Hypocrites

It appears to me that if you want to be a newspaper journalist, the main characteristics you need to have are a 4 second memory and the ability to be completely and unashamedly hypocritical. In other words, if you can give someone an hour long lecture about the evils of drinking with a double vodka in your hand…and completely forget about it the next day… there’ll be a paper somewhere just dying to snap you up.

Let’s talk about Amy Winehouse, shall we?

Let’s face it, Winehouse was an absolute trainwreck.. Over her career the papers continually described as a talentless junkie and they absolutely loved looking down their noses at her, telling her she should be ashamed of herself and to think of the example she was setting ‘for the children’. The only time Winehouse ever made so much as a blip on my radar was when there was another picture of her falling out of a nightclub or punching someone in the face or having yet another breakdown on stage.

Of course, to read the eight page tribute in the Daily Mirror the day after she died of an overdose, it appears that she suddenly switched from being the drug fueled crazy lady they’d spent years exploiting to a tragically misunderstood genius. Suddenly, she’s not an ‘out of control junkie’, but a ‘brave, headstrong artist who lived life by her own rules.”

My absolute favorite part is when the papers talk about ‘the media’ and the way it cruelly and mercilessly hounded her… somehow managing to forget that they are the media.

It’s like Michael Jackson all over again. The day before he died he was a disgusting, evil pedophile who should be castrated. The day after he died he was the King of Pop, a tragic loss… and the very same people who built careers on writing about he should be burned at the stake were suddenly writing long, heartfelt tributes about him.

So, let me tell it straight: Amy Winehouse was a moderately talented musician who died of an overdose that everyone with at least one working brain cell saw coming. It’s tragic, but she’s not a hero. If anything she was incredibly stupid for throwing her life and career away by getting addicted to drugs.

For me, personally, a drug addicted singer who writes a song about refusing to go to rehab just doesn’t deserve my pity and absolutely shouldn’t be held up as any kind of hero or role model.

As for the papers, well, someone can either be a talentless screeching junkie or a headstrong genius…they can’t be both.

Oh, and to the Mirror in particular: When Amy Winehouse dying of a self inflicted overdose takes up four fifths of your front page, but I have to go to page eight to read about 84 people being massacred in Norway (you know, a story that actually matters)…something is very, very wrong.