To the surprise of no one with the slightest sense of irony, singer Amy Winehouse, who earned a spot on iPods everywhere for saying no, no, no to rehab, died last weekend of an apparent overdose. Earlier this year, two other (less famous) celebrities, alumni of Dr. Drew Pinsky’s “Celebrity Rehab,” also died unsurprisingly from presumed overdoses: Mike Starr and Jeff Conway. Starr, formerly of the band Alice in Chains, had at one point achieved six months clean—an eternity in sobriety; but, then, it’s an insidious thing, this disease. And, lately, so is the response to it. Over on The Huffington Post, Charles Karel Bouley (“KGO Radio and Syndicated Host, Stand Up, Entertainer, Author, Actor, Dog Walker”—who doesn’t blog for HuffPo?) spends many thousands of words pondering the cruelty of the “general public” who “pass judgment on Winehouse, or any of the other host of celebrities that left too soon because of drugs, alcohol, fast cars or a myriad of other ways to die.” Let’s break that down: We, the general public, are chastised for our—un-cited—judgments of Winehouse and those other celebrities who died in, well, myriad other ways. “Those critics are not artists,” he huffs. How perfectly annoying. It’s bad enough that Bouley cannot produce one example of this supposed mass intolerance of fast cars (?!) and the like, but then he has the gall to be callous toward the “general public”—none of whom, apparently, are artists. Talk about passing judgment. “What we really should be asking,” Bouley declares, “is, why artists?”
more from Sacha Z. Scoblic at TNR here.