Of Butterflies and Wheels
Almost 41 years ago, Mick Jagger was arrested, tried and sentenced to imprisonment for the illegal possession of four amphetamines without a prescription. While he was on bail awaiting his appeal, this newspaper took up his cause in a leading article entitled, in a line taken from Alexander Pope, “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”
It was not the custom of The Times then, or now, to devote a substantial section of its space here to the saga of pop singers, no matter how famous. However, William Rees Mogg, as the Editor, decided that the matter had been so discussed among the public and that the circumstances involved were sufficiently unusual that it would be appropriate for him to comment on the merits of the sentence. To the surprise of many, The Times came to the opinion that the Rolling Stone had been treated harshly and unfairly. …
Four decades on, the case of Amy Winehouse is very different. She might not be the superstar that Jagger was in the 1960s but she is a figure of considerable prominence and was the bestselling British recording artist last year.
Yesterday, her picture was cast across newspapers as she apparently consumed a gruesome cocktail of crack, Ecstasy and Valium. Even if the authenticity of these photographs is open to (faint) discussion, the descent into drug dependency that they illustrate is surely not for challenge. It is but another example of the extraordinary open self-destruction of this human being. …
The case made for Jagger was that the State’s overreaction was in danger of destroying an artist. For Winehouse, the opposite is true. The State’s actions could save a great talent. She desperately needs to be brought into rehabilitation and, this time, to stay put there for weeks if not months. The means to that end have to be found.
I just think it’s amazing, that these two, Mick Jagger and Amy Winehouse, have done their thing in public, splashed across the cover of The Sun, and meanwhile Britney Spears is all over the tabloids while everyone in her life tries to get her help, and yet, in quiet, without anyone knowing but a few of his friends that it was at all likely to happen, just as this editorial goes to the printers, Heath Ledger and all his talent just goes out like a light. So, read it with that in mind.
Update (friggin finally, stupid server):
It’s the lost interview. Sorry, if he was acting so, ah, newsworthy, why was the interview, ah, lost? Now journalists are cluck-clucking “oh well we always knew.” Yeah well maybe you should have “journaled” it and maybe someone could have tried to help?
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