Whitney Houston: Regrettable Punditry and 'Too Soon' Reactions on Video

By Dennis Romero Tue., Feb. 14 2012 at 8:08 AM

Bill O'Reilly

When a celebrity dies in L.A., it's a somber moment. But it's also an opportunity for competition among journalists and pundits.

Members of the media can make mistakes, over-reach, and downright go too far.

That was the case for some of the coverage of Whitney Houston's untimely demise in Beverly Hills over the weekend:

Even before she died, one reporter made statements she'll probably regret.

Stephanie Bauer of the website Hollyscoop said in a video report Friday that the singer had been seen "looking and acting like a hot mess" at a pre-Grammy party Thursday at club Tru in Hollywood:

When she left the club she seemed disoriented and angry and had blood dripping down her leg and scratch marks on her wrists. She looked disheveled and appeared to be shouting and pointing at someone as she was led out of the nightclub by a few concerned looking friends. Whitney seemed to be intoxicated or using other substances as she stumbled to a waiting car ... We're happy to see Whitney back on the scene even if she is acting a little crazy, 'cause I'll admit it's a little more fun to watch.

Not so fun, apparently, on Saturday, when Bauer tweeted:

Her video report has been removed from YouTube, but you can still find it here.

Not to be outdone, our friend Nancy Grace of CNN (this reporter has appeared on her show a few times) suggested this week that someone might have pushed Houston into the tub where she was found submerged and expired Saturday afternoon in a room at the Beverly Hilton hotel:

I'd like to know ... who let her slip or pushed her underneath that water ... who let Whitney Houston go under her water?

Fox News' conservative talker Bill O'Reilly, a.k.a. Bill O'Lie-lly, actually suggested possible suicide:

It is obvious the woman destroyed herself and over the weekend the woman was found dead in a bathtub at a Los Angeles hotel ... The hard truth is that some people will always want to destroy themselves ...

And there you have the definition of "too soon."

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

Tags:

Bill O'Reilly, Hollyscoop, Nancy Grace, pundits, too soon, Whitney Houston

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Youtube Viewer

When her dumb comments went national she managed to get everything taken down including comments from people who just advised her to apologize. Dumb.

LA90014

"When a celebrity dies in L.A., it's a somber moment."LMAO

William Keenan

Fuck Whitney Houston. Another dead junkie loser. Only this time she was killed by Pfizer and not some street pusher. Thank you US Senators for taking another legend from us. After all with your pockets lined with big pharmaceutical cash we the sheeple can trust you to keep up your BS war against drugs while killing us with "safe drugs."

mimsi

Wow. You are a sad, vile spirit. You need a soul.

Christopher Neal

As for Stephanie Bauer, she spoke the truth--nothing wrong with that. The blood dripping down the leg thing? She's calling it like she sees it.

Really?

The point is that she took a lot of pleasure in someone with a history of drug abuse that was clearly in bad shape. "I'll admit it's a little more fun to watch!" is hack writing, at best (there's nothing clever about it, it's just mean-spirited). Even if Whitney Houston hadn't died, it's still over the line & not the least bit clever. The reason people know about it, is because upon Houston's death, the Hollyscoop story was one of the first links up on Google News. People went to the story looking for facts and got this girl, mocking her. Of course, it's not her fault that Whitney Houston died, but she should have the class to sincerely apologize. Quoting her from Facebook at 7:33 last night (7 hours after her "apology"), "I really don't care anymore! Now everyone knows my time and knows I did NOTHING wrong anyway! :)" I think she meant, "knows my name," not "time" but she probably won't be up for any genius grants, anytime soon and Hollyscoop should let this girl go, fast.

Christopher Neal

So "Really," you would rather have all your news sugarcoated? You would like it mediated so as to not be too offensive? Whitney was a mess; this should be a lesson to enablers. If someone is a train wreck than call a spade a spade. Maybe if her Godmother would have grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her and told her to straighten her shit up, she might have faced her demons. I'd like to see an audit of her finances.

Just keepin' it real...

Youtube Viewer

So Steph, if you are so positive you did nothing wrong - why did you first take down all of your comments and then get youtube to take down all of the comments. Please don't say it was out of respect for Whitney Houston's family again. The only one who looked bad was YOU.

Youtube Viewer

What was unbelievable about Stephanie Bauer was when she was busted for saying Whitney Houston was "more fun" messed up, she kept make new and more ridiculous excuses why it was okay. Mainly: everyone else is doing it and I didn't know she was going to die. Also she managed to compare herself to Walter Cronkite and call herself a "highly educated journalist".Finally, when her dumb comments went national she managed to get everything taken down from youtube including comments from her critics and from people who just advised her to apologize. I cannot imagine why a celebrity would ever want to talk to her, she is absolutely CLUELESS.

Really?

Correction. The line was "I'll admit, it's a LOT more fun to watch!" I gave her too much credit.

Really?

Not at all... I don't take issue with 98% of the piece. I'm specifically talking about her last line, "I'll admit it's a little more fun to watch!" when talking about Whitney Houston "acting crazy." There's a huge difference between fact-based reporting & lazy writing that actually revels in someone else's misery. It seems like this girl (or her producer) added a throwaway line that she didn't think twice about until it bit her in the ass. By the way, her friends do her a disservice by telling her she didn't do anything wrong. Instead of learning from this & correcting it in the future, it looks like she'd make the same mistake again (if she's not fired before then). On another note, the Eddie Munster picture's great. I wish I'd used it. I'm actually serious.