As I’m an early middle-age white male hipster contrarian type, I mostly ignored Whitney Houston past the initial wave of pop stardom (though “How Will I Know” and all that were pretty popular tunes when I was a ten year old). I saw “The Bodyguard” of course, and spent most of my time cringing at that scene where Whitney waved Costner’s gun around, and kept thinking about how much better Dolly’s version of “I Will Always Love You” was.

Honestly, though, until this weekend, I hadn’t thought much about Whitney Houston at all for about a decade. She just wasn’t on my radar at all.

That said, I found fellow traveller Amanda Marcotte’s piece in The American Prospect about Huston’s cultural influence thought provoking. The piece reminded me exactly how big Houston was, and how far she had to fall. She draws more than one comparison to Marilyn Monroe, which I honestly didn’t consider, but makes perfect sense once it’s pointed out.

Further, the piece hits on one of those larger truths about the difference between our private and public lives, which doesn’t get talked about enough, except when a famous person’s ugly personal business gets a good airing:

Being a huge celebrity exaggerates the compromise all human beings make to get along in society. Most of us have a messy inner life that we roll up and leave at home so we can present a pulled-together version of ourselves to the outside world. Despite overwrought claims that social networking and blogging have turned us into a TMI culture, we still control what we show and don’t show the world about ourselves. We don’t like being the target of nasty gossip or having our weaknesses exposed for the outside world to judge. Social networking has become another tool for us to protect and monitor our reputations.

And that’s the rub, really. All of us, even those of us with blogs and social networking accounts, are always projecting an image when we deal with the world around us. We do our best to keep our inner demons and turmoil hidden, and most of us end up managing, in some fashion to look like we’ve got it all together, even if, in our heart of hearts, we know we’re just barely keeping the demons at bay. Most of us are just anonymous faces in the throng of groundlings, so when our carefully crafted mask slips and our inner ugly is laid bare, the fallout is limited, relatively speaking. But when you’re a player on the stage, it becomes national news thanks to the voyeuristic tabloid culture we inhabit, and it’s much harder to get past that exposure of one’s humanity, and not everyone is able to bounce back.

It’s something worth thinking about and considering when dealing with our fellow humans, even those of us operating in relative obscurity amongst the rabble.