Is Whitney Houston’s death at 48 really the most important news story in the entire world?Houston, once a Grammy-award winning vocalist with the world at her feet, had become just another drug-addled reality television staple in the final years of her life.Jean Cocteau once said, “Americans are funny people. First you shock them, then they put you in a museum.”He missed one important detail. We put you in the ground first.I admit with no small amount of smug satisfaction that even though I often indulge in similar guilty pleasures, I never saw the reality show chronicling Houston and husband Bobby Brown’s downward spiral.Millions did, however, and it strikes me as more than a bit perverse when I realize how we as Americans will delight in people’s bad fortune until we have hounded them literally to their graves and then try and make them out to be ready for canonization.We love people with talent.