Heard on the Hill: Amy Klobuchar Vs. the Biebs
A pair of civil liberties groups have Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in their cross hairs, and they are packing the heaviest ammunition they can muster: Justin Bieber.
Recap (for those of you who are NOT wildly hysterical 12-year-old girls): A few weeks back, a local radio jock brought the eponymous, curiously coiffed pop-music superstar up to speed on Klobuchar’s pro-copyright initiative, the Commercial Felony Streaming Act. Bieber’s response: Lock. Her. Up.
“Whoever she is, she needs to know that I’m saying she needs to be locked up — put away in cuffs,” he said. “People need to have the freedom. … People need to be able to sing songs. I just think that’s ridiculous.”
Fast-forward to present day: Demand Progress and Fight for the Future have started airing ads in Minnesota — to wit, they are supposedly targeting cable news shows and Comedy Central — condemning Klobuchar’s languishing proposal.
“Lawmakers love sponsoring Hollywood bills because it means untold thousands of new dollars for their campaign coffers. Ads like this will make them think twice,” the combatants detail on the website for their coattail-riding campaign, bieberisright.org.
Demand Progress seems to be having the most fun with the campaign. “Love him or hate him, Justin Bieber got famous by posting videos of his covers of other artists’ songs on YouTube, so he could go to jail if this legislation passes,” their separate release states. Some parents and older siblings might not think this is such a bad thing. But we digress.
The bill’s co-sponsors, Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), appear, at least so far, to have been spared the wrath of the Biebs. Of course, he might have been temporarily distracted by all that baby-daddy drama. …