This should probably be filed under "maybe this make's me an ass but..."
Yesterday morning on the way to work I heard a medley of Whitney Houston songs... It's not my style of music but I can objectively say she has an amazing voice. The thing about the songs is I had heard them all pre-1997... Because since she started doing crack she hasn't really produced any notable music... I realize she might not have been on crack but she was a fan of the drugs...
And she probably smoked some crack.
Perhaps I'm callous but I'll always see her as a crack addict... Michael Jackson will always be a child molester... But I don't listen to either of their music so it's easy to separate it.
Although Andrew Wood, lead singer of Mother Love Bone who died days before the scheduled release of his first album from a heroin overdose, will always be a fool and I think of it every time I listen to their album... While for some reason I always see Kurt Cobain's death as just sad.
Why we posthumously hold people like Whitney and Michael up on pedestals blows my mind...
It's weird to compare deaths of folks but I think that's what we do as humans... And one recent death that hit me this year was Sarah Burke, the freestyle skier. Her name was a mainstay on the X-games winner pedestal... She progressed the sport in a huge way... She died too young doing what she loved and that to me is sad. She wasn't destroying herself.
Her death did get some press. The X-games had a great memorial for her.
I realize action sports get less press than music... That she probably "touched" fewer lives. But as a father people like Sarah are the ones I'd rather mourn. Because who, and how, we mourn will show our kids who to look up too...
And action sports aside I want MF to look up to folks that aren't crack smokers, child molesters or heroin addicts.
Yesterday morning on the way to work I heard a medley of Whitney Houston songs... It's not my style of music but I can objectively say she has an amazing voice. The thing about the songs is I had heard them all pre-1997... Because since she started doing crack she hasn't really produced any notable music... I realize she might not have been on crack but she was a fan of the drugs...
And she probably smoked some crack.
Perhaps I'm callous but I'll always see her as a crack addict... Michael Jackson will always be a child molester... But I don't listen to either of their music so it's easy to separate it.
Although Andrew Wood, lead singer of Mother Love Bone who died days before the scheduled release of his first album from a heroin overdose, will always be a fool and I think of it every time I listen to their album... While for some reason I always see Kurt Cobain's death as just sad.
Why we posthumously hold people like Whitney and Michael up on pedestals blows my mind...
It's weird to compare deaths of folks but I think that's what we do as humans... And one recent death that hit me this year was Sarah Burke, the freestyle skier. Her name was a mainstay on the X-games winner pedestal... She progressed the sport in a huge way... She died too young doing what she loved and that to me is sad. She wasn't destroying herself.
Her death did get some press. The X-games had a great memorial for her.
I realize action sports get less press than music... That she probably "touched" fewer lives. But as a father people like Sarah are the ones I'd rather mourn. Because who, and how, we mourn will show our kids who to look up too...
And action sports aside I want MF to look up to folks that aren't crack smokers, child molesters or heroin addicts.
Yeah. There's often an over emphasis on celebrity death even if their lives were clouded with abuse. Or even celebrity in general. Chris Brown at the grammy's is another example how we misplace our actions in society.
ReplyDeleteChris brown at the grammy's and the stupid kid's tweets also shows how incredibly dumb people are
Deleteword.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to blog something about her death..and blah blah...but..I realized there was nothing really to say..for the last years,and I would have had to write something that would have attracted lots of haters maybe. So,I said nothing. I mean,yes it's sad, yes she was what she was, but...yes..she is the only one to blame for what she have done with her life. She had EVERYTHING..and did not care...
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. If it makes you feel any better, Sarah Burke's death got a lot of media time here in Canada.
ReplyDeleteFinally! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree. RIP Sarah Burke.
ReplyDelete