Teachable moment from the Beebs

Thank you, Justin Beiber, for a teachable moment.
Our 5 year old Cali girl loves Justin Beiber and has been crushing on him for about a year now. Over the last few days, Jimmie and I decided, with all the negative news surrounding Justin, that it was time to have a talk with Cali regarding her “boyfriend”. However, I didn’t want the conversation to be “Cali you can’t like Justin anymore because we say so” because in my mind, if we fast forward that conversation 10 years, we will have driven her straight to the bad boys to spite her parents. So I explained to Cali that although I realize that Justin isn’t her really real boyfriend, he has been making a lot of bad decisions and that I would hope that in the future when she does have real boyfriends, that she would pick boys with much better character because she is better than that to have a boyfriend that makes bad choices. She was sad at first and we told her we would give her a few days to say goodbye to her Justin Beiber posters (which she kisses regularly lol) and I told her we would find her a new “boyfriend”. She told me that she didn’t want any more boyfriends lol… ok it’s all good!

On a more human note, have you noticed a pattern? We live in a society that loves to build up people to super star heights and with just as much sick pleasure, tear those same people back down until they are a shell of a person… it’s a weird phenomenon. And we shouldn’t forget that under all the glitz and glam, this is a person. Reporters said this morning, that yesterday after Justin saw the Judge for his bond hearing, when he got back to the jail he was “bawling his eyes out”.

Even more disturbing is something else I heard this morning, a theory that this is Justin’s way to earn “street cred”; in effect, this is Justin “twirking” like Miley. This desperation for someone who was a child star to sort of rough up their image so that they will be taken more seriously. Sadly, it seems to have worked in Miley’s favor for the most part. She is sort of all over the place now, and even made fun of it all on Saturday Night Live. What is wrong with still being a sweet innocent star? What is wrong with a society that embraces a star even more when it should have been that she made a complete disgrace of herself and her family on television?

I know I should be surprised at the brokenness of our little world, but some things like this just bother me. Lord help us all.