Amy Winehouse Haters, Please Save the Sanctimony

Take your smug criticism elsewhere: Mary Elizabeth Williams
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 26, 2011 6:00 PM CDT
Amy Winehouse Haters, Please Save the Sanctimony
Amy Winehouse in 2007.   (AP Photo/Keystone, Steffen Schmidt, File)

Mary Elizabeth Williams has heard about enough from the holier-than-thou folks carping about Amy Winehouse coverage. You've heard it all: Winehouse got what she deserved, I told you so, or why waste time on her when people are dying in Norway, Africa, fill in the blank. "God forbid a young woman's death not turn into an opportunity to announce to the world your cleverness in predicting it all, the unworthiness of someone who had the disease of addiction to merit sympathy, or your outrage because apparently you've been too engrossed in Somalia to give a toss," writes Williams at Salon.

At least concede the possibility that Winehouse actually meant something to the people grieving her death. "It is outrageously insulting to presume that anyone's response to a news story—whether it's a celebrity death or a royal wedding—is somehow trivial because it doesn't fall on the same place on your own personal worthiness scale." Winehouse was a part of our pop culture, and pop culture does matter. "If you're too above it all to care, fine. But it doesn't make you nobler than anyone else." Read the full column here. (More Amy Winehouse stories.)

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