LOL, Whitney isn't remotely in the same class as MJ. Granted nobody really is, but considering she wasn't even the biggest female pop star of her generation (that would be Madonna by some distance) you're really showing your parochialism here.
I've addressed
these points and
more in the O&E Maradona thread, but to recap:
- I doubt my earliest name familiarity with Pelé vs. Maradona (as an old millennial to boot) is an outlier.
- Those polls and "studies" are very dubious as they tend to look at biased samples to begin with. (
Diana's ranking in these polls is probably my "favorite" example.)
- As a general rule sports (yes even football) take a back seat to pop culture at large which at its most democratic transcends national and cultural boundaries.
Expanding on that last point, I like to browse international media following a big news event and I can tell you that the current coverage of Maradona's life and career, while indeed remarkable in scope, doesn't quite compare to the historic earthquake that was Michael Jackson's death. Case in point: I'm already seeing a dearth of Maradona links/articles on the main pages of Baidu/QQ (China), Yahoo! Japan, Naver (South Korea), Indiatimes, Yandex.ru, Tribunnews.com (Indonesia), Sabq (Saudi Arabia), Daily Post (Nigeria) and their ilk - and that's even when football is one of the trending topics - while MJ seemed to pop up nonstop for days if not weeks on these sites not long after TMZ got its biggest scoop ever. And unsurprisingly football isn't the dominant sport in most of these countries.
I understand this isn't an exactly fair comparison as Jackson was most likely the biggest superstar the world has ever seen, but let's say the news breaks that a (younger) Paul McCartney has met an untimely demise of his own. Would that lead to a similar amount of media attention and public outpouring? I think so, though it's an admittedly unprovable assertion.
And it's hard to see anyone of more recent vintage commanding such a wide audience today. I suppose Trump comes close as the guy is a walking news generator - I'll confess I was too shocked and horrified to do my usual media roundup that fateful night in November 2016 - but I keep returning to this eye-opening exchange I once had with an old dorm mate from Ghana who told me that many Africans can't even recognize POTUS or the pope by face while pretty much everyone knows who MJ (the moonwalker, though I think my bud also included the other one) or Madonna is. Of course I understand GWB's successors are pop culture icons in their own right that Bush never was, but many people just don't pay enough attention to politics to begin with and its innate division and partisanship all but precludes the possibility of universal appeal.
Most importantly, though, Jackson's best songs - "
Billie Jean" above all, but also "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," "Beat It," "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "Bad," "The Way You Make Me Feel," "Smooth Criminal" and "Black or White," just to name a few he penned himself - are timeless pop masterpieces that will be played, covered and imitated for countless generations to come. And of course we all have our favorite Beatles tunes that we know by heart. That's their true legacy which will outlive just about all athletes past and present - including, yes, even Maradona, Pelé, Jordan, Messi, Ronaldo (either one), Tiger, Bolt, Phelps, Federer, Serena, King and their peers in our increasingly diverse culture.
Diego's drug addiction was most likely a factor, but cardiac arrest could be due to a bunch of things and barring a clear link it's wise to exercise more caution.
Whitney's was obviously a more open-and-shut case, but the
Whitney documentary recently dropped this bombshell* that accused Houston's cousin Dee Dee Warwick of sexually abusing Whitney and her brother Gary while babysitting them. (Alas Sissy Houston, the family matriarch, reportedly
disowned her son for making his allegation public before bringing it to their attention.) The film goes on to suggest that the experience possibly scarred her for life, and while that's admittedly speculative I doubt it's much more so than the current attribution of Maradona's death to drug abuse.
*And I use that word very deliberately. When I saw the doc in a cinema there were these two guys who were annoyingly chatty for most of the screening, but even they were stunned into silence when the film began broaching the sexual assault allegation.