Saturday, February 5, 2011
He is everywhere. In the last month, pop sensation Justin Bieber has graced every part of American media in what can only be called saturation.
He has been on Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel, Regis, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, MTV, Vanity Fair, People, Us Weekly, CSI, the Super Bowl, The Today Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Lopez Tonight, the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, Extreme Makeover, and others.
Bieber just ended his 86 show world tour before Christmas and is scheduled to pick up again in March in Europe. He wins every award he is nominated for and has merchandise ranging from posters, calendars, headphones, nail polish, dolls, and other trinkets.
His album and book sales are in the tens of millions.
So what’s there to worry about? Seems everything is going great for Bieber. That just might be the problem.
Movie theater owners around the country have been quietly ramping up for Friday’s release of Bieber’s “Never Say Never 3D”. And they are starting to panic.
They have done the math and realize they only have so many theaters, seats, and tickets – in other words, “There are only a certain number of movie goers we can move through the system in a 24 hour period.”
And that, my friends, seems to be the problem. Why? Because thousands of crazed Bieber fans are expected to swarm theaters and malls this weekend for their chance to see the megastar in 3D.
Officials fear that malls and theaters around the country will be flooded with Bieber fans and that traffic and crowd control will become a problem. There is concern that fans will grow impatient and descend into various acts of civil unrest and disobedience.
Factor in the fact that each screaming 13-year-old also has her mother with her, and… well that is an angry crowd I would try to avoid at all costs.
Officials are discussing what to do about port-a-potties, extra security, aid stations, accidents, traffic control, fire rescue, wreckers and towing, media stations, reporters, satellite trucks, and the list goes on. Some major cities are expecting weeks of problems before things start to get better.
Really? Is it possible? Could the United States be forced into weeks of anarchy and chaos just because millions of Justin Bieber fans can’t get tickets to see his movie?
All we can pray for is that we will look our fellow man in the eye, and show the compassion and constraint that have held this country together through some if its darkest times.
If CNN starts to report on mobs on angry, disobedient teens at thousands of theaters in all 50 states, and if FOX News starts comparing Bieber’s hold on his fans to the control of Hitler on Nazi Germany, if the Center for Disease Control declares Bieber Fever a pandemic, then life as we know it may have changed forever.
We may never recover. Bieber’s hold on the world may just be too great. We may just have to fall to our knees and admit…. that the kid has unbelievable talent and deserves to be a star.
