Justin Bieber is the poster child for why someone shouldn’t become really famous at too young an age. I’ve written in the past about how both Britney Spears and Hillary Clinton have been living in a bubble for a long time. It’s not healthy.

Last week Bieber was in Boston for a long-awaited show, one at which the Globe critic opined that Bieber just “mailed it in.” Regardless, Bieber apparently wandered around the Boston Common without any shoes on Monday, and was found perched in a tree in the Common on Tuesday. Which, by the way, would be a very normal thing for a 22 year old to do on a beautiful spring day. However, in Bieber’s case the press was all agog.

Bieber has apparently complained in the past that he sometimes feels like a “zoo animal.” I wonder why.

I don’t have too much sympathy for Bieber, as he’s obscenely rich on what seems to me to be a pretty marginal talent.[1]

But a lot of this is definitely not his fault. In our society, where we make commodities of our celebrities, it would have been asking a lot for this kid – who became famous at the tender age of thirteen – to maintain his bearings and not turn out as an entitled little prick.

Which seems to be the way that he’s turned out so far.

Of course, maybe he would turn out differently if we could let him frolic in the park for a little bit without taking pictures of him as if he were an animal in a zoo. For Christ’s sake, even the Daily Mail, Britain’s 2^nd biggest circulating daily newspaper, reported on Bieber sitting in the Boston Common feeding the squirrels. This is international news?

[1] Like Britney Spears when she first broke on the scene, both of their primary talent seems to be in being a very good looking young person who can sing a little and dance pretty good.