Courtney Love is the white Whitney Houston. Houston had a considerably higher profile, making a splash in the 80s with her pyramid perm and octaroon beauty, she looked white enough to be unthreatening to the dominant culture, yet still was a descendant of R&B royalty. When she sang the powerhouse hit “I’m Every Woman” we all believed her. She made love with Kevin Costner on the big screen, the whitest dude outside of the John Birch Society, and made a huge hit out of “My Bodyguard,” not to be confused with the brilliant ’70s film starring Chris Makepeace. Her follow-up film, “The Preacher’s Wife,” was not so successful, possibly because she was paired with Denzel Washington and in the unwritten laws of race in Hollywood, her “Imitation of Life” identity became tarnished, as in her cinematic union with another Black actor, made her darker by proxy. Whitney didn’t get better, as she started on a downward spiral, and unraveling of her ‘passable’ status that was unfairly begun by her marriage to a self-diagnosed ‘bad boy’ with his own ‘prerogative,’ Bobby Brown, a marginally criminal drug addict, who happened to be a Black man, making the American public realize that in fact, Whitney, despite all her attempts, unintentional and unfairly presented, that she was not white, and thereafter fell from grace in the glare of the media spotlight. Now she is considered a visual joke, a train wreck. All her glorious talent seems to have not made a dent in the creepy culture vulture den and there is never anything to report any longer about her except for her inexplicable forays into Middle Eastern countries and bailing her husband out of jail.
Love, also of inestimable talent, is slightly different in her history, yet she is considered a nutcase of the highest order in the same Whitney-esque fashion. She shows up and is photographed as unflatteringly as possible time and time again, emaciated from drugs and misquoted to the point of mania, in order to punish the fact that she is a successful woman, despite her husband’s tragic end and her own personal lifetime bout with narcotics.
Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain is without a doubt one of music’s most influential figures and his legacy will live forever in the annals of rock history, but in the talent department, Love is certainly no slouch. Her band, Hole, is a magnificent display of female angst and sexual predatory power. I love Courtney because she is unapologetically herself and intimidatingly intelligent despite all the media attempts to make her less so. Her latest war with the former members of Nirvana are a good example of how the media will immediately side with the boys against her, as she is vilified, considered a shrill, unbelievable harpie. It is often speculated “If he had to be married to her, no wonder he shot himself in the head.” Facts notwithstanding, no one was willing to side with her, in the tug of war of unreleased tracks, Kurt’s farewell to a cruel world. By rights, as executor of Cobain’s estate, Love owns the music. She may not have written the songs, she may not have been a supermodel rock wife, she did drugs with Kurt, but she also was trying to get him into detox. Love desperately tried to save Kurt’s life. Kurt did not want help, and as we now know, did not want to be Kurt anymore. Cobain’s music lives on, even if he is no longer on the earth, and Love is responsible for the maintenance and respectable distribution of her late husband’s legacy.
The latest Courtney conundrum has her facing possible sentencing and the loss of her daughter with Cobain, Frances Bean. The drugs she is accused of possessing are Hydrocondone and Oxycontin, the exact same deadly combination that got Rush Limbaugh in such trouble a mere five weeks ago. She brilliantly quipped, “It wasn’t like I was shoplifting or anything.” Of course, the media spin on it was that she was just being her loony Vagina Dentata self, and what could anyone expect from her really. So if we prosecute the abusers of drugs, why is it not done with equal measure? Rush Limbaugh, on the opposite side of the political spectrum, did the same drugs, likely, more of them, at least according to the sources that he procured them from. Why does Rush not face the same predicament? What is the difference? The inequality here is unspeakably clear. Rush, once out of rehab will have a job waiting for him as the highest rated radio talk show host in America. Most likely, this scandal will make his popularity soar, as more will tune in just to see if he will fall back off the pharmaceutical wagon again. Why are we threatening to take away Courtney Love’s child, as Eminem proudly displays a tattoo of a Vicodin pill on his arm? Double standards rule, even in counterculture, where they are supposedly above that, which makes the whole shebang all the more criminal. Free Courtney. Maybe get her another nanny, but free Courtney.