Justin Timberlake and a Shame Anniversary

Taking a page from JT’s playbook and making his arrest about me

(Sag Harbor Police Department booking photo)

Dear Squawkers,

(Usually on Friday we publish a mailbag, and this started out as the opening of this week’s mailbag… and then it just turned into something else entirely. So it’s now a newsletter for paid subscribers and we’ll be back with a regular mailbag next week that will include questions that have already been submitted and new questions that you might have, please share them in the mailbag chat for next week.)

Two months ago I wrote a Squawk newsletter, “Justin Timberlake and the Young Fame Effect”, about how JT should be included on any list of “troubled child stars” even though he arrived into his 40s without a mugshot; just because he hadn’t fucked up as badly as some of the others in this cohort doesn’t mean he’s an actualised person. One of my points was that we don’t “talk enough about the effect that early fame has had on him”. Sorry to be quoting myself.

Fame has stunted the growth of so many of the young celebrities, particularly of his generation. But the fame effect is still the fame effect, and it doesn’t look the same on everyone.

Well.

Fast forward to this week – and please believe me, I’m not here to gloat. I do not want to be gloating about anyone getting busted for drinking and driving. It is such a relief that no one was hurt, including Justin. He, too, has a family, and they’d be devastated if anything happened to him.

So, again, this is not a brag, but rather further reflection on that piece from April, written shortly after he dropped his latest album, about the criticism that he hasn’t matured as an artist, and my point that he can’t mature as an artist if he hasn’t matured as a person. Now to present day, is Justin’s arrest a result of arrested development?

This is someone who’s been famous for almost his entire life, certainly his entire adolescent and adult life. And, for the most part, he hasn’t been professionally tested. Since we don’t know him for real and what he’s experienced in private, it wouldn’t be fair to say that he hasn’t been personally tested, but if he’s had character-building moments outside of the spotlight, the results of that development haven’t necessarily transferred to the way he manages his public image.

Over the last few days, then, I’ve been thinking about the night of his arrest. For the first time in…maybe ever?... his fame was not an asset. For the first time in decades, he spent the night in non-luxury accommodations. I mean, I’m sure there are worse places than the jail cell in the Hamptons but, like, when you consider that Justin Timberlake has only enjoyed five-diamond accommodations since he was 16 years old, by his standards, it had to have been a rough night. Those are the nights that can, sometimes, change a person. In the context of his privilege, that may have been his rock bottom – at least up to this point.

This is not me trying to be sympathetic (because there have certainly been indications, including that defiant as fuck statement from his lawyer, that that wasn’t a come to Jesus moment for Justin Timberlake) but I did read a comment on the JT thread from Wednesday that made me think about my own circumstances, my own shame.