You may feel like you’ve heard more than enough about gone-slightly-crazy young celebs as of late, but, hey, the “fun” never seems to stop in the world of megastars-not-long-out-of-puberty.
Justin Bieber is the latest celeb making headlines almost every day. Just this morning, the Internet is abuzz with the latest on whether he’ll be tried for egging a neighbor’s house (“EGGS-honeration might be out of the question for Biebs!” declares perezhilton.com). And now, it seems that more than a few want President Obama to kick the singer out of the U.S. Yup, the Canadian pop star has raised such a ruckus in the past little while that a group of Americans finally said “enough is enough” and decided to ask the White House to do something about it. They created a “We the People” petition on the administration’s titular website that asked … well, here let me quote it directly.
We the people of the United States feel that we are being wrongly represented in the world of pop culture. We would like to see the dangerous, reckless, destructive, and drug abusing, Justin Bieber deported and his green card revoked. He is not only threatening the safety of our people but he is also a terrible influence on our nation’s youth. We the people would like to remove Justin Bieber from our society.
Now, just in case you’ve heard a slight-but-annoyingly constant buzz about this kid but haven’t been keeping a close eye on him (you’re not a True Belieber, in other words), let’s take a quick look at a his trip down the lane of youthful decline.
Most people know that Bieber hit the scene in 2009 after a music producer spotted his video clips posted on YouTube and decided to make the babyfaced kid a star. And it worked. Young girls everywhere were soon head-over-heels. But with stardom came … issues.
By late ’09 and early 2010, he was already rubbing elbows with the famous and looking up to rap stars for guidance. There were rumblings here and there that Bieber might not be headed in the right direction, but it wasn’t until 2013 that things really started tumbling. Tats, crotch-grabbing and entourage strutting became the Bieb’s public M.O. And then there were squabbles with Paparazzi, spitting at fans, urinating in public and spewing epitaphs at a former President. By the end of that year Bieber was caught on camera sneaking out of a Brazilian brothel wrapped in a sheet. And then he officially tweeted his retirement.
That didn’t mean he was retiring from getting himself in tight spots, however. In early 2014, in addition to the whole egging incident, he had his house raided for a stash of drugs. And the day after that We the People petition went up, Bieber was arrested for failing a sobriety test after racing a Lamborghini through some residential streets in Florida. Flailing and screaming upon his arrest, the bleary eyed young performer profanely wondered why the cops were persecuting him so. Why indeed.
Now that kick-him-out petition on the President’s virtual desk has about 250,000 signatures from folks all across the country. And it likely has quite a large number of former Beliebers scratching their heads and wondering what happened to their beloved cute pop star.
To me, the answer to that question is pretty self-evident: Fame, money, alcohol and drugs. It’s a potentially lethal mixture for anybody at any age. It can kill a career and it can literally kill―as fans and relatives of some recently deceased music and film stars can attest. It makes you wonder why so many of we mere celeb-adoring mortals seem to desire it so.
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