Here's what Justin Bieber wrote in the guestbook at Amsterdam's Anne Frank House after an April 12 visit: "Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber" — that is, a fan of the 19-year-old singer.
After the museum posted the message with news of Bieber's visit on its Facebook page the following day, there ensued an onslaught of international opprobrium sufficient to make those who are hazy on world history wonder if the pop star had been the one to betray the young diarist and her family to the SS in 1944.
But before we condemn Bieber, let's unpack his sentiments line by line.
The first is one that most people would share, although it's actually more inspiring to "be at" the Anne Frank house than it is "to be able" to go there.
"Anne was a great girl" is inarguable and inoffensive, but phrased in a way that makes you think Bieber is speaking at the memorial service for someone who drowned while skinny-dipping on prom night.
It's that last line that got Bieber in trouble, and not because of the regrettable misuse of the adverb "hopefully" for "I hope."
Bieber is not the first mega-celebrity to err by viewing all human history through the lens of their own stardom, and he will not be the last. But for me, there are three major factors in this affair mitigating in his favor.
First off, his awkwardly worded message reads like it was written by a human being, in contrast to some of the other flat expressions left behind by celebrities who have made the same pilgrimage.
"Thank you so much for your time and attention. We learned a lot," Madonna wrote last summer.
That's a message she could have dropped after touring the bottling plant at the nearby Heineken headquarters.
Second, let's remember that there are plenty of other activities that a wealthy pop star on tour could have pursued in his free time — especially in Amsterdam, a city where prostitution and the consumption of marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms are regulated but totally legal. (How do you spot the American tourists in the red light district? They're the ones who toss polite waves back to the hookers tapping on the full-length glass doors in an attempt to draw business.)
For that matter, Bieber could have availed himself of any of the ancient taverns, fascinating museums or outstanding Indian restaurants the city has to offer. He could have gone shopping for ceramics, tulips or soccer jerseys. But no: He went to the Anne Frank House.
When I visited the city in 2010, I did all these things — the ones in the preceding paragraph, that is — but waited until my last day to visit the Anne Frank House. It was a foggy, rainy morning with few other visitors, which fit the hushed mood of the space. Moving from the modern exhibit hall, you pass into the achterhuis, the secret rear annex where the Franks and others lived for two years before being captured.
In the re-creation of Anne's bedroom you can see the photos glued onto the wall during the Franks' time in the annex. They include images of the young British princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, looking far less regal than screen icon Norma Shearer, who appears ready to take the entire world out for a night on the town. Many of the other film and music stars on the wall have been largely forgotten by pop historians, but it's likely that they meant a great deal to a teenage girl in desperate straits in the early 1940s.
Any parent would recognize a wall like that, with its ragged clippings of longed-for beauty, assurance and style — dispatches from a world where you don't have to worry about armed men kicking in the door.
So let's give young Bieber the benefit of the doubt, and imagine that he looked at that wall and saw the sort of evanescent cultural figures he understands all too well. And then made the imaginative leap and connected the girl trapped in the room to the thousands of screaming teens on the other side of the footlights at his concerts.
Because it's not too much of a further leap to imagine there's a young girl somewhere in the world today — in some bombed-out corner of Syria, perhaps — with a picture of Justin Bieber taped to a wall that's cross-hatched with cracks from nearby shelling.
It would be nice to imagine that she gets through the day reading the Great Books and listening to Beethoven, but that sort of teenager is the exception.
This girl might not think much of Bieber in a few years, but she needs him right now.
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619