Monday, April 15, 2013

New Guidelines for Reporting on Justin Bieber

Remember in the old Clash of the Titans, when Zeus is moving pieces around on a board, plotting out the lives of the mortals below?  Someone, somewhere, is doing the same thing for Justin Bieber, and they're following a beat sheet some hack wrote thirty years ago that lays out the behavior of an idiot child who's been handed everything his entire life.

So here's the thing: as long as Bieber is following that predestined course, no one in the "news" has any business discussing it, because nothing about it is new.  This is just a dog biting a man, over and over.  This is like the Weather Channel announcing every hour that our atmosphere is still 78% nitrogen.  Great.  You should really only let us know when that changes.

What would be "new?"  What could Bieber do that may actually warrant a news report?  Here are a few suggestions:

  • Writing an actual novel, all by himself, targeted at anyone over 25.
  • Quietly absorbing a lesson about humanity without tweeting it.
  • Realizing the immaterial nature of reality and giving up his worldly possessions to wander the earth as an enlightened beggar.
  • Keeping his shirt on for eight straight hours.
  • Settling down in Michigan with a plain-faced nurse and going into lumber sales.

Otherwise, news outlets may as well run two minutes of an anchor repeating the alphabet, because that information has as much value as anything else this kid is going to do in the near future.  This also applies to Taylor Swift and breakups, and Amanda Bynes and...whatever it is she's going through.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.