I’m just going by a story in People magazine this evening. Cissy Houston, the singer, mother of Whitney, has written a book (“Remembering Whitney”) that’s going to be published two weeks before the first anniversary of her daughter’s death. For years this woman saw her daughter doing drugs. And both of her sons had drug problems. Her cousin, Dee Dee Warwick, sister of Dionne, a fine singer and a beautiful person, had substance abuse problems, suffered for years and died a tragic death much too early.
All of this was around Cissy Houston for decades. And now she says she didn’t know what was going on and couldn’t do anything about it. This seems a little far-fetched. On top of that, in People, Cissy says she doesn’t know if Whitney had a romantic relationship with Robyn Crawford, and that she didn’t like having Robyn around. This also suggests that Cissy was an ostrich of the first order. Crawford was probably the last good influence on Whitney until she was “replaced” by Bobby Brown as a confidante and soul mate.
If the rest of Cissy Houston’s book, due on January 29th, is this clueless, then truly these words have more impact than ever: “Houston, we have a problem.” It does seem that, as in the case with Michael Jackson, the family became so financially reliant on the superstar that they simply stopped questioning anything for fear of being shut out. And the result was a death on February 11, 2012 that still remains shocking.
