Austin Hill takes on Justin Bieber and emerges from the fray looking ill-informed, petty, and callow. Indeed, next to Justin Bieber, Austin Hill appears rather... juvenile.
... after Rolling Stone magazine’s new interview with the international pop music star was released last week, I was struck with the reality that many of Justin Bieber’s comments about economic matters were not that different from many of the comments we’ve heard from Washington over the past couple of years. And while inane chatter is par for the course with kids, it shouldn’t be tolerated from elected leaders.
Oh look, Sarah Palin just tweeted something.
It’s not that I’m looking to rock stars, least of all sixteen-year-old rock stars, to enlighten me about anything. It just happens that Justin Bieber permeates nearly every aspect of the social environment at my son’s junior high school –kids either “love” or “hate” Bieber music, and for better or worse his moppy hairstyle is commonplace with my son and his friends these days – so when he makes the headlines I generally read them. And that’s how I happened to stumble past Rollingstone.com, to read the exclusive Justin Bieber interview.
I guess he subscribes to Rolling Stone, then, because you need a subscription to read the whole interview on Rollingstone.com. All you can "stumble past" is a teaser. Let's be big-hearted about this, bleeding hearts as we are, and assume that Hill is simply too thick to have failed to understand that he wasn't reading the whole thing and isn't being mendacious. After all, he only admits to to reading "headlines" about Bieber, and thinks "love" and "hate" need scare quotes. He's a bit glib.
When asked for his opinion about abortion, Bieber noted that “it’s like killing a baby” (Planned Parenthood, did you hear that?).
This appears to be some species of "joke."* Anyway, Bieber seems to Hill quite an insightful young man when he agrees with him!
But then Bieber says something naughty and is sent to bed without his poutin.
And whether he was asked about it or not (it’s not clear from the Rolling Stone text), he also managed to get in some comments about the American quest for “free” government-run healthcare. That’s when things got real interesting with Canadian Justin Bieber.
Maybe it would be more clear if he'd read the article? But anyhow:
"You guys are evil," Bieber joked to the American magazine writers, "Canada's the best country in the world….We go to the doctor and we don't need to worry about paying him, but here (in the United States), your whole life, you're broke because of medical bills.” He continued, “My bodyguard's baby was premature, and now he has to pay for it. In Canada, if your baby's premature, he stays in the hospital as long as he needs to, and then you go home."
Well, there you go. A Canadian who likes his government-run medical care. Which makes him, you know, a typical Canadian. To Hill, this means Canadians are stupid. Why?
What a wonderful little fantasy, wouldn’t you say? America is so “evil” that when one goes to “see the Doctor,” one has to fuss with something so trivial as “paying him.” How terrible it is that a highly trained professional like a Medical Doctor must be compensated for his or her work.
Doctors in Canada are not paid, but compelled to treat patients for free on pain of severe forechecking. This is well-known.
Yet how beautiful it is that in Canada, “the Doctor” just provides services, the patient just receives those services – as much as he or she needs – and the Doctor apparently doesn’t need to be paid. Or at least the patient doesn’t have to worry about it, right? Isn’t that the way it goes in Canada? Somehow, because of the magic of government, Doctors and nurses and everyone “at the hospital” in Canada just simply perform their jobs, patients just simply “get” what they need, and everybody’s happy. And Canadians don’t have to face that devastating threat of long-term medical bills.
Well, yes. Except not "everybody's happy" with their public healthcare. Only a piddling 86% of Canadians.
Aside from that, empty sarcasm is a pretty devastating comeback! Just ask any, uh, 16 year old.
I expect such childlike silliness from, well, children.
Hill lives up admirably to my expectations of Townhall columnists.
But far too many elected “leaders” in Washington have been emulating this kind of fantasy-based thinking for far too long – and if our nation is to survive, they need to be un-elected altogether.
I wish anyone in Washington was proposing a Canadian-style system. However, they are not. The Canadian system is not especially similar to "Obamacare." They are different things! This minor detail of substance however does not detain Hill; he has a trendy pop culture hook for a canned wingnut diatribe, dammit!
Recall that in May of 2010, then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi noted that the Obamacare legislation would enable “artists” to simply quit their day-jobs, and not worry about providing for themselves. "We see this as an entrepreneurial bill,” Pelosi noted at the time, “a bill that says to someone, 'if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.'"
No need to think about who pays the Doctor, for Ms. Pelosi. Just focus on your “passion” and “aspirations,” and thanks in no small part to her, you will simply “have” healthcare. Sounds like Bieber’s Canada.
The ability to work hard and live your dreams without having to worry about going bankrupt because of medical bills-- sure sounds like Canada is basically Mordor. This is one of the reasons an overwhelming majority of 14% of all Canadians want a US style system, because they're tired of having the freedom to follow their "passion" and "aspirations," on account of how terrifying those things are once you put them in scare quotes.
And then there is our President. Ardent supporters will point out that Barack Obama “invested” over four years of his life “selling” nationalized healthcare, and it’s foolish to compare a few sentences on the subject uttered by Justin Bieber to the President’s remarks. This is a fair point.
Even those of us who are not "ardent" but indeed "meh" supporters wpuld on the contrary probably just bring up the "Obama didn't propose or get passed a Canadian-style system" thing again. But Hill is having a fine time arguing with the voices in his head, so let him blather.
Yet the President’s assertions about “healthcare reform” were based on the assumption that a government system would produce a higher quality healthcare, and a greater quantity of that healthcare, for less money. That was economic fantasy, right from the start.
The President also claimed that his reform would “bend the healthcare cost curve down” – yet since becoming the law of the land, healthcare costs have been rising dramatically. And he claimed that without Obamacare, “the government will go bankrupt” (we’ve got Obamacare, and we’re still headed towards insolvency).
These "claims" (see, I put that in "quotes," so now I don't have to "debate" them) are all pretty, er, controversial or misleading, to say the least.
But in the context of a rebuttal to Justin Bieber's comments, they are utterly irrelevant, because, you see, Barack Obama is not the president of Canada. Where not everything is rosy, but up there they surely aren't as "insolvent" as we are, even though you can go to the doctor for free!
Justin Bieber should check-in with his accountant – or at least his mom – and learn how much of his earnings got confiscated by the Canadian government last year, and then consider how much “free healthcare” he purchased for other people. And us “evil” Americans need to grow up, as well, and choose more wisely in the 2012 election.
By "growing up" Hill seems to mean that Bieber needs to become an unpatriotic, ungrateful prick.
Namely, an American "conservative."
Bieber would be a healthier person all around, though, if he just developed a good old fashioned rock star cocaine addiction, or something. I've never listened to a Bieber song knowingly and probably never will, but he's sure easier to take than wingnuts. And more mature.
*But even funnier is that there's a bit of a controversy here. Bieber basically says that he's against abortion, but then is asked "what about in cases of rape," and essentially says well yeah even then ("I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason") but then backs off, and ends up with "I guess I haven't been in that position, so I wouldn't be able to judge that." Which is, you know, the pro-choice position, in a nutshell. Leave the judging to the woman who is "in that position."