Why the flag should never be lowered to half mast for Whitney Houston

By Steve Janoski

“Crack is cheap…I make too much money to ever smoke crack.”

Yes, we all remember what Whitney Houston said in her now-infamous 2002 TV interview with Diane Sawyer.

At that time, there was suspicion about the famous singer’s drug abuse, but over the years, her battles with drug-addiction became well-chronicled, and many people (such as me) suspect that her demise two weeks ago had everything to do with it.

But in New Jersey, stuff like that doesn’t matter, especially to Governor Chris Christie, who officially decreed last Friday that, by executive order, the American flag would be lowered to half-staff in commemoration of the Newark native’s mysterious death.

Christie has come under intense criticism for this, but, according to Suburban Trends’ sister paper The Record, he’s defended his position by saying that Houston was a “cultural icon” that belongs in the same category in NJ music history as Frank Sinatra or Bruce Springsteen.

Her accomplishments, he said, are “a great source of pride for the people of the state.”

He did the same thing when Bruce Springsteen’s saxophone player Clarence Clemons died last June, but that move didn’t generate the same fire, perhaps because Clemons was never known for the erratic behavior and drug abuse that Houston became synonymous with over the past decade.

Now, it’s possible that ole’ Chris has some sort of affinity for Houston’s music — maybe one of her songs was his wedding song, or he just enjoys karaoke-ing to “I Wanna’ Dance With Somebody” at his neighborhood bar on a Saturday night.

But regardless of where his love for Whitney comes from, the fact that he doesn’t understand that lowering the flag for a musician — any musician at all — cheapens and degrades the significance of that momentous accolade, is a shame.

The American flag is no mere piece of rag — it is the emblem of a nation born out of the greatest ideas of the Age of Enlightenment and forged in the furnaces of war. Every piece of it drips in symbolism, and for many a man over the course of the past 250 years, that fluttering banner was the last thing they saw before their lives escaped them.

To lower that flag to half-mast is to say that collectively, this nation is giving a heartfelt tipping of the hat, a fond adieu, to one of its greatest citizens, to someone who idealizes what it means to be an American.

It’s an honor that is nearly unparalleled, and should be reserved for soldiers, cops, and former or current politicians who gave either their lives, or a part of them, in the service of this country and its people.

The flag is not a toy or prop to be lowered every time someone with a modicum of talent passes away, especially when that someone was a drug-addled diva that set the worst possible example for those who admired her, and appears to have squandered whatever talent she had left before departing in true celebrity fashion — alone in a hotel room amongst bottles of prescription drugs.

To treat it as such is to do the greatest of disservices to those brave men and women that have, as Lincoln said, “laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

And personally, I would rather see that flag stay at half-mast until every single World War II veteran is dead than ever see it lowered again for someone like Whitney Houston.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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The Meadowlands Redemption

BY STEVE JANOSKI

It’s hour two of my incarceration.

I am lodged in a tight seat barely built to accommodate my 5 foot 7 inch frame, with my knees tucked close to avoid kicking the back of the head of the person sitting in front of me; how a larger man could sit for four hours in this diminutive folding chair was beyond me.

Whenever I stand to leave, an audible growl arises from my peers. The people sitting next to me stand on their chairs and breathe in deeply to allow me to pass, grumbling under their breath with lowered heads.

I get out of the aisle, and into the heart of the building. The walls are a frigid cinder-block gray, and every 15 feet is another state trooper clad in their Schutzstaffel-esque winter uniform, replete with Sam Browne belts and saucer hats.

Some of them hold German shepherds tight to their sides; the dogs eye every person with tempered suspicion.

I head toward the bathroom, and stand in line like a cow heading to slaughter for my turn in the cramped, disgusting quarters.

A helicopter hovers incessantly over the parking lot outside; its maddening hum can be heard throughout the halls.

I thank god that I’ve quit smoking; there may be snipers on the roof, and I fear that if I moved too fast for the exit, I’d catch a bullet in the back.

Freedom lies beyond those concrete walls, but I’ve paid too much money to skip out now. These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them.

In the far distance I can see the other great building, the place that nearly 137 years ago, they said would one day be a mall.

It is still unfinished though, and its ugly loading dock façade rises like a great wart on the meadows, a heaping monstrosity that’s a shining example of all that’s wrong with New Jersey.

It’s not time to think on that now though.

I walk up to a beer vendor, but they tell me that because the second half has started, there will be no more alcohol served to ease my suffering.

I curse silently, and realize that I should probably go to the bathroom again before I go sit down because once I am there, I am there.

Before returning though, I go buy a pretzel for a friend. It costs $8.75— and it uses up the last of my commissary. It is neither the best pretzel in the history of the world, nor made of gold.

They conned me in here. They said that my favorite team was playing, but my favorite team doesn’t actually play so much as gimp and bound around the field underneath the vivid lights of a losing scoreboard.

This day is different— they’re winning against another hapless punching bag of a team, but it doesn’t lessen the strain.

I head back toward my seat, dejected and beerless with an inferior pretzel in my hand and the lonely hope for a Miller Lite in my heart.

I can already tell that I’m going to have to go to the bathroom again in 20 minutes due to four hours of tailgating, and I rue my constant lack of planning.

I stop at the entrance of the aisle, and the angry groans rise again as the people begin shifting and shuttling around in their seats in a vain attempt to make room for me.

My odyssey complete, I cram myself back into the seat.

"Where’s the beer?" she asks me.

"Rehabilitated?" I ask. "Well, now let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means."

She looks at me.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Never mind," I say, shaking my head.

You know, for $1.6 billion, they could have put a space shuttle in the parking lot of the old Giants Stadium and left it how it was. It would have been way cooler.

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