Wednesday, February 5, 2014

The new Prince of Pot

I recall once on a flight from Toronto to Calgary whiling away the time locked in the bathroom, slowly dribbling beads of hash oil onto a lit cigarette. Didn't take too long for that cosy closet to fill right up with smoke, which of course just led me to relax and stay awhile. When I finally emerged I got a lot of nasty stares from a long line of folks waiting with legs crossed and accusatory looks on their faces.

But apparently when you're flying with Justin Bieber you don't have to hide in the bathroom to indulge your habit. If this story is true Bieber and crew smoked up their private jet to the point where the pilots had to don their oxygen masks or risk getting as loaded as their passengers. That Gulfstream was a veritable hot-box in the sky.

There's no end to media nonsense, especially in Toronto, about how poor young Bieber has lost his way and is crossing to the dark side. Rubbish! This "dark side" nonsense is part and parcel of an elaborate image make-over engineered by the sharpest PR minds in the biz. Bieber is getting a little long in the tooth for that squeaky-clean teen-hearthrob schtick, so he is being rebranded. His make-over is designed to attract a broader demographic than just teenage girls.

Back in the early days of rock you had your squeaky-clean Beatles and your dirty Rolling Stones. That was all image management of course. As we now know there wasn't much difference between the two behind the scenes in terms of drug use and general debauchery, but look who has managed to wring fifty years of sold-out stadiums out of that "bad-boy" image.

That's where the management team at Bieber Inc. wants to take him.

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