Justin Bieber recently visited the Anne Frank house and wrote this in the guestbook:
"Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber."
People are pretty upset about it, but I think the critics have been too harsh.
1) He could have said "I know she would have been a belieber," but he used the word "hopefully." So he wasn't totally arrogant, or at least showed restraint.
2) I don't think it's a bad thing to hope that someone you respect would be a fan of yours and appreciate your work. I think it's pretty normal.
3) Justin Bieber isn't really an artist, he's a pop star. He's a product of a very lucrative and very influential system. From a dangerously young age he has been conditioned to believe that it is a good thing to have fans. His career has been built around growing and satisfying a fan base. Pointing fingers at him for assuming an entertainer-fan relationship with the late Anne Frank may not be fair considering so many of us have condoned the system through which he engages the world: a system in which the entertainer-fan relationship has possibly become the most significant relationship in the life of a very young man. I don't think we can play innocent.
I think it's great that people are discussing the appropriateness of Bieber's guestbook note, I don't think it was totally appropriate, but it's naive and unfair to put all the blame on Bieber.
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