A Whitney Houston meme Chris Rock shared on Instagram recently turned into controversy thanks to a caption the comedian wrote to accompany it, and it’s drawn fierce criticism from Bobby Brown.
In the since-deleted post, the comedian uploaded a meme that featured a screenshot of a straight-faced Houston with sunglasses over her eyes during a 1990 interview.
“Me sitting in a meeting that could’ve been an email,” the text above the image read.
But what caused an issue was the joke Rock made in the caption.
“Hurry up I got crack to smoke,” it read.
The backlash against the joke was swift, as the post quickly spread beyond Rock’s account and onto other celebrity news Instagram pages. So while the post was removed from the comic’s page, fans still had room to weigh in elsewhere.
“Serious low blow. And disrespectful.”
“@chrisrock that was too low my brother. Take this down. I am extremely offended. Respect the Legend.”
“Everyone has a struggle including you. Very disrespectful to the one who has transitioned on. Take it down! Very offensive.”
“I agree it was in poor taste let that women spirit rest.”
Before the post was deleted, however, Brown, who was married to Houston from 1992 to 2007, leaped in the comments section to criticize Rock’s joke.
“During this time of women empowerment you chose to use your time to try and humiliate our QUEEN!!!” Brown fired off in one comment.
In another he said, “I thought you was a friend of the family.”
Houston struggled with drug addiction throughout her life. She famously declared in a 2002 interview on ABC’s “Primetime”, “Crack is cheap. I make too much for me to ever smoke crack … I don’t do crack. I don’t do that. Crack is whack.”
Still, the star adddressed her drug woes and asserted she had control over it at the time.
“I’m not as excited anymore about it. … It was new, I partied, and it’s done,” she said before declining to state whether or not she would remain clean from drugs.
By February 2012, however, the star, who spent time in and out of rehab throughout her career, was discovered dead in the bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel at age 42. Houston’s toxicology report revealed she had traces of cocaine in her blood system when she died of accidental drowning. The singer’s autopsy disclosed her hotel room was littered with drug paraphernalia, including a “small spoon with a white crystal-like substance in it and a rolled up piece of white paper.”
