I never understood the hate for Justin Bieber. After listening to his single "Baby" too many times on the radio and in dance clubs, I think it's clear that his music is bad — but bad for the same reasons that you might dislike a song by Britney Spears, or Ke$ha, or Nelly.
For sure, lyrics like
"I'll buy you anything / I'll buy you any ring / Cause I'm in pieces / Baby fix me"
-"Baby," Justin Bieber ft. Ludacris
are 1,000,000 times horrible. But let's face it. They're not too different from the lazy rhymes and filler metaphors that you get with most other pop stars today:
"What you got boy is hard to find / I think about it all the time // I'm all strung out, my heart is fried"
-"Your Love Is My Drug," KeSha
[My heart is fried? Is that what happens when you get lovesick?]
So, this is all to say that we shouldn't dislike Justin Bieber for being uniquely bad, or uniquely undeserving of his massive celebrity. The shallow music, the carefully curated marketing artifice, the whole industry that has been built around his personal brand — none of these are new phenomena.
But what can we judge, then? Well, for one thing, I think that there's only so much that you can do to separate out someone's moral character from their art: while deficiencies in the former don't necessarily affect the quality of the latter, deficiencies in someone's character ought to at least make us pause:
* If you knew that some popular musician repeatedly beat their partner, would you still listen to their songs?
* If you knew that some openly racist public figure was also a first-rate novelist, would you read their work?
This brings us back to Justin Bieber. In an interview with Rolling Stone that's hitting newsstands later this week, Bieber reveals that he is anti-choice. He also goes on to say that he doesn't believe in abortion in cases of rape, because providence and fate apparently dictate that we should just let women suffer. Here's the full excerpt from Rolling Stone:
"He does have a solid opinion on abortion. "I really don't believe in abortion," Bieber says. "It's like killing a baby?" How about in cases of rape? "Um. Well, I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason."
A number of media commentators have already weighed in on this controversial statement, with more than a few saying that we should give Bieber a free pass for not having a better publicist. But that kind of assessment is the height of inane punditry: it's like saying that we should forgive Chris Brown for committing relationship violence because he didn't have a good enough fixer to hide it.
Ultimately, the important fact is this: during a high-profile public interview, Justin Bieber went on record against abortion rights, including abortion care in the most tragic of circumstances.
Looking at my Twitter stream right now, I see that some people are defending Bieber by saying that "he is entitled to his opinion." Well, yes: I do not object to the reality that Justin Bieber can form, validate, and express thoughts. At the same time, consumers have every right to indict members of the pop culture A-list for holding seriously wrong opinions. If we progressives expect our politicians and our titans of business and industry to share our values, then why not also our artists and cultural icons? Why should we give someone like Justin Bieber critical immunity on matters of social ethics — especially given that he is a star who has the captive eyes and ears of billions of young people around the world?
Because it's not like Bieber just revealed his views on, say, his favorite hair gel. To me, stating that you "really don't believe in abortion" in (apparently) all circumstances automatically puts you in the same boat of unreasonableness as those who hold anti-gay, racist, sexist, or other bigoted and extreme views. I just hope that Bieber changes his mind eventually.
At the end of the day, it's one thing to disrespect someone's aesthetic sense. While I cringe when I imagine stadium-sized throngs crying for Justin Bieber as if he is the second coming of John, Paul, George, and Ringo (all rolled into one), I'm not hurt by it. I can tune out these cultural rituals in favor of something else.
It's another thing, though, to promote an opinion that disrespects the rights, agency, dignity, and freedom of choice of your fellow human person — and promote this opinion from one of the largest celebrity platforms of all time. If you're going to dislike Justin Bieber, dislike him for exactly this: his pathetic sense of morality.