Caturday: Why the Justin Bieber hate?

One thing that I've become aware of as I get older is how difficult, often impossible, it is to catch up with whatever pop zeitgeist is going on at any given time. Most of the people I work with are a lot younger than I am, and listen to music that is very different from what I listen to. Green Day is about as "today" as I get, and even that band is now a bunch of guys in their late thirties. An article about Gregg Allman is more likely to catch my eye than one about the return of Lauryn Hill, whose voice I wouldn't recognize if I heard it.

But all this is about real musicians, not about "pop stars." And that brings us to Justin Bieber. Aside from the fact that I am almost old enough to have grandchildren who would listen to Justin Bieber, I really didn't know much about him, other than that he's some cute-boy singer who got his start on YouTube, and is now the biggest thing among tween girls since Leonardo DiCaprio drowned to save Kate Winslet. This month's Vanity Fair has him as its cover boy, which used to spell Career Doom (see also: Gretchen Mol, who has turned out to be a damn fine actress, even if it took longer than Vanity Fair promised), which is perhaps why more established people like Cher and Johnny Depp have graced the cover recently. But since I am an occasional commentator on the pop culture zeitgeist, I felt obligated to read it. Bieber seems like a pretty nice kid for a pop juggernaut, aside from the religious stuff. But if religion is what this kid needs to keep him from becoming yet another teen star burnout, who could object?

Still, there seems to be the kind of hate surrounding this kid that tends to always go along with being this kind of pretty-boy teen dreamboat. Who can forget the infamous "Leo Is Gay And Kate Is Fat" wars of 1998? The only thing keeping David Cassidy from the same onslaught during the 1970's was the lack of participatory media, and even from that decade, yesterday's teen dreamboat is all too often today's addict/jailbird (see also: Leif Garrett). So if Bieber rakes in tons of cash while teen girls scream, who cares, as long as the kid has his feet firmly planted on the ground? I may shake my head, but especially with no tween girls in the house, I don't have to listen to it.

Well, here's a cat in Poland who really, really, REALLY hates Justin Bieber:

Seriously, puss....some perspective please.