There Are No Idiots.

I've been chastised for calling Amy Winehouse an idiot.   I'm heartless.  I don't know her.  She had problems.  I'll admit she was pathetic in a forgivable way, mainly due to how much I've enjoyed her music.  And perhaps she wasn't properly succored by those around her.  Regardless, I wouldn't put her on any list of clever people in any category.

If she was not an idiot, what was she, I ask?  Depressed, addicted, and exploited.  I don't think the dead famous can be anything else.  Why do we excuse famous people for their actions?  Are they so different from the rest of us?  Apparently, yes.  According to a celebrity psychologist often on TV, studies suggest that people who seek fame are different from the rest of us and more likely to be the sorts of people who do dumb stuff.   A rather paradoxical statement.

So, in order to have a heart, I have to hold celebrities to lower standards than I hold cashiers, bus drivers, pilots, and pretty much everyone else.   Idiots are only people who annoy us and are not famous.  Your non-famous neighbor who drinks too much and leaves beer bottles all over the yard, he's an idiot.  No reason to cut him some slack because he has trouble saying no to yet another beer.  The plain jane who gets piercings and skips school to take drugs -- she's an idiot rather than a girl having trouble dealing with her banal middle-class existence.  The bitter woman at the counter who gives us a hassle at the end of a long line at the airport -- idiot.  We're certainly not going to consider she's been suffering from low grade depression since she was a teenager and forgive her her rudeness.  Nope, idiots all the way through.

I'd like to see the people who think I'm callous for calling Amy Winehouse an idiot apply their sanctimonious standards to all the annoying and idiotic non-famous people they come across.  Perhaps there are no idiots at all, only the misunderstood.  Instead of the finger, give that idiot who cuts you in line a hug next time.  He needs it.  He's just more fragile than the rest of us waiting our turns.

 

Comments

[IronMike]

She is/was an idiot. I am only sad because I wanted her to come out with more albums. I was overjoyed to find out, after her death, that she had an album before that one you found, Back in Black. The album before that is Frank. And its wonderful. I have it on the iPod now, so it'll download to the computer as soon as I get back.
L,
DH

[MTheads]

Her death is very tragic. I wish she could have gotten the correct help or imagined life in some other way. But she chose or couldn't think much beyond her immediate emotional upheavals.

L, MT

[North Face Store]

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