I wasn't surprised this afternoon when I got up from a nap and my wife told me she had died. My first question was, "Due to drugs or suicide?" Now I have to listen to the "sainthood" crap if I watch the Grammy Awards, which I might deliberately miss.

I hate waste. And watching somebody with talent, status and privilege flush it down the drain' while others would happily change places, makes me angry and unsympathetic. Sometimes I didn't even know who was the bad influence pulling the other one down, her or Brown.

And so just as the Titanic will be forever remembered in some form of fatalistic glow, we will now have images and black crepe of Houston belting out "I will Always Love You."

Most of my brothers who threw their lives away died between the ages of 45 and 60. Houston was 48. She's not the ideal of tragedy. She's the personification of stupidity. The poster girl of buffoons who shove a donut, a cigarette or a crack pipe in their mouths and expect me to feel their pain. Well, I feel a pain alright, and now it's coupled with a continuing cavalcade of losers who will mysteriously become icons and role models.

Since when has blowing yourself away become a career choice? Better yet, why do we tolerate it?

I agree with you Tourist.

I'm happy you do. Not for her, but for a real problem this country has of "looking the other way."

If you look at people like John Belushi, Chris Farley, and Michael Jackson, you see the same story. Despite the money and power, there is always a group of insiders and friends who knew the celebrities were addicts, but let them die anyway. In the case of Jackson, he had an entire roomful of medical equipment and a stooge doctor getting him any drug he wanted. The excuse was that when Michael wanted something, he got it.

My opinion is that these insiders feared alienating the celebrities for fear the money to them personally would dry up. So they sat and did nothing. Of course, these same carrion eaters are some of the first to eulogize the dead in tearful tributes.

In Jackson's case he weighted perhaps 140 pounds. He had a big bruiser for a body guard. Why didn't this employee entrusted with Jackson's safety scoop him up and take him to a hospital? It was simply fear of losing the gravy train.

As with "The 27 Club," these people abused drugs, liquor and the power to defy authority, and we watched them die. Personally, I'm not going to pretend I care, and that includes the system that keeps cranking out this problem.

Who cares about Whitntey Houston. The closest some one like me could ever come to Knowing some one like her is, saying hello to their feet as some steroid infected monster smashes my head into the ground for getting to close to them. As far as using them for a role-model I couldn't they died younger than I am and I plan on being much older than I am now when I die. As far as there charity I'm sure they did allot of it. They could, They gave a portion of the surplus, their surplus is more than I will make in a life time. True charity is when a person gives from their want. It's sharing all they have with their community and then having to live there, not just jumping in for some photo op then going home to your luxury. I rather my kid use for role-models people who appreciate life, they may never be rich and famous, but they will be human.

In my area of Madison we call these people "limousine liberals." That is, they loudly trumpet charities and write big checks--one guy gave 10 million to rebuild our "theater district"--but they do little else. No hands on work, no real fix to the source of the problem, and not one thing done to break the cycle of suffering.

I know. I've lived here since 1968, and the problems we face have never gone away or even lessened. We do have "Frosty Balls," and "Crazy Legs" marathons, and every nutball parade you can name. We protest anything. We all pat each other on the back for doing good.

But when it comes to actual work, we solve racial issues by hiring an "ethnicity czar." They now have a six point program to bring up the test scores of our poorest citizens. Very little of this new groundbreaking initiative actually teaches or holds students accountable. It seems we spend more money in trying not offend them for being black.

My view is that people like Whitney Houston actually do nothing. What kind of role model "inspires" anyone by staying drunk and stoned for three decades? She was a good singer, she made untold millions. I owe her nothing, she got paid for her work.

The damage she did to my country will last long after her name is forgotten. She demonstrated to numerous kids that you can be a drug addict, entitled, rich, lawless and somehow worshipped and society will remain silent. How many thousands of kids will die in a dirty ditch because Houston's life made that lifestyle look like a harmless romp?

You forgot canonized. The family is keeping the circumstances of her death under raps. This will allow the canonization to start. not that it really matters. Everyone knew the circumstance of Michel Jackson's dead and they knew the perverse way he lived his life yet all was forgotten within days and now he's been canonized and his family is making more money off of him than they did when he was alive. The public fell for the hype. The same will be for Whitney Houston.

You're probably right. By making the funeral 'invitation only' they are guaranteed to get a lot of pictures of celebs entering and leaving.

In a perverse sense of art mimicking life, I'll bet a lot of those insiders are packing nose candy. Birds of a feather, you know. The cycle never ends.

True-Dat my friend. True-Dat