Hands up if you share my dismay over the fact that the two Canadians who are best known to the world right now are Rob Ford and Justin Bieber. I leave it to Torontonians to anguish over the antics of their mayor, but the train wreck known as the Bieb seems to keep going from bad to worse.
Hopefully one of the judges he must still face will show some creativity and sentence the kid to pass a basic history exam before he’s allowed outside again. Bad enough that Bieber soiled the memory of Anne Frank. After touring her house in Amsterdam, he speculated that the holocaust victim who is still an inspiration for young girls everywhere might be a Belieber if she were alive today.
This past week Justin was in Tokyo. He was photographed visiting the Yasukuni war shine. If only he had kept his mouth shut, which would have been highly appropriate in such a place. But no, he had offer up the view that Yasukuni was a place of peace and quiet prayer. It honours more than two million Japanese who fought under the Rising Sun flag in World War Two, including more than a dozen of them who were convicted of major war crimes.
Far too many people in Japan just don’t get it, when it comes to acknowledging their history. Obviously Justin Bieber doesn’t “get it” either. Will someone please do whatever it takes to keep him and the paparazzi away from the graves of Canadian soldiers if his travels take him to places like Hong Kong.
Bieber just turned 20, and his antics over the past 12 months should have turned him into a ‘Where are they now’ feature by this time. What is it about bad boys that only seems to make huge numbers of people admire them even more, no matter how outrageous their behaviour?
I’m not sure I even want to know the answer to that one.
I’m Roger Currie
