Crack shows in Whitney's story
Whitney Houston told Oprah of abuse in her marriage. Photo: Getty Images
Sunday September 20 2009
Every now and then a reminder comes along and it's no harm: you can't believe everything you see on the telly.
That might seem obvious, but not to everyone. In the same week Jordan mentioned -- apparently without cognisance of consequences -- that she was once raped, Whitney Houston went on Oprah Winfrey's show to confess her drug-hell past. She had a drug problem for many years, revealed the 46-year-old singer, who is staging a comeback, and while this admission was courageous, it completely contradicted her last big TV interview seven years ago.
Back in 2002, according to Whitney, crack was "whack". Further, she insisted any suggestion of a drug problem was just crazy, given her wealth. "I make too much money to ever smoke crack," she told Diane Sawyer, and, while few believed her, there it was, Whitney said on the telly that she didn't do drugs. And that was what we had to believe; it was from the horse's mouth, albeit at odds with her dishevelled appearance and erratic behaviour.
On Oprah, however, the 46-year-old singer admitted that her abundant cash wasn't an obstacle at all to taking crack. Quite the opposite, in fact. And she did a lot of it during her 14-year-marriage to fellow singer Bobby Brown, a marriage that ended in 2006 and after which she kicked the crack. In fact, as Whitney put it to Winfrey, Brown was the cause of her downfall, what with his jealousy, his emotional abuse, his controlling of her. He spat on her once, she recalled, in front of their daughter, which must have been horrible for the kid, but maybe not much more than your mother repeatedly baring her soul on the box.
- Sarah Caden
