Why we should leave Justin Bieber alone about what he wrote in the guestbook at the Anne Frank Museum.

He wrote: "Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber."

Writing about this causes him to be the main/first thing millions of young people think of when they hear her name. There are, I'm sure, many kids who are hearing about her for the first time in connection with their pop idol, and it's the only thing they know about her. These 2 characters shouldn't have this bond in the mental space of those who don't know much about history. Don't lock in that link!

ADDED: How outrageous is it for Bieber to imagine her as a fan? Have you been to the Anne Frank house? I have. Preserved behind plexiglas on her bedroom wall are pictures of movie stars. (I remember Greta Garbo and Ray Milland.) Based on seeing her room, it was entirely rational for Bieber to think, if we had been contemporaries, she'd love me. Teenage girls do love their pop idols, and remembering the living, not-yet-captured girl does honor her.

A quick wrap-up of today's incipient "mask" theme.

Sometimes the blog acquires a theme, like today, when the first post of the day was about masks that the Hopis don't like to call "masks" — you call them masks, we call them friends — and the second was a metaphorical use of the word "mask," to refer to Ben Carson's current persona. But I would be bullshitting if I said that the third and fourth posts were on theme. Oh, I could do that bullshitting. But I'm not going to waste your time. As the title of this, the fifth post, says, quick wrap-up. So here's the news about masks:

1. "Vogue models 'ate tissues' to mask hunger: Revelations follow similar claims by fashion industry insiders."

2. "Hamas militants’ menacing mask of defiance: Hooded gangs patrol Gaza as Israel fires first attack in months breaking fragile truce."

3. "A man wearing an 'old man' mask robbed a Cleveland Chase Bank Wednesday morning, the FBI said." (Hints for bank robbers: Use sunglasses to keep the rubber mask in place and to provide additional masking.)

4. "Do North Korea’s threats mask power struggle behind the scenes?" ("Those who study the Hermit Kingdom have very serious doubts that any attack on the U.S. or allies South Korea and Japan is even being seriously considered. 'It could be there’s a whole other game going on,' said Stephen Long, a North Korea expert at the University of Richmond.")

5. The General Zod mask from "Man of Steel" has been identified as the Halloween costume item for 2013, but the images that were at this link — purportedly terrifying — have been "removed at the request of the studio." Here's a 2010-era General Zod action figure, decidedly unscary.

6. "Police are looking for a man who went into a Turkey Hill [store] in Palmyra early Sunday morning wearing nothing but a ski mask." ("The man is described as a white male, approximately 50 years old, standing 6 feet tall with a 'heavyset' build. He had no visible scars, marks, tattoos or body piercings, police said." An amusing twist on the old phrase "no visible scars." Usually it refers to scars other than on the face. Here, the face is where the scars could be.)

7. The gas mask Justin Bieber wore around town in London last month was just "a joke." (And he "know[s] who [he is]" and is "not gonna let negativity towards [him] bring [him] down.")

So put down the tissues and eat some real food. Don't let the negativity bring you down, baby. Take off the gloomy mask of tragedy. It's not your style.

"The moment that hamster was handed off to a screaming girl in a harsh, frenzied environment was likely the moment it gazed at the short path to its doom."

Predicted doom met.

"A paparazzo hoping to get a picture of Justin Bieber in his Ferrari after the vehicle was pulled over by police in Los Angeles got struck and killed by an SUV instead."

"And as it turned out, the 18-year-old singer wasn't even in the sports car."

This seems to be an occasion for wheeling out that horrible old saying: He died doing what he loved. He thought he had Justin Bieber set up for a shot. The photographer was swelling with delight and then — blam — not from a Ferrari but an SUV. Let's hope he never knew what hit him — to coin a phrase — and never knew that Bieber wasn't even in that car. He died doing what he loved! He had his peak of paparazzi ecstasy and then... annihilation. A consummation. It's over.

But wait! Justin Bieber wants to speak:

"While I was not present nor directly involved with this tragic accident, my thoughts and prayers are with the family of the victim... Hopefully this tragedy will finally inspire meaningful legislation and whatever other necessary steps to protect the lives and safety of celebrities, police officers, innocent public bystanders, and the photographers themselves."

Oh, Justin. Not every screw-up is an argument for legislation. Putting "meaningful" in front of "legislation" is itself meaningful, but what does it mean? 1. It means meaninglessness, an empty existential cry in the face of helplessness. 2. It means I would like to soothe myself with the fantasy that if the right laws had been in place, the bad thing that just happened would not have happened. 3. It means that we can express meaning through laws, that laws work as expression, quite aside from whether they have any effect on the bad things we would like to call bad.

Now, should we also get on Bieber's case for calling what happened a "tragedy"?

Tragedy (Ancient Greek: τραγῳδία, tragōidia, "he-goat-song") is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes in its audience an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in the viewing....

Pedants love to say that the word "tragedy" is misused, but I think we may have encountered a correct use of the word. That correct usage seems out of place with the rest of the statement, with its angst about prayer, inspiration, and meaning. One suspects Bieber bumbled into saying something he wouldn't have meant to say. It's meaning without a mind that meant it. We witness human suffering and feel... good!

ADDED: The more apt term is poetic justice — "a literary device in which virtue is ultimately rewarded or vice punished, often in modern literature by an ironic twist of fate intimately related to the character's own conduct." The key is the self-contained logic of the story. It makes sense. There should be no call for legislation to find meaning. The meaning is already there. What happened is exactly right: poetic justice. The Wikipedia page I just linked has some examples, and since we were just talking about Wile E. Coyote, I enjoyed seeing him first on the list of poetic justice in TV and film: "Wile E. Coyote always sets traps for Road Runner, only to end up in the traps themselves." The phrase "hoist with his own petard" expresses the concept. Did you know it's from "Hamlet":

"For 'tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard." (Shakespeare, Hamlet (III.iv.226).)

And did you know (again, from Wikipedia):

During the late 17th century, critics pursuing a neo-classical standard would criticize William Shakespeare in favor of Ben Jonson precisely on the grounds that Shakespeare's characters change during the course of the play.... When Restoration comedy, in particular, flouted poetic justice by rewarding libertines and punishing dull-witted moralists, there was a backlash in favor of drama, in particular, of more strict moral correspondence.

"Inmate hatched castration plot after Justin Bieber didn't return his love letters..."

We're told Dana Martin, 45, felt like a "nobody" in prison, and now, we're all talking about him. Pretty impressive: A prisoner — in for life after killing a girl — is able to seize the headlines. He should be a nobody, but now, he's been allowed to become a big old celebrity and to tie his name to that of a mega-celebrity:

Martin — who has a large tattoo of Bieber on his leg — offered $2,500 for each of Bieber’s testicles, which were to be snipped off with a pair of Fiskars Durasharp pruning shears last month, records show.

I think we should have prevented this: Martin's leap into fame.  And we should not be talking about "Bieber's testicles." Talk about Anne Hathaway's vulva if you want: She flashed photographers. But Bieber has kept his pants on and has nothing to do with the despicable nobody Martin.

Sorry to be part of the machine that is making Martin famous, but I want to call out everyone who's getting off on this story.

I know that it's possible for prisoners to commit crimes from prison by hiring others and that it's not automatically a big joke. But specifying the brand of the pruning shears and the pattern of the tie to be used for strangling (paisley) smells like dark comedy. It should not be this easy for a prisoner to amuse himself and aggrandize himself this way. Martin killed a 15-year-old girl and is a life prisoner: turn the spotlight elsewhere.