In the current Rolling Stone magazine, teen singing sensation Justin Bieber opines on the morality of the U.S. health care system (Bieber is Canadian) and abortion, saying, among other things…
On abortion: “I really don’t believe in abortion. It’s like killing a baby?”
Abortion in cases of rape: “Well, I think that’s really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I guess I haven’t been in that position, so I wouldn’t be able to judge that.”
On the U.S. and its current health care system: “You guys are evil. [Rolling Stone notes that he says this “with a laugh.”] Canada’s the best country in the world. We go to the doctor and we don’t need to worry about paying him, but here, your whole life, you’re broke because of medical bills. My bodyguard’s baby was premature, and now he has to pay for it. In Canada, if your baby’s premature, he stays in the hospital as long as he needs to, and then you go home.”
So to sum up: in the course of one interview, Rolling Stone managed to prompt a 16-year-old to…
- Opine on the most contentious social issue in America, suggesting women who get abortions as are “killing a baby”…
- Suggest that rapes “happen for a reason”…
- State that the country whose fans are making him rich is “evil,” and weighing in on the most contentious political legal issue facing the country.
- Fall into the popular ethical misconception that one can only render judgments on what one has had to deal with personally, thus encouraging his fans to give credence to the same theory of ethical abdication.
Bieber is just short of 17, and I refuse to hold him responsible for facile, ill-informed and naive answers on topics he knows little about and has no reason, at his age and with his background, to understand.
I do hold his handlers and advisors responsible for not teaching him to avoid these kinds of landmines and traps set for young pop superstars (Lesson 1: “John Lennon says The Beatles are more popular than Jesus. Discuss.”) Most of all, the Rolling Stone interviewer was unfair and unkind to lead the kid into such shark-infested waters. Abortion, rape and health care should not be brought into an interview with a barely educated Canadian kid whose biggest hit has a chorus that goes..
And I was like
Baby, baby, baby ohhh
Like baby, baby, baby noo
Like baby, baby, baby ohh
I thought you’d always be mine mine…
Why not ask him about marginal tax rates? The U.S. deficit? The social unrest in Yemen? The questions were a cheap effort to spark controversy and to get a nice kid to make people angry at him by talking about things in public that no teenager should have to talk about.
Ethics foul, Rolling Stone.
Ethics Alarms 
Agreed.
The cherrypicking has also already started. Political bloggers on both sides of the aisles are grabbing the statements they like to show that even this pup knows what needs to be done, while not mentioning his equally flip comments on the other side of other issues. Ethics fails all around. The uneducated beliefs of a teen idol do not lend any support to any possible position more interesting than what his favorite color might be.
Well…agreed that the kid’s handlers need to teach him how to handle these landmines, but I’m not so sure I would give a pass on having opinions on abortion and rape to a 17 yr old. At 17 he is old enough to father a child; the lyrics to his songs are certainly suggestive enough. At 17 he is also old enough to know what date rape is – the kind most teens that aren’t delinquents are likely to encounter, at least in my comfortable middle-class world.
I certainly expected my son to understand these questions and be able to articulate opinions on these topics by the time he was 17. The difference probably being that my son had a normal adolescence, unmarred by fame, and a diverse and intense academic preparation, uninterrupted by training and tours!
Your son’s opinions would not get national circulation or have income consequences, presumably.
Agreed, a nice kid who shouldn’t have been booby-trapped like that; I mean, is the kid even shaving yet?
As to the Beatles: we need to know what the popular definition of “popular” is. To many non-thinkers, it means of more value, or more goodness, etc. Of course the Beatles were correct: more people knew and loved them than people did Jesus. But it was not wise of them to say it.
I loved the funny answers they often gave interviewers, e.g., “How do you find America?” Answer, “Go to Greenland and turn left.”
Or in “A Hard Day’s Night”, an older man digruntled by their rudeness says, “I fought in the War for the likes of you.” Their reply: “I bet you’re sorry you won.”
About the Canadian health care system: there’s room for discussion. A good friend in Alberta is an elementary school principal — not paid a whole lot. His wife developed cervical cancer. His total bills, for the surgery, hospitalization, etc., were under $10. (She’s recovered, thank you, doing fine.)
A lot of the studies seem to suggest that Canada is better for covering people who couldn’t otherwise get care, but the US is better for making sure that those who qualify for care are more likely to survive.
“A lot of the studies” I’ve seen do not speak any better for American health care and survival rates. Except, of course, for very highly insured people, most of whom (and their families) continue in debt for the length of their survival. Another myth disproved: waiting time in offices and for surgery (again, with the exception above which ALSO by the way, pertains to private insurance in Canada!) is about the same.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m no fan of the current health-care system and how it excludes those who can’t pay, and I certainly think us Americans can learn plenty of things from other post-industrial nations. I’m just saying that there are specific metrics (like cancer survival rates) where we’re relatively top-tier by even by post-industrial standards, though this certainly doesn’t mean that our system is superior overall. As far as waiting time goes, both us and the Canadians are worse than the Western Europeans.
I hope, if someone says he should apologize, he just says, “What?! They asked!”
John Lennon said”More people know about us than about Jesus Christ.” this was an English vernacular for describing the popularity of anything. In fact there is an old episode of “Are You Being Served” where Mr. Lucas uses the same vernacular to sell something. I apologize for not knowing which episode this was. I remember it because I was struck by the familiarity of the phrase.
I lived in Israel for years and at that time British English was used and i remember hearing that phrase all the time. It had a strange ring in my American ears. We may like the phrase but we must be correct in quoting it.
Lennon was speaking like an Englishman to the wrong audience, but he deserves not to be arred by something he didn’t say.
…and here I thought he was Australian. I’ve been cursing the wrong country…
Are you kidding? By the time Aussies are Bieber’s age, they have a full beard and have skinned their first croc!
That may be his last cover. Just scanning IMDB for current movie data and noticed that Justin Bieber Never Say Never 3D has an audience rating of 1.1 (out of nearly 15,000 votes). I’ve never seen a rating that low!
Let’s hold our collective breaths for the Bieb. Some kid singers have never survived their post-puberty voices, and some have ended in tragedy as a result.
This is what Rolling Stone does. In young Mr. Bieber’s defense, I can only point out that he’s no more naive about these treacherous rascals than General McChrystal was! Hopefully, with this experience under his belt, he’ll have learned that being “on the cover of the Rolling Stone” ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.