Pubdate: Tue, 14 Nov 2000
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA)
Copyright: 2000 Cox Interactive Media.
Contact: Journal:   Constitution:  http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/
Forum: http://www.accessatlanta.com/community/forums/
Author: Michelle Malkin
Note: Michelle Malkin is distributed by Creators Syndicate. Her column
appears occasionally.

DIVA DISEASE: HOUSTON, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM

Washington --- What's a four-letter word for spoiled rotten and above
the law? "Diva." One of America's self-proclaimed divas, pop star and
actress Whitney Houston, demonstrates how celebrity women exploit fame
and gender to escape responsibility for inexcusable conduct.

Last week, an attorney for Houston won dismissal of a drug possession
case against the singer. She was stopped in Hawaii 10 months ago after
airport officials found 15.2 grams of marijuana in her purse. When
airport staff tried to detain her until police arrived, Houston
ditched her handbag and hustled onto a plane headed for San Francisco
to escape arrest. If any average citizen had attemp-

ted to do the same, he or she would have been charged with drug
possession, smuggling and obstruction of justice --- and would have
faced at least 30 days in jail along with a $1,000 fine.

Roughly 600,000 people were arrested for marijuana-related offenses
nationwide in 1995. In 15 states, laws require life sentences for
certain nonviolent marijuana offenses. "What happens time and time
again in the drug war is that big shots are treated differently from
other people," noted Hoover Institution fellow Joseph McNamara in an
interview about the Houston case with Salon.com. "This goes on all the
time with relatives of congressmen and senators where rules that are
mandatory for others don't seem to apply."

Houston faces no consequences for breaking the law. She must simply
complete "a probation-like program." Her attorney promises that she
will exhibit good behavior. But that is something she seems
congenitally incapable of doing.

The six-time Grammy Award winner started her career as a gospel
singer, but shows little reverence these days for anything other than
her own indulgence. A recent profile in Jane magazine featured a fax
from Houston's management team demanding food required at her photo
shoot, starting with "Deer Park Water, at room temperature" and ending
with "Gummy bears." She once threw a tantrum and held up a music video
production for four hours over a "completely inadequate" dressing room
chair.

"I'm not exactly sure what the exact definition of a diva is," wrote
the reporter for Jane magazine who interviewed Houston. "My guess is
it's an artist who initially agrees to let you into her home to do an
interview and then changes her mind. Maybe it's a woman who invites
you out to dinner, then cancels an hour before. I'm a hundred percent
sure that a diva is also a woman who shows up for a photo shoot four
hours late."

Houston has a penchant for being tardy, canceling concerts, and
skipping out of public engagements. She bailed out of her own father's
80th birthday party, but found time to attend demagogue Louis
Farrakhan's "Million Family March" last month in Washington with her
husband, recording artist Bobby Brown (a convicted drunken driver and
playboy who has fathered at least four children with three women).

Houston seems to share Farrakhan's anti-Semitic leanings. She referred
in a profanity-laced media interview to a jeweler as "this Jew guy on
Diamond Row in New York," but has yet to receive any John Rocker-style
sensitivity training.

For some inexplicable reason, Whitney Houston remains a popular role
model. In a recent interview with Ebony magazine, she shared her
parenting advice: "As a mother you try to give your child the best
that you can," she said, "and the best thing I can give (to my
daughter) is the love of God, and to teach her the way I was taught."

Before she gives other mothers advice, Houston would do well to
relearn some basic lessons in doing unto others and leading by example. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake