Can somebody please explain to me why Mrs. Whitney Houston is still ridiculed as a "drug addict" on this forum while it is obviously tolerated or even considered cool and a kind of "lifestyle" when Mary J. or Chaka or anyone in Prince's entourage do the same ??
I don't get it.

Hmmm... I never gave much thought to this double standard until you pointed it out.

My guess is the public's reaction to news like this has to do mostly with the way an artist is sold. Chaka has been a weirdo all along and is the product of the '70s' funk/soul scene. (Have you ever taken a look at Rufus? Scary!) It was pretty much a given she's seen some seedy stuff in her time. Same goes with the very urban "thug girl" Mary J. and members of the Prince entourage, most of whom were "fab" during the excessive, coke-charged era of the '80s and the rise of X and other club and designer drugs during the '90s.

Whitney, on the other hand, surfaced as a beautiful, demure adult contemporary vocalist at a tender 19 -- the neice of the classy Dione Warwick and the daughter of a famed religious vocalist, no doubt -- and capitalized on that classy image for nearly 15 years. When things began to spiral for her, the public was shocked at having been "duped" in their minds.
[This message was edited Fri Oct 17 12:30:30 PDT 2003 by Lammastide]

first of all thanks for your reply!!!

..maybe you're right, it DOES have something to do with image/marketing...still I can't understand why it's inacceptable with one person and tolerable with another...people should judge an artist for their art, but I guess it'll never happen...they'd rather let the media manipulate their attitude...and that's sad.

OH GOD! I had this long detailed post and then I erased it. Don't you hate it when you do that. It was like 3 paragraphs thick!

Basically, I was saying in the post that..

Whitney was marketed as Black America's Sweetheart back in the day and her actions are kind of countering that image, so people diss her. Not saying it's right, but they do.

Same goes for Mariah Carey. She was marketed as a "Sweetheart"-type. She changed artistic direction and image and people started hating on her.

The industry's like that.

Madonna, Lil Kim, Trina, etc. have always been nasty and sexual so people don't care. You know what I mean?
[This message was edited Fri Oct 17 15:12:36 PDT 2003 by JANFAN4L]

..you're right right JANFAN4L but I thought people on this board were smarter than the masses. Proves me I was wrong about that. Seems they can't spot talent when it's there.

Chaka and Mary J don't do whacked out interviews like Whitney did. And they never passed themselves off like goody-too-shoes for years either.

Ah OK, so it's cool for them. I take it that's your message.

cause they are real with it and whitney has been hiding it forever. i mean a really long time. Mary came out and said, shit, I was coked out al the time and had to wear sunglasses

KatSkrizzle said:

Being "real" with it is facing the problem and CORRECTING it. I'm tired of everybody from politicians to athletes and singers thinking they get a pass for admitting they did something wrong. We know you did it fool-- now you've got to pay the consequences just like anybody else.

Great question, I think that its becasue no one expected Whitney Houston to go down that road. Its like discovering the squeaky clean Will Smith hitting the pipe. I think it keeps coming up because it is quite a shocker. I am not saying the double standard is right, just trying to make sense out of it.