Justin Bieber, Frank Sinatra — two of a kind bad boys?

Booking images released by the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department show singer Justin Bieber, 19, who was arrested early Thursday on charges of driving under the influence, driving with an expired license and resisting arrest following an alleged street-racing incident.

I didn’t seek this knowledge but like smog and government mind-control drugs the Beebs is in the air.

Through some kind of pop culture osmosis I receive regular updates on Bieber’s serial misdeeds. From monkey smuggling in Germany, to house eggings in Calabasas, I’ve followed every twist and turn in the career of the 19-year-old prince of problems.

Of course I wouldn’t know a Justin Bieber song if I was one of the background singers but that’s irrelevant to modern fame. He just is. Today, that’s enough.

Finally Bieber has been pinched for his boorish behavior, busted in Miami on suspicion of DUI, resisting arrest, and basically being a spoiled brat and we love it!

Don’t make that face. You love it as much as I do.

We love the moral superiority that comes from looking down our noses at this over-hyped teen idol who 10 years from now will be remembered as, “Justin who?” if he’s remembered at all.

Enjoy the show while it lasts.

As Americans we’ve had a long love affair with troublemakers. We’re the people who threw someone else’s tea in the harbor. The tea throwers are still national heroes.

From Lizzie Borden to Bonnie and Clyde, Jesse James to Tony Soprano, we have a thing for bad guys. The gunslingers of the Old West are more beloved than the lawmen that tracked them down. “Breaking Bad” took all the prizes. Bad Boys get the hottest girls.

I blame Frank Sinatra.

It’s unlikely the names Justin Bieber and Frank Sinatra have ever appeared in the same sentence but there’s a first for everything, right?

Frank Sinatra was the Justin Bieber of 1944.

A true bad boy, he was Hoboken tough, born with a chip on his shoulder. Frank loved hard and hated harder. He also had talent the likes of which we’ll never see again and that forever separates Sinatra from the Beebs, but our parents and grandparents didn’t see him that way.

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Sinatra was that skinny kid young girls swooned over, causing FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to open a file on him. That subversive singing Svengali was corrupting the morals of America’s youth and therefore had to be watched.

And we watched for 60 years!

Throw in some mobsters, a couple of punched photographers, a few suicide attempts and messy divorces and Frank Sinatra dished up enough tabloid fodder to keep even the tone deaf entertained.

And this is what we know about. In Frank’s day, phones took nickels not pictures. Sinatra’s Hollywood worked 24/7 to clean up the mess stars left behind. Bieber’s Hollywood sells the mess.

Miley Cyrus, the female Beebs, twerked her way to the top of pop fame, the most Googled celebrity in 2013. That she has only a thimbleful of talent is beside the point. Same goes for Beeber.

While the rest of us are held accountable for everything we do and stuck with the tab for everything everyone else does, celebrities are given carte blanche to thumb their noses at middle-class values. The more outrageous the more we like it.

Unless it happens to be your house Beeber tries to whip into an omelet.

Maybe it’s boredom with our own lives or a subconscious rebellion against the avalanche of rules written and implied we’re subjected to, but the American middle class loves to hate on the failures of the rich and famous much more than we celebrate their triumphs.

Every day thousands of us are cuffed for DUI, resisting arrest, drag racing, throwing eggs, smoking dope, or whatever anti-social, public menace behavior Justin Bieber has perpetrated on any given day. The truth is we don’t care unless the perp is popular.

By the time Frank Sinatra died in 1998 he was mourned as an authentic artistic and cultural icon. Back in 1949-1950 there weren’t many who would have predicted that. Then he was a washed up nobody. A bum. He showed ’em.

So maybe the Beebs will snap out of it. He’s only 19 for crying out loud. How would you have handled the wretched excess of modern pop fame?

I barely survived those years and I’m a nobody.

The Beebs will get better or he won’t. For his sake I hope he does.

For our sake, I hope he doesn’t.

That’s entertainment!

Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sunday and Wednesday. He can be reached at: Doug@KABC.com.