A couple of years ago I wrote about lowering the age at which drinking should be legal, my claim was that if you are old enough to decide to join the army, you are old enough to buy a beer.
Well, if you are old enough to work 300 days a year, you are old enough to tell the world to stop annoying you every time you move. The relentless pressure and bad press Justin Bieber is being forced to suffer through is an insult and it is dangerous. A self-fulfilling prophesy of jealousy and hate against a man who single handedly props up an entire Bieber industry.
I have read every thing Justin has been accused of doing and the only thing that crossed the line was keeping an audience waiting two hours. Every single complaint otherwise has been sustained bullshit. He is a pop star, he isn't Jesus Christ. If Justin is so bad what has he done that is so bad? What is so incredibly out of control? And even if it was incredibly out of control, what business is it of ours?
Is the litmus test for pop stars whether they smoke pot? Really? For a 19 year old? So what if he drinks? Or gets tats? Or loses it on a press that won't give him one seconds peace? And how is it his fault if his fans are, well, fanatics? Why is the world shocked, or disgusted, when he acts, at the very worst, and probably, a lot better than anybody else would in his position?
The truth is Bieber has been under relentless pressure since he was fifteen years old, and if the nonstop pressure of a work ethic which should have been illegal wasn't enough, and it wasn't, the entire adult world then gang up on him. What the hell is that? Is there no sense of proportion? Where is the heroin? The pregnant twelve year old girls? The brawls in clubs? Instead the press watches his every move and the world is judging it.
This is all part of the 21st Century assault on teenagers. There seems to be a cynical older generation claiming, we had all the good stuff so you don't have to try it. With no money and no war, with nothing worth fighting for, the current generation is completely sucker punched. They are perhaps the most alienated generation around because they are the most indifferent generation around, there is a generation gap and Bieber's generation are on the wrong side of it.
Which leads me back to Bieber. Teens today consider bulimia an act of rebellion, everything fits into its own world and cyberspace has changed the social contract. When anybody acts up in the slightest, it is blown completely out of proportion because there is nothing else and no one else. When I was a teen, I'd stock up on speed and drink till I threw up on Friday nights. Imagine if Bieber did that? Imagine if Bieber had the flu, and threw up on the sidewalk? The world would come to a standstill.
There is a danger and a stupidity to what the press is doing to Justin Bieber. He doesn't have to be a nice guy, he doesn't have to be humble, if the worst you've got is Justin smoking a joint, go away and leave him alone. Go pick on someone your own size.