You Want A Napkin With That?

Ariana Grande is an American singer/actress. She has her own web site. She is twenty-two years old. These facts may not seem terrifically significant, given the number of American twenty-somethings who have their own web sites. Many of them are successful artsy-types who have achieved some measure of fame and fortune such that they can pay to have someone else put together the kind of flashy batch of links and videos and product tie-ins that help generate more revenue, therefore allowing more web-types to devote more of their working hours on fashioning a lifestyle connection with a person who gained fame on a Nickelodeon show about a teenage singing sensation who played the sidekick of that singing sensation, not the singing sensation herself.  Still with me?
Okay, so what if that sidekick launched her own pop music career from those same roots as Hillary Duff and Miley Cyrus happened to have some of that same youthful sense of mischief that her predecessors had? She's not racing Lamborghinis while under the influence of alcohol. Or throwing eggs at a neighbor's house. While under the influence of alcohol. Or trying to make it through Australian customs with an assortment of illegal drugs and paraphernalia. While under the influence of alcohol. And perhaps some of those illegal drugs. In your underwear. That would be the Justin Bieber method. For the record, Justin never starred or even appeared as the sidekick in a Nickelodeon TV series.
Which brings us back to Ariana Grande. She played Cat Valentine on Victorious. Now she is starring in her own videos. Unfortunately, some of them are the less-produced, more security-camera version. Ms. Grande can be seen licking a doughnut left out on the counter, being rude to the help, macking on her backup singer boy toy, and then uttering the words "I hate America." All of this behavior would be despicable and rude from anyone of any age, but precisely the kind of behavior that twenty-something girls and boys might engage in Lake Elsinore, California after a fun-filled Fourth of July. Except your next gig was going to be a concert before the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Not anymore. As the pundits put it so aptly, most baseball fans won't know the difference between Ariana and Demi Lovato, and now Ariana will have to go to Spin-Video Jail. And wait for Justin Bieber to show back up again.