If only we could channel the passion of Justin Bieber's fans into something useful. Not that there's anything wrong with the 18-year-old Canadian's R&B music. But just think what these 13- to 19-year-old girls could accomplish if they turned the sheer energy of their Bieber lust onto a world problem. We'd have no poverty, no hunger, no disparity of any kind.
The lengths to which these nubile young Beliebers, as they're called, go to proclaim their love for the moptop star could move mountains. At London's Royal Garden hotel, a posh hotel overlooking Kensington Palace, Hyde Park and St. Paul's Cathedral, thousands of young fans camped out, skipping school, starving themselves to keep their place in the Bieber viewing queue.
Even though the ritzy hotel is pedigreed in hosting stars from Sonny and Cher and the Monkees to the London Rugby team, Biebster's fans and their 2,000-plus phone calls (claiming to be everyone from his long lost cousin to his personal stripper) jammed the phone lines, forcing the five-star hotel to change its phone number. That unbridled passion could be used to insure health care for all Americans, something their Canadian crush has consistently applauded.
At another London hotel a few years ago, a couple enterprising Beliebers snuck inside the employees's entrance and pirated a couple maid's uniforms before they were nabbed dutifully snapping pictures inside the Paul McCartney suite at Liverpool's Hard Days Night hotel where their idol was staying. Again, if that persistence was used to feed the hungry or stop the Syrian government's bombing of innocent neighborhoods, the world would be a much nicer place.
The more than 300,000 screaming, purple-wearing (allegedly his favorite color) tweens who stood in the rain for the pop star's June 11 Mexico City concert could have easily moved their ardor to Los Cabos's G-20 Summit a week later and put some genuine teeth in the "tax and entitlement reform" act.
Mr. Bieber, I would love you, too, if you could just get the ardor of your 20 million twitter fans pointed in a more productive direction.