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. We also love to see those people get their comeuppance.
We revel in so-called “reality” shows in which celebrities go through rehab, or go on diets, or simply choke on their own fame and die slowly before our eyes.
We laugh at their misfortune, we ridi-cule them for being as stupid and weak as the rest of us, and we gloat as they turn into shadows of themselves, driven only by the desire to be as famous as they once were, or to stay high enough to forget they aren’t.
Only when they have expired from the strain do we begin to worship them again, and suddenly we can’t seem to recall ever doubting that they were worthy of our unbridled love.
For those of us who monitored CNN, Fox News and the big three networks this weekend and could not find a scrap of real news, here’s what happened:
Kosovo-born Arid Uka, 22, was sentenced by a German court to life imprisonment for the killing of two U.S. soldiers at Frankfurt airport last year.
Vladimir V. Nesterets, an engineer at a Russian space facility primarily used for military rocket launchings and ballistic missile research, was sentenced to 13 years in prison Friday for passing on classified military information to the CIA.
Hundreds of people marched in New Delhi on Friday to protest a free-trade agreement being negotiated between India and the European Union.
Patient groups and health activists say the pact could severely curtail India's production and export of affordable drugs for millions living with HIV in developing countries.
More people were brutally murdered by the Syrian government.
The State Department advised Americans to defer "non-essential travel" to vast stretches of Mex-ico, warning that 14 of the country's 31 states are so dangerous that visitors should avoid them if at all possible.
People who died last week and were greatly ignored include:
*Stephen M. Levin, 70, who ran a clinic for 9/11 responders;
*Patricia Stephens Due, 72, Civil Rights leader;
*Nello Ferrara, 93, creator of Lemonheads Candy; and
*Peter Breck, 82, actor in “The Big Valley.”