Sort of political Monday

I'm having a hard time figuring out why anyone sees any significance that Amy Winehouse is dead
This death was so predictable.

Everything about Winehouse stunk of moral failure. Here is what I wrote about her last October:

Symbols are more than buttons we can take off or put on. No one can do like some Lewis Carrol character and declare that their symbols gestures and clothing mean only what they want them to mean. It matters how we wear the symbols but the symbols mean something. The clothes, make up and tattooes on Amy Winehouse in the video for "I don't want to go to rehab" tell us pretty clearly that she should go to rehab. 

It would be wrong to suggest that Winehouse had poor impulse control because that would be to suggest that she had any impulse control at all.

The big question here is why did anyone take her seriously in the first place. Because she had talent? Lots of people have talent equal to hers. And her music was not original but was rather derivative.

Let me suggest a couple of reasons why Winehouse succeeded in becoming a star while many other equally talented singers did not.

1. First and foremost, she succeeded because she had a  desperate craving for attention. Her "success" was odd in that it wasn't any desire for happiness that got her where she was. She proclaimed her deep unhappiness loudly to anyone and everyone, most notably through her music.
2. Related to the above, she was so desperate for success she was willing to be a shameless exhibitionist to get it. She was willing to sublimate any needs or desires of her own to be the kind of woman that other people like to look at. Not because she was sexy—although she was—but because a lot of people get an especially ugly sort of erotic thrill watching a sexually eligible woman degrade herself.

But here is another thing about her. Did you notice what a superior, moralistic twerp she was? No really. Look at the video below (I apologize for the title she gave it.). It's a little painful to watch now because so much of it obviously applies to Winehouse herself but she really was making some sort of statement here and the people who bought this music bought it because they crave this sort of moralizing:




And it's not just her. We the public just gobble up moralistic preening from celebrities whose personal lives do not even come close to justifying there presuming to have anything to say to anyone about morality.

That people such as Winehouse become big stars says something disturbing about our culture.The question is not, 'What was wrong with her?' The answer to that is obvious and commonplace. There are people slowly dying the same way within a mile or so of where I am now. No, the question is, 'What is wrong with us that such a sad, sick person was a significant voice in our culture?'