read about how it's a tragedy that the "queen of Pop" died like Micheal Jackson there's plenty of places to do it. Frankly no one's given a shit about her or her music for a decade.

Anyway, the dildos. Whitney would barricade herself in the bathroom for days while she would cook cocaine into crack, do the crack, and hammer herself with an huge collection of vibrators and dildos. Apparently it wasn't always sexual, it was also about trying to clear her clogged bowels. Pictures of her bathroom midway through a post binge cleanup are available on the internet.

The truly depressing part about rich unrepentant addicts dying is usually the endless parade of enablers who then get fat off their estates.

My pilot friend(s) used to fly her and Bobby around in the jet.  I'll just say all the rumors about them were/are true.   :oh_i_see:

While Bob can be a bit much in this case he is totally right. It's sad she wasted her life and her talent but her death shocks no one. I'll only be shocked if it turns out to be totally natural causes and not an OD or in someway related to her shitty lifestyle.

Not surprising? Sure, I think just about everyone saw this coming. Not sad? Strenuously disagree.

Classy as always Bob. 

RIP Whitney, you were one of the great voices of recording history.

This is the truth.  While I don't like the kind of music that she made, she was one of the best talents to ever grace the earth.  She had a wonderful career cut short due to drug addiction. 

*thinks*

Nah, I don't need to punish myself that badly.

Tragic waste of talent.  She was so amazing in her heyday.  I can't say I feel too terrible, though...she is probably at peace for the first time in a couple decades.

Who will ever forget the Star Spangled Banner singing she did right after the first Gulf War started?  There will never be a better rendition of that song.  If you've never heard it, it is worth a look.

This. 

There's a very fine line between (artistic) genius and insanity. 

There may be no line at all, TBH.

Saturday night I was at the Variety Playhouse to see TMBG.  Between the opener (turns out it was Jonathan Coulton) and TMBG, I found a restroom.  There was a guy standing there who claimed "next" when he saw that I had determined I was looking at a restroom.  We had the usual chat including "The line is longer at the other one".  He goes in, later comes out and on the way out he stops to say "Whitney Houston died!"  My immediate thought was "In this restroom?!"

I did the same thing Furiously did, and still don't feel bad. RIP because she was incredibly talented, but I don't respect people that make such shitty life choices


That sucks that you found some dbag that broke the men's room unspoken rules. My boss does that and I've lost count how many times I've explained to him that there's no talking and keep eyes forward at all times.

There but for the grace of God go I, no?

The more important question is how was TBMG? Would love to see them if/when they come to Seattle.

No.  Not in this instance.

Don't ask me to have sympathy here or with Winehouse or with Jackson.

If you want to piss away gifts, I'm not going to accept the 'Hard Luck' line.  There are tons of good people getting fucked over by real bad luck out there.

Yep, drug addiction because you can't cope with success isn't hard luck, nor do you get pity.

Because in the end, there were thousands of opportunities to walk away. From the drugs or the life.

I do have a little sympathy for her, because crack is a horrible drug and very tough to quit for some people.  I think it's tough to say "well, you're rich so fuck you" or "you made a stupid choice" so fuck you.  I've worked in enough drug clinics to feel bad for these people.  It's hard to imagine being an absolute slave to this sort of addiction. 

I didn't care much about her music while she was alive. In fact, it annoyed the piss out of me. I can acknowledge that she was talented even if her music wasn't to my tastes. But other than the death of another human, likely through really bad decisions, I can't get too broken up about it. I'm more upset that we'll get a week of the news media trying to squeeze every bit of air time out of the death while completely ignoring the glee with which they reported on her public fuckups.

There's a lot of misunderstanding of addiction going on here it seems to me. Yes, bad choices were made, mostly right at the beginning (and the wonderful Mr. Brown was probably involved in helping her along to those.) Once addiction kicks in, for a lot of people choice really doesn't have a role at all.

Not like she could not afford the help.

Anyway, sad she died, but most people expected it.

Thanks, Whitney. Thanks for a generation of over-singing tarts. Thanks for churning out shitty dance tracks with no lasting value. Thanks for making your name by over-singing a great Dolly tune.

At least Etta James got a nod at the Grammy's. Kids, use your spotify or whatnot to pull up Etta James' Rock the House. Get a lesson in where Janis got it from.

Not to mention the buckets of money the record companies have been waiting to make on her collection once she passed on.

And yes, Etta James' > Whitney . . . but most of Etta's generation is either dead or can't remember how to wipe themselves. Whitney is much fresher on the pyre.

Great, great show, small venue, yet again I was on the balcony but I'm OK with it.  It was the Lincoln tour and they played about five songs from that album. :oh_i_see:  The opener comes out and plays the theme song from Codemonkeys, but it wasn't until he started playing Still Alive that I figured out who he was.  He was pretty good, actually, and I thought that before I knew who it was but after the Codemonkeys song so it's probably a legit opinion.  Altogether probably one of the best shows I have seen.

I understand full well that addiction melts your brain so that rational choices are no longer possible without a journey to the darkest parts of your own psyche and sometimes not even then. From what I understand, her death may be a result of taking too many combinations of prescription pills that caused her to drown in the bathtub (and maybe mixing them with alcohol). See the thing is... if you spend a decade wrecked off your head and become a public laughing stock in the music industry (where idiotic behavior like hers is par for the course, she set a high bar), then manage to get yourself clean? You ought to be able to see that the people around you who ENABLED ALL THAT STUPIDITY WHILE THEY PROFITED aren't good people to have around in your new clean and sober living.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for rich people killing themselves with drugs. There are people on the streets with no fucking money and no home who manage to unfuck their lives. What's her excuse?

Those folks are a rarity.  If anything, maybe this can help kids see how shitty crack/addiction can turn your life and maybe get a few to not go that route. 

Going deep into "Ingmar's non-scientific guess territory" here:

People who manage to unfuck their lives from addiction probably have one (or both) of two things: a genetic/brain chemistry/whatever advantage of some kind, or a very, very good support structure from family or friends. Having money to afford the latter is no particular advantage if you're so fucked up you don't know who is helpful and who is a leech.

Environment plays heavily into addiction and breaking it. You can send an addict off the Ford or whatever-Name clinic for 3 months and they can be perfectly clean coming out. Problem is, they get out and go home... back to the place they were in before, same faces, same places. Unless all that changes or the person makes an effort to avoid the seedy parts of their old life... well chances of relapse increase dramatically. Granted, I haven't kept up with the addiction literature for about 5 years, but it was a primary interest of mine in grad school.

Of course, now-a-days - you have doctors pushing drugs harder than most street dealers. Yay! You got off crack, but now you have anxiety disorder and can't sleep, here are some depressants and tranquilizors for that. Giving drugs to an addict, even couched under "doctor care" is never a good thing and takes way too much medical supervision to keep from spinning into abuse. And since medicine is turning into an assembly line industry where people are now customers rather than patients, well good luck getting that sort of medical attention.

She went to rehab in 2004, 2005, and 2011. She tried to get help and couldn't overcome her addiction. Why? Because she refused to stop touring. She refused to stop singing and living the lifestyle. She refused to stop being the center of attention diva that she always wanted to be.

Anybody who goes to rehab will tell you that you CANNOT go back to your old life and expect the changes to hold. You can't have the same friends. You can't go to the same places. You can't claim that you're cured. You have to change everything that brought you into the X-factor of using that took over your life.

Right.  But to really go through rehab you have to want to do it, and she may not have ever really felt the desire to quit.  Is that because the drugs had such a tight hold on her?  Who knows.  If she didn't want to quit then she didn't really want to change her surroundings.  She really just needed someone to kick her ass into shape, which absolutely would have required a change in lifestyle. 

And not the BB sort of ass kicking.

My point is that I don't shead many tears for anyone who is truly unrepentant for their choices and doesn't want to change, ever.

Hell the very day before she died, she was at the Beverly Hilton bar, drunk off her ass, living it up with the Grammy celebs.

My point is wanting to change doesn't mean shit for some addicted people. Brains don't work the way we want them to.

Isn't that what interventions are for?

Yep.  The guy down on the corner holding the cardboard sign that's been shooting up heroin every day for a month probably wants change too, but his body wants the heroin more.  Addiction is a bitch.  Whitney just happened to be lucky enough to have a (once upon a time) great voice.

And a fuck-ton of money. Possibly, a private island.

Not any more though.  She was virtually bankrupt and had all sorts of leeches hanging off of her trying to take advantage. 

Which, by the way, is probably why she kept touring. Touring is by far the best way for musicians to make money (the promoter/venue gets a smaller cut than a record company takes out of an album), and since she wasn't also a composer I doubt one of the usual avenues for ongoing income (publishing royalties) was something she was seeing anything from.

Is the world full of assholes, or is the 'I don't respect people with issues' crap in this thread an American thing.

Can't it be both?

So they are hopeless? Exactly how far are you willing to take this? Should we just do them a favor and shoot them in the head after a certain amount of exposure because they simply no longer possess the capability to stop?

Personally, I think this is bullshit. We're human, but it's never to late. If you want to stop, if you need to stop, you can. I believe in the power of the human spirit. I believe anybody can change.

Hopeless without external intervention, yes, and good luck getting someone with a lot of money separated from sycophants and bad influences permanently. Chemistry is what it is.

EDIT:

In other related news: http://boingboing.net/2012/02/13/sony-raised-price-of-whitney-h.html

I've never understood the whole "addiction is hard to break, they need help!" shit. I say this as someone who's kicked addictions to heroine (three years of using), cocaine (two years of using) and, most difficult of the three, caffeine (almost 24 years of high intake). I didn't change my lifestyle a single bit in any of the cases. I simply decided one day that was it, that I was no longer willing to deal with the results of my addiction and I stopped, cold turkey, with little to non-existent support from other people (the most help i received was a phone call while kicking cocaine, once, saying 'good luck').

You either want to kick the addiction and are willing to go through the hell it entails or you aren't. Its that simple. Is it hard as fuck to do it? Yes and no. Personally, everytime I dealt with it and the ensuing withdrawal I kept in mind the why of my quitting and coped. Messy as fuck, at times difficult (more-so physically than mentally) but I found myself closer to suicide than falling back into the addiction when it got to the worst of the withdrawal.

I have no sympathy for her, or any other addict who dies because of their addiction, and get annoyed at those who make excuses for them and how tough it is to break an addiction, especially if they haven't gone through it.

You're making the mistake of assuming your personal experience is applicable to people with different genes and different brain chemistry.

God I just love the "bootstrap" crowd.

There are a lot of assholes in the world....

I'm proud to be an asshole, but I don't think it's something I can help.  :why_so_serious:

This is not "bootstraps" criticism. This is people with a shitton of resources who cannot or will not rid themselves of the sycophants, hangers on and parasites that infest their world in order to unfuck their lives. If you have or had $50 million and a catalog of bankable music, you don't need ANYONE who is causing you harm. There's also some other asshole willing to exploit your bankability for personal gain. The trick is learning which shitheads are a drag on your life and which aren't (if any). Staying married to a shithead like Bobby Brown is one perfect example.

No, it isn't easy but don't expect much sympathy from me if you can't use the vast resources your fame and fortune bring you to get yourself out of self-created cluster fucks.

My comment was not aimed at you Haemish.   :-P

Cannot is a whole different ballgame than will not. 

Just because someone has money doesn't necessarily make things any easier.

I'm reminded of David Chappelle comments about the reasons he quit, Martin Lawrence, Mariah Carey, etc.

There is a huge lack of empathy in this thread. This whole "I got problems, and I'm poor, why the fuck should I excuse a talented rich person" makes me feel a bit sick. What would any of you really know about dealing with such pressures?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2787517403276391321

Forget it lamaros, it's f13 town.

Empathy is for pussies, lamaros, duh. Far better to posture about how you'd never be so stupid.

Not everyone is deserving my empathy.

Unless you've lived through it yourself or in the same house with a loved one going through it, you don't have empathy to share. You may or may not have sympathy, but you cannot possibly have empathy.

That's not true. You can empathise without having been in someone's shoes. You might need a better imagination though.

Yeah, empathy does not necessarily mean you've been in that exact situation (although that certainly helps strengthen the feeling).

What does it matter if they excuse her or not? She's still dead. Even if you don't like their logic as to why they aren't disturbed by her passing, it's pretty much irrelevant. We're not weighing her soul into the afterlife. It's the internet.

Speak for yourself bro.  I am god in my own little kingdom here.

Because I spend far too much time reading this forum and would prefer to think that the people I'm sharing that time with aren't all dickbags?

You have, of course, read the politics forum.   :oh_i_see:

Yeah, I didn't even touch the drug stuff. Too easy, posers.

You need to be clutching your pearls when you make a statement like that.

Actually it matters because drug policies are, like all policy, partly susceptible to public pressure. If the majority of people just accept the media line and blame the user then you end up with, well, you end up with the kind of policies we have now in the US and UK and many other places.

And those polices are working really well aren't they?

There's also, IMO, a point that needs to be made every time we have one of these celebrity death threads which is how badly the fame industry fucks people up. Fabulous wealth, constant adulation, unrelenting intense media attention - it looks kinda like those things are just too much for some people to handle. And while I certainly think that any problems are a damn sight easier to deal with from the comfort of a multi-million dollar mansion surrounded by flunkies than from the worst poverty our countries can offer I do think it's tragic and disgusting that our fame industry chews up and spits out so many talented people, year after year.

I wasn't a fan of Whitney Houston, in fact quite the opposite, but the fact that she's dead at such a young age from (probably) such avoidable and preventable causes is very sad and IMO if you have no space in you for sympathy for anyone in that situation then you're probably not someone I'd want to be friends with IRL.

What kills me is the hypocrisy of it all.

People die of drug abuse in the streets every day and people don't give a fuck. But when a celebrity dies everyone is supposed to be gushing about it.

Everybody being indignant about people don't paying proper respect to Whitney Houston dying better be equally heartbroken about the Hobo down the street. Apart from the people who liked her music she was equally important to society.

It sad that she died. Because its always sad when people die. She really isn't worthy subject about how drugs kill people, because in the entertainment industry thats almost an occupational hazard anyway. Maybe we could talk about the institutionalized abuse of drugs there in another thread, because it certainly seems to be widespread enough to maybe be a systematic problem.

Edit: Preferably in politics because its destined to head there anyway.

I sorta agree with what you are saying about the hypocrisy, because I am feeling that a bit as well.  But the difference, of course, is that we think we know people in the media, so it is easier for us to relate to them.  We believe we know something of who she was and what she went through (we really do not, of course).  We know nothing about the hobo down the street, so what happens to him doesn't matter, right?

Bah, I don't know.  Whitney said it best herself.  Crack is whack.

Agreed. As for the rest of your post, you're reading an awful lot into posts in this thread that just wasn't there.

It was more like a general observation, as in "We as a society" more than "We as f13".

This is pretty much it. The fact this was by and large self-inflicted. Granted, addiction and abuse can get out of control and take on a beast of its own; but it is not like she did not have the resources to combat it. Old age, yeah we expect people to cash out from that - that is inevitable.

I have to admit my first thought was "I wonder how long they will have her in the freezer while everyone involved does chat shows talking about how much they loved her and haggle over the tv rights of the funeral."

I think this story will die out relatively quickly...if for no other reason than nobody was really surprised by it, and she was considered somewhat of a laughing stock for the last 15 years or so.  While tragic in its own way, it won't measure up to other major celeb deaths.  Had it happened 15 years ago (or whatever), she would be getting the full MJ treatment, maybe even moreso.

That isn't meant as a commentary on what I think is more or less tragic, just a prediction of how I think the media will soon move on to other things.  See Winehouse, Amy.

Yeah, but Micheal Jackson was a figure of fun for well over a decade as well and there was a huge deal made about him.

Just because someone dies and it makes someone sad does not make it tragic.  This was no tragedy.  A famous person took too many narcotics and didn't wake up.  King Lear or Macbeth this is not.

I despise the overuse of "tragic" in the news.  I know the definition has morphed from the purely dramatic use that I referenced with Shakespeare, but even the newer definition of "distressing" does not even apply.  That definition would fit "6 year old falls down well while mother works 3 jobs" or "soldier who regained the use of his legs after a war injury dies in freak lightning strike".

If Whitney was clean and sober, her career reviving, and then some sordid leftover event from her past surfaced to sabotage her comeback, ending in her death - THAT would be tragic. 

I agree with all of that. The overuse of "tragic" when anyone dies is extremely annoying to me as well.

Tragic by classical definition actually fits her more than some. Tragedy is the bringing low of the mighty through their hubris.

I think it's sad/tragic anytime someone let's their lives be ruined by drugs.

Yeah but that's just lol media.

Just like every time there's a whiff of snow in the UK every single newspaper uses the phrase "TRAVEL CHAOS!" without fail. Every single celebrity death is tragic because there isn't anything more hyperbolic for them to use. :oh_i_see:

With fucking Scotrail, sneezes cause travel chaos.

It sure can help get into fancy rehab establishments instead of waiting for the court order shrink to decide whether to send you to prison or rehab hell.

The tragedy in Whitney Houston's life started a long time ago. Her death was just the sadly inevitable end to a series of bad decisions and bad relationships. I also find it hard to feel all that torn up about her death when I see the media feeding frenzy that is accompanying it. I felt the same way about Michael Jackson's death.

I am proud to be a dickbag. It's not like I'm walking into her funeral and pissing on her grave. I'm just finding it hard to feel all that broken up about it. People die.

And drug addicts die sooner.

For just a wee island with a couple millennia headstart, you guys have a hard time getting your shit together, yeah?

Also, free my people!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsT2akkI4lc

I get that, I just don't get why some people don't just leave it at that and instead have to make sure we all know that they don't care that someone died.  It's like an "I'm a callous dickbag" attention grab or something.

Part of it could be an attempt to mitigate the overwhelming love fest that goes on whenever a celebrity dies.  The constant news coverage of talking heads/execs/realfolkz/whomever going on and on about what a tragedy it was celeb died and how fantastic/marvelous/terrific they were and they were so influencial/respected/loved/imitated whatever.  The 24/7 news cycle just ruins any sense of.. real drama.. over something like this, IMO, with the constant coverage every second.  I thought she was good back in the 80s/90s, grew out of listening to her and didn't think much about her except for hearing about the drug issues.  She was a great singer, but I'm not wailing and beating my fists on the ground over her death like so many people seem to be.  And honestly, I rolled my eyes when I heard 20/20 was having a special 2 hour show in Friday night to celebrate her life or something.  Really?  Like they are going to come up with something new and original as compared to the entire week of weeping and wailing that's already gone on by then?

Yeah, why would you have a retrospective on a prominent artist after they have died, it makes no sense at all!

Also, funerals? WTF are they for?! Get over it everyone!

 :awesome_for_real:

Because that's not what I said.  There have been multiple reviews/recaps/histories about her already and I'm sure there'll be far more the remainder of the week on all the news channels.  Everyone in the media has to get their 2c in, no matter what.  As long as there isn't live coverage of the funeral, I'll be fine, because that to me really is taking it too far.  Funerals should be private affairs with family, have a memorial after the fact or something.

What is clear to me about all of this is that a heavy drug habit pretty much cut her career short. She didn't have the "freak in a bubble" appeal of MJ, so we're left with what we currently have.

Having lost several friends to ODs and whatnot, I can absolutely say that I wish we wouldn't put so much emphasis on famous junkies. At least Wm. S. Burroughs had the common decency to own his issues, I guess.

Let's face it. When people that others idolize die, those people get sad. Apparently, Whitney Houston still has some of those followers. The media is, of course, trying to fill their 24 hour news cycle.

When Ron Santo died, I cried. It sucked, and I was unhappy about it. We all have our heroes. That doesn't diminish the tragedy of random people dying, but they're outside our individual monkeyspheres, so we are less inclined to give a  fuck, or to even know about it.

And further, unless one of *us* dies, the only shared experience we're going to have as a forum with regard to this sort of thing is figures we're all familiar with - celebrities, game designers, etc. So it is pretty natural that we get 'x celebrity died' threads and not 'a homeless man died in the street today' threads.

Moreover, I submit the erudite works of Lee Ving:

Death is not a tragedy, death is a part of life.  We simply live in fear of it and call it a loss because of our desperate attempts to distance ourselves from it.

Is there loss? Sure, of course, but it's transitory and that's what really freaks us the fuck out and scares us.  It reinforces the fact that we're all meaningless.

Can't believe that fat tub Christie ordered flags flown at half staff. I mean, come on, really?

Presidents, national tragedies, crackheads (so long as they're famous and from New Jersey).  That doesn't cheapen it at all.  You should see what he has planned when snookie succumbs to whatever her dominant stv is.

They are having a "vigil" at a funeral home in town for her. As far as I know she was never in Champaign in her entire life. And a couple of elected officials are going to speak at it.

God damn, this country is officially gone batshit.

Edit; she was here for a concert in 1991

Wow, Fear, Bathory, and the Butthole Surfers in the diva thread.

Awesome!

\o/

Is now a good time to bring up Chuck Schuldiner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Schuldiner#Death)?

You people and your cherished metal.

Sorry. Singer, songwriter, musician, producer and creator of genre, who could not afford  his own Cancer surgery. VS. Some pop star with more money than sense who killed herself.

Who?

Exactly!

I'm with Bloodworth on this one. I'd rather the media piss themselves to death over someone who actually was more than just a singer. Or just, you know, leave the family and friends alone to grieve privately instead of plastering their faces all over the news 24/7.

Dude.

If we're going there....

Dime.

Yeah, like seriously Dimebag. Or a whole host of metal artists that no one has seemed to give a shit about except the small nest of metal fans. Cliff Burton for another.

There's just a lot of people that to my mind contributed more to the world of music than a very talented, messed-up warbler.

But they won't, because they never heard about them.  The public tends to care about dead people they know about.  That's kind of why they're the public.  We can rage and pout all we want, but she's still Whitney Houston and anonymous to 99% of everyone, metal god, is still going to be nothing more than some obscure counter point no one gives a shit about.

Personally for me, it's another dead junkie.  Whoopidiy-doo.  I have enough personal experience with worthless junkies to not care about when they finally kick it. We're just waiting on my uncle's liver to finally give so we can forget his ass exists.  His most often repeated line is "I have no regrets".  Really?  A guy that hasn't lived in a place of his own in like 35 years, has 3 kids that won't speak to him, divorced, toothless, dying, and generally disliked by everyone still thinks slamming heroin into his veins was worth it all.   :uhrr:

fast edit: Heh, even I've heard of Dimebag and most probably know about Cliff.  It's not like a drummer from Sepultura or something.

I say we piss on her corpse while we're at it.

 :grin:

I didn't know you were into that kind of shit.

Me and R Kelly. Corpse pissers.

Tebonas wins the thread for me and my line of thinking. It's not about empathy or lack therof. It's about "Why is *famous person* more important than *other person*? Why should we mourn Whitney any more than, say Ryan Bonaminio (http://www.instantriverside.com/2010/11/ryan-bonaminio-riverside-police-officer-death/).

Clearly it's impossible to empathize with every single death that occurs, and celebrities are not more deserving of mourning than anybody else.  That said, it's not the lack of sadness or empathy from some people here that bothers me, it's when people feel the need to say stuff like "Fuck her, she made her choices".  If you don't care fine, but taking it any further than that is unneeded.

"I heard a police man say it's just another overdose.  Just another overdose."

As much as it sucks for her family that she's dead, I know enough people personally who have their own drug struggles who have cleaned up or aren't doing well so I end up having a hard time giving much sympathy for drug addicts that I don't know (famous or not).  Especially since I've had so much oh my shit stolen or broken into by junkies looking for anything to sell over the years.

It's sad for her family, but no impact upon me.

The people in my life who screw up?  Yeah, those matter to me.  Some made it, some didn't.  All of those were sad, but not like I expect anyone to care beyond thinking it's a good thing to try and help those who are having a hard time making it.

Sure it does.

AAAAAND IIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIII.....

Ad nauseum for a while. Then maybe it can go away for good. But we'll always have the oversinging divas to reminds us of her.

There is a big pharmacologic/physiologic difference in how one person reacts to a drug as compared to another.  If we all were to take the same blood pressure medication, most of us would respond fairly typically, but a small subset of us would not really respond at all and an equal subset would respond a lot.  Addictive drugs like heroin and cocaine and alcohol don't act any differently.  Some people lie in the subset of strong responders and just cannot put down the bottle.  Some people have absolutely no interest in drinking, even a tiniest amounts.  Most of this interaction for the severely addicted is based on biology and not "willpower" per se. Once you get a person that responds like this it doesn't really matter how much money you have to start with.  Money can't change biology, at least not yet.  Those types of folks are always going to end up in the same spot-  dead.  The fact that Whitney actually had her shit together at one point and made a lot of money doesn't change any of this or make it any less of a sad case.  

Notice that the answer to "why should we care about famous person?" cuts both ways. You could argue that we should have sympathy for people whose lives are messed up, whether they're famous or not, or that we should be equally dismissive of both the famous and non-famous.

Very true, but the sentiment here seems to be more negative against wealthy or famous drug addicts as compared to the street corner variant.  The biological portion doesn't care how famous or rich or poor you are.

No, but the clinic does.

I don't think so.  I think it's more 'what's the difference' ?

For my part, as I said already, it's a shame and all but it's not important to me and the wailing and gnashing of teeth is ridiculous and unneccesary.  She had every opportunity to seek help, biological factors or not, more so than some others do.

I have no fucking idea why we're wasting 4 pages now talking about it.  There are people getting fucking murdered in their beds all over the world for madness reasons.  I don't intend to waste much thought to a totally avoidable death that everyone saw coming miles off.  Just like Winehouse.  Just like Jacko.

 :awesome_for_real:

You really don't know why?

Because pot kills.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33271127/pot.jpg)
Cast Iron ones especially.

As can be expected, the learned scholars and philosopher poets who inhabit the comments section of Fox News have been in fine form.

Not Safe for Faith in Humanity (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/39912_Fox_News_Commenters_Respond_to_Whitney_Houstons_Death_With_Deluge_of_Hatred_and_Racism)

Likewise A Powerful Argument for Electrifying the Mason-Dixon Line (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/39918_Now_Fox_News_Commenters_Are_Spewing_Racist_Hatred_at_Whitney_Houstons_Daughter).

Wait, isn't Little Green Footballs a right leaning mag? If so, good for them on policing their own base a bit. More than any other right wing mag has done.

Charles Johnson had an "I'm surrounded by assholes" moment, decided he wasn't on board with the (barely) veiled racism and blatant anti-intellectualism of the right-wing blogosphere, and made a very public "These guys are fucking nuts!" denunciation.  These days they hate him even more than they do Kos.

--Dave

Since her funeral's happening right now, I thought I'd hold a candle-light vigil for her.

Whitney Houston, one week sober! Woo!

I loled, you terrible asshole.  :awesome_for_real:

Really. People care about celebrities more that a bum down the street. No duh. That's just the twisted way people work, and the reason why a mother can love her child and not break down crying every second of every day over all the children of the world who died today. Because if we couldn't compartmentalize, we'd go nuts with grief.

It was funnier when I heard it the first time for Amy Winehouse.

Who is Amy Winehouse?

Another dead junkie.

Need a rope there, Paelos ?

The christiany lack of judgement is palpable...

Should I clarify? Another singer with massive drug problems who died of an overdose after even going as far to sing a popular song about how she would never go to rehab.

Judgement was where exactly? She is factually 1 - Dead, and 2 - a junkie.

Opinions! And I was just trying to reverse-troll Merusk!

Ah, here I thought you were being funny. As in; "Dude, we've moved on! There's a new tragedy in town."   Which would have been much more poignant.

You really can't expect me to employ those upper levels of wit. I prefer to keep things on a much lower level!

I expect no more than you are capable of.

The question is why do you expect so little of yourself.


 :grin:

You guys are messing up the candlelight vigil.... :oh_i_see:

Do they have enough spoons for it?   :grin:

Foil works just as well, just have to hold the lighter lower... annnnd, I have said too much.  :awesome_for_real: