“He also doesn’t buy the general notion that everyone today is a tinok shenishba.”
That is reasonable. But the issue with Amy Winehouse was not tinok shenishba but that she had a very serious disease: drug addiction. Her repeated outbreaks of anti-social behavior are quite characteristic of addiction, as was her defiant refusal to do anything about it.
I recently had to attend the funeral of a Jewish drug addict who had died young; he had been a teacher and many former students came. He had a sister who is orthodox and the family sat a full shiva. There was also a suicide in my community a few years ago; the person had only recently spent time in the hospital for depression and there, too, the family sat a full shiva with the approval of the rabbis. Both these were tragic losses of good people. I had just given the man who committed suicide an aliyah the preceding Shabat. Amy Winehouse had tremendous talent and could have used it for good.
I just hope that Amy Winehouse’s death might inspire those who have fallen prey to scourge of drug addition to take action now before they end up like her.