I feel bad for Justin Bieber. He's not without some talent. I mean, whatever he does someone thought it was good enough to not only produce a record with him but to set his career off into the stratosphere. It's what all young up and comers want, isn't it? And to get there they have to believe they suddenly deserve all of the accolades and praise that goes with it. I mean, it must be difficult to go from being a cute kid who can sing at a school talent show to being an international superstar with a myriad of endorsements for all manner of things you never even thought about previously. And you have to deliver because a lot of people have invested time and money into your success and they stand to make a lot of money off your back. So, it all must be true, right? He must be a superstar. He must be the most talented thing to come along in ages. He must be the cutest, the hottest, the most creative, the best dancer, ad nauseum. It's the basic principle that if you tell a child they are stupid, they will act stupidly. If you tell a child he is the bombdiggity, he will become the bombdiggity. Yet, we don't really want him to BE the bombdiggity. We want him to be the sweet, innocent kid found on Youtube. So when he does something completely self indulgent like get mad at a club when someone in his entourage cannot get in or leave a crazy message at the Anne Frank museum about how he hopes she would have been a fan of his, we get our undies in a bundle and start saying things like, "He's believing all that hype!" and "He thinks too much of himself!" Well, of course he does! We made him that way. And now comes the "fun" part - we get to bring him down a notch or two! I mean, after all, who does he think he is?
The best way to accomplish the derailing of one's career is to start behaving in the way that your public has been demanding it. That then gives the public the fuel needed to orchestrate the demise of one's career. You see, Mr. Bieber is not alone in the fact that the same press exposure that called him "cute", "talented", "sweet" and "best" are now circling him like sharks to report his next blunder. It happens all the time. And we revel in it. We want to bear witness to the fall of those celebrities we place on those towering pedestals. Look at Lindsey Lohan. It seems the only reason she is even in the news these days is because of her tumbling off that pedestal. We cluck our tongues and tsk, tsk and opine loudly about how "we saw this one coming" and it all makes us feel superior in our humdrum lives. Its like watching a train wreck - as disgusting as it can be, we cannot look away.
The road to stardom is littered with the remains of these teen idols and flash celebrities. It's horrible to see them trying to spin the stories back in their favor just to be shot down again and again until they finally, hopefully, fade away. Those that stay in the struggle are the saddest because they never regain the momentum and are usually lost in the world of B movies, straight to DVD films, and opening acts at county fairs. I've never really understood why we do this but it's happened time and again like some kind of sick national past time. We just can't let our idols get too big.
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