By Mary Best
Editor- in- Chief
Are you a Belieber?
Apparently, Anne Frank should have been.
Teen pop star Justin Bieber started a social media frenzy last week after his entry in the guestbook of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam suggested Frank hopefully would have enjoyed his music, according to an April 15 Rolling Stone article.
His full entry reads, “Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a Belieber.”
Celebrities and opinionated civilians alike offered their hilarious commentary on the situation, ranging from Albert Brooks’ shameful “Justin Bieber said he hoped Anne Frank would have been a fan. I really want to kill myself,” to Rainn Wilson really hitting the nail on the head, predicting the outcry of Bieber’s fans.
“Who’s this Anne Frank & why is he visiting her HOUSE? Are they dating?! OMG!” -93% of beliebers,” Wilson tweeted on April 14.
While I could go on for days about Bieber’s less-than-redeeming qualities and lack of foresight with his comments, the outrageous reactions to his statement proved to be all the more alarming.
The Anne Frank House’s Facebook page first posted about Bieber’s visit and guestbook inscription on April 13. As of April 17, the post garnered more than 3,170 comments, with hundreds of replies within the comments. Bieber obviously didn’t give a lot of thought to what he said, but some of the claims on his intentions with his visit and guestbook entry depict an even more desperate cry for help.
Harry Leslie Smith, a World War II veteran, had this to say about Bieber’s comments:
“I can’t fathom how anyone, even a teenage celebrity, could leave Anne Frank’s house with less of an appreciation of history, the Holocaust and the unspeakable things humanity has done to so many innocents. I am truly speechless because it means that this young man is totally disconnected to the suffering occurring around him in this modern world,” he posted on Sunday.
Erin Young, another commentator, also wasn’t pleased with the situation.
“He took something that is so much bigger than him and made it about himself,” she posted on Sunday. “Him and all his little fans, who weren’t even there in respect to Anne but to catch a look at Justin. It’s horrible and he may as well have spray painted ‘Swaggie’ right across the f******g museum itself. And all he could think is if she would have been a fan, really.”
That’s only a very small sample of the ridiculous statements found in the trenches of that unfortunate Facebook post. Other page visitors go on for paragraphs, even claiming Bieber doesn’t understand or respect the Holocaust and doesn’t deserve his fame or money because he’s too much of a scumbag.
I’m sure all these Bieber critics were perfect geniuses when they were 19 years old.
Trust me, I am no Belieber myself, but this whole situation was blown way out of the water. This was definitely not Bieber’s finest moment, but what else do we expect from a YouTube-sensationalized teenager who recently had his pet monkey taken away from him?
The Anne Frank House posted again two days later, with a simple post praising his efforts to visit the museum and interest in the topic during his hour-long visit.
Annemarie Bekker, a spokeswoman for the Anne Frank House, said the reaction to Bieber’s statement was overwhelming and tried to focus on the positive.
“He’s a 19-year-old boy taking the effort to come and see the museum, and we’d like to point that out, and I think it’s quite innocent what he put down,” she said in an April 15 statement.
Realistically, while there’s no telling what Frank would be like if she were a teenager in 2013, if she was the “typical teen” as she is sometimes described to be, there’s a very good chance she would have been a Bieber fan. The critics who say otherwise lack the same evidence to prove their argument.
I couldn’t care less what Bieber does or says about anything. But all these Anne Frank defenders who think they are doing the inspirational young woman justice by verbally destroying Bieber would do well to remember Frank’s good nature and optimistic philosophy.
“I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”
While I consider myself among you (most of the time), dear army of Bieber haters, take those wise words to wash out your harshly judgmental mouths.
