Why You Should Care that Amy Winehouse is Dead

Amy Winehouse died. So what? And I'm not talking to fans here or family. These people are understandably upset and saddened by this loss. Truth is, I've listened and enjoyed Amy Winehouse, though I probably couldn't tell you an album title or a favorite song. Amy Winehouse's music isn't particularly my cup of tea, but I respected what she did--fusing cabaret and lounge with hip-hop, looking on the darker side of things, even celebrating them. And to that I say, Thank God that someone was doing it. So, on that sense, for me it's a shame.

Beyond that, that's why you -- person who probably doesn't care about it or like her music -- should care about her death. How many stories in the past 3 to 5 years have we passed by about her "drug abuse" or "recklessness" or "drinking" or "inability to stay sober" etc.? My guess is at least 1000, if not more. And that's as many times as I was nauseated by it. What you put into your body is your choice and your responsibility. And, yes, it can be an illness. However to treat it, as Amy Winehouse was so often treated (I'm looking at you Perez Hilton), as some sort of side-show is incredibly wrong. It's sad when people die and even more melancholy when they die young. But to forget to treat them as people when they are living is even more grotesque.

Hicks has it right. And how Winehouse was treated when alive is a testament to the Puritanical and, yes, sexist horror of the media. Keith Richards publishes a book about snorting his father with cocaine and putting a needle into any vein he can find and we go "Oh, Keith." Winehouse is a tramp, a skank, a whore. Why must everything be perfectly good or pure or morally acceptable to a media that generates its own rules and codes of conduct? Who said that makes any good art? If anything it dilutes it and makes for shitty music.

You should care, because you want to be judged on what you do, rather than by Puritans and rumor-mongers who shill on contrived controversy based on a fictional morality. You should care, because you're a person, too. And we should all be treated as such: glories and foibles together.

So here's to you, Amy. I'm having a glass of wine for you.