Winehouse's home movie

What happened

A British tabloid newspaper on Tuesday published photos of troubled soul-singer Amy Winehouse apparently smoking crack cocaine in a home video. The newspaper, The Sun, also posted clips from the 19-minute video on its website. In one, Winehouse says, “I just took about six Valium.” (CNN) Fans left messages on Winehouse’s website begging her to get help. Her father, Mitch Winehouse, said he was already worried about his Grammy-nominated daughter. “She says she’s OK, so no problems,” he said. “All that picture shows is what everybody knew anyway.” (ThisisLondon.co.uk)

What the commentators said

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This seals it, said the Sydney, Australia, Daily Telegraph. Amy Winehouse is “out of control.” This footage has “laid bare the Back To Black singer’s squalid lifestyle,” showing her stumbling around, wearing a “grubby vest” and “surrounded by junkies and parasitic hangers-on.” No wonder the family and rare true friends are so worried that the “dazed and confused” singing sensation “could soon end up dead.”

The Winehouse in that video was indeed a “dead woman walking,” said Jane Moore in the London Sun. Surely this is all the proof that should be necessary to have her committed to a hospital to get the help she so desperately needs. Something has to be done to “hammer into her thick skull” that she’s destroying her career, and her body, with this poison.

It’s not exactly a shocker to see photos of Amy Winehouse doing drugs, said Stuart Heritage in the blog Hecklerspray. What has her fans so worried is that this time she was allegedly smoking crack. Crack is “so hard to kick,” and it’s the drug that reportedly was to blame for Whitney Houston’s descent from “bestselling powerballad diva” to “incapacitated toothless ruin.” And “nobody wants to see Amy Winehouse turn into Whitney Houston.”