THREE SAD STORIES, SAD BUT TRUE, ABOUT A GIRL THAT SOME ONCE KNEW…

7/23/11

This morning, I was reading the newspaper stories about the debt ceiling negotiations and the bombing and shooting spree in Norway that killed, at last count, 87 people. Hoping to get some updates on these very major stories, I turned on the CBS radio news at noon. What was the lead story, amid the dance of the dunces in Washington and the tragic murders in Norway? Someone named Amy Winehouse was found dead in her home in London. This “story” was also the lead on the 12:30 news.

There is little doubt that, judging from that “news” flash, that Ms. Winehouse’s story was a tragic one of her inability to deal with her addictions to drugs and alcohol. Admittedly, it is hard to sympathize with someone who, again, judging from the news stories, positively and unabashedly celebrated in “song” the addictions that killed her, but, nonetheless, addiction is a devastating and debilitating (the latter often too weak a word) demonic disease that is, in many cases, far stronger than its victims. Ms. Winehouse deserves our pity and our prayers, even if mixed with a healthy measure of our criticism for her unwillingness to take the steps necessary to deal with her maladies and the example she set for others prone to her disease. But many, many others deserve our pity, prayers, and whatever help we can provide, help that Ms. Winehouse reportedly repeatedly refused. Why is Ms. Winehouse’s sad story apparently so newsworthy when the similar tales of millions of others routinely ignored?

It’s hard to determine which is sadder, Ms. Winehouse’s tragic life or our media’s, and apparently our people’s, decision that her story is somehow more newsworthy than the deaths of scores in Norway and our government’s utter inability to address the problems it, and those who elected it, have created. Maybe we should go one step further by introducing a third baleful aspect of this story: according to this news report, Ms. Winehouse’s “work” has won several Grammies (Grammys?). From what I heard in the story, Ms. Winehouse’s music is, to put it nicely, whiny, tuneless, artificial, and dyspeptic. Yes, I know I sound like my dad complaining about “all that crap you kids listen to” when I was squandering entirely too much time listening to the music of my era (or usually prior eras, as my friends in my formative years can attest, but that is another story), but Ms. Winehouse’s work is simply awful. But the American people (and, people across the globe) apparently like to be aurally assaulted, and Ms. Winehouse's drivel is only one example of our utter disdain for silence or pleasant music or sounds and our strange preference for all noise, all the time, but that, too, is grist for another mill. And that, too, is very sad, or, rather, pathetic and emblematic of the rapid acceleration of our downward spiral into a certain dystopic future.