Whitney Houston: Comments on Whitney's tragic death

A husband hated by the Houston family: Bobby Brown and Whitney at a Vanity Fair Oscar party in 2001

Tuning in to a radio phone-in show on Wednesday evening, as they inched through the decaying urban sprawl where Whitney Houston was born and raised, the commuters of New Jersey were stirred by a vitriolic debate.
Earlier that day, state governor Chris Christie had issued a special decree, ordering the Stars and Stripes flag to be lowered on public buildings for the singer’s funeral — an honour usually afforded only to fallen servicemen and great civic figures — and the battle lines were drawn.
‘She was just a drug addict!’ stormed one former U.S. Navy sailor, to murmurs of agreement from programme host Steve Trevelise. ‘It’s a disgrace that our society celebrates people who take the wrong path. This is somebody who had it all and chose to throw it all away.’

Falling idol: Whitney Houston with Bobby Brown, her mother Cissy and (far right) her 'close friend' Robyn Crawford

Troubled: Whitney, seen with her daughter Bobbi was said to have binged on drugs and alcohol ahead of her death

Another caller countered that Houston’s personal life was irrelevant, and said she deserved to be remembered with a ticker-tape parade, and even a public holiday.
Then, almost inevitably given the divisions still simmering in Houston’s home town of Newark — scene of America’s bloodiest conflagration during the Black Rights uprisings of 1967 — the tone turned uglier, with a black woman insisted the anti-Whitney protests were racially motivated. Though Trevelise tried to play this down (pointing out that some black callers were also opposed to the governor’s flag-lowering order), he concluded that Houston’s passing was ‘the most polarising celebrity death I’ve seen’.