Anybody in a horrible state can evoke compassion, no matter how she got there. That's a sort of normal human response, and if you aren't capable of that separated from assessing responsibility and blame for the condition then you are a little bit less than human.

Go ahead, parse the condition for its causes and measure-out responsibility, but do that after you have felt a little pang of sympathy.

It's only a step from that kind of small callousness to blithely accepting torture because it's only terrorists we're torturing.

man, she probably has so many awesome stories

steve wrote:It's only a step from that kind of small callousness to blithely accepting torture because it's only terrorists we're torturing.

That's tortured logic, Steve. No pun intended.

Fuck her and her rich kid husband pretending to be 1950's Gypo's. I hope he gets ten years for being a bullying cunt and she dies and gets off my BBC news front page.

My patience has gone with the UK idolising these fucking reprobates.

Media has truly died when they are reporting that she passed out from a "mystery illness" whilst doing "admin".

And if that makes me less than human, so be it!

blinduncledallas wrote:Fuck her and her rich kid husband pretending to be 1950's Gypo's. I hope he gets ten years for being a bullying cunt and she dies and gets off my BBC news front page.

My patience has gone with the UK idolising these fucking reprobates.

Media has truly died when they are reporting that she passed out from a "mystery illness" whilst doing "admin".

And if that makes me less than human, so be it!

Mate, if you edit this down you can get:

Fuck her... Gypo's... cunt...reprobates...

I genuinely am shocked by the level of anger towards this woman. What for, for being talented, a bit foolish, a bit melodramatic and drug addicted? For being on the BBC website too often? I use the BBC website daily and find it very easy to dodge her stories.

So she's popular, with the people and the media showing a ghoulish interest in her self-destruction? How is that hurting you? It is not as this ghoulishness is a particularly new phenomena.

Gypo's: the connotations might be different elsewhere, but to me that usage is dubious, particularly given the ongoing discrimination against the Roma community.

I think that Adam has put it nicely.

sparky wrote:and the media showing a ghoulish interest in her self-destruction? How is that hurting you? It is not as this ghoulishness is a particularly new phenomena.

But there is something particularly ghoulish about this specific case. She's only 24.

millions wrote:

Yngwie Einstein wrote:]I hardly call this a tragedy when she is the instrument of her own demise.

Actually, that is pretty much the exact definition of a tragedy.

You have a good point. But when I think of tragedy, I think of someone having some calamitous event happen to them, not tragedy in the Shakespeare sense. Instead, I think of someone caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, say like someone getting killed by a drunk driver while crossing the street, or even greater tragedies like tsunami victims or members of the opposition in Zimbabwe. Drug addiction rates a shrug from me. So ordinary. So avoidable.

I understand that addiction is a disease and you just can't quit like you can flip a switch. I too have relatives and friends/acquaintances that have permanently screwed up their lives, some having been institutionalized. And I've seen how that has impacted their families. But they've made those choices and their lives have become pathetic because of that and there isn't much anyone else can do about it. It's sad and it's a sad existence.

I don't wish Amy ill, but I'll save my compassion for people who really have suffered at the hands of greater disasters. If that leads me down the slippery slope to supporting terrorists, then I'll buy each of her fans here a beer.

I wonder, if you switched you the name Amy Winehouse with Liz Phair if you would still feel compassion.

Yngwie Einstein wrote:I wonder, if you switched you the name Amy Winehouse with Liz Phair if you would still feel compassion.

Yes.

Jesus, why would I hate Liz Phair or Amy Winehouse?

There are genuine shitheads in this world who are actively destructive, lots of them.

connor wrote:

sparky wrote:and the media showing a ghoulish interest in her self-destruction? How is that hurting you? It is not as this ghoulishness is a particularly new phenomena.

But there is something particularly ghoulish about this specific case. She's only 24.

You're right that it is unusual in that we are not very used to watching a 24 year old go off the rails so spectacularly (I'd caveat that with comparison to Britney - a friend in a music publishing firm was telling me how fixated his LA sales colleagues were with the two, effectively running a two woman dead pool on them). However, new breeds of special ghoulishness seem to have popped up regularly in the media throughout my lifetime, for example the various manifestations of child-paedo-terror. If we had the time and inclination, I'm sure that we could go back to Victorian times and make a charming little timeline of the printed ghastly. The stuff around the Jack the Ripper case was hardcore, from what I saw.

The Winehouse Circus is a new fixation, and a special one if not unique; but if we're going to stay sane in the modern age, we will need to either develop a taste for this kind of sick news, or just learn to skip it. With current media distribution technologies, totally avoiding hearing of these individuals is more difficult, but we don't have to consume it.

Regardless, this ghoulishness is not something that comes from her - the scandal hungry public and media make for that. I don't think that she has been guilty of anything other than perhaps a little weak and a little stupid. So yes, if I think about her, I do feel sorry.

is anyone watching the Mandela-fest on VH1? amy winehouse was just on and she looked good for the most part, but i noticed that when she performs her eyes are as vacant as a stripper on xanax...