This week, Holy Week, we ponder the life of a man who was born to an unwed teen mother and a carpenter father. A man who started with very little, but whose followers would go on to change the world. A man who knew how to get down with hookers, who was betrayed and tortured by his own people. A nobody who became a beloved somebody, followed by a hated everybody, and finally, a humiliated anybody, cleansed by suffering. I’m speaking, of course, of Justin Bieber.
It took Justin Bieber just months to rocket from obscurity to fame, and years for that fame to sour and curdle into a reputation as one of music’s foremost shitheads. Little short of divine intervention could salvage Bieber. And divine intervention is exactly what Bieber is going for.
As somebody who spent an inappropriate amount of hours during her Catholic childhood pondering the suffering another dude whose name starts with J went through in the hours up to and including his crucifixion, last night’s Justin Bieber roast couldn’t have been more bizarrely evocative if it served as the lead in to Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. From the moment Kevin Hart (playing the role of a tiny, foul mouthed Pontius Pilate in this analogy) took to the stage in a minister’s robe to introduce Bieber to the stage, the event was pure New Testament.
Bieber’s roast followed a familiar path laid out by what Catholics call the Stations of the Cross, a long somber pondering of the suffering Jesus endured so that we could all be saved. Just replace “Jesus” with “Bieber” and “we” with “Bieber’s career” and we’ve got a Comedy Central Roast Order of Show.
1. Bieber is condemned to death
“Tonight we are gonna do what parents and the legal system should have done a long time—give the boy an ass-whuppin’ he deserves,” says Kevin Hart at the top of the show.
2. Bieber carries his cross
There he is, turd-faced Justin Bieber, still gawky in a sharp blue suit.
3. Bieber falls for the first time
Bieber emerged from the ceiling wearing enormous angel wings as a gospel choir sang about him, before falling the final portion of descent, only to stand up, grinning winsomely. Subtle.
4. Bieber meets his mother.
5. Chris D’Elia helps Bieber carry the cross.
In the Bible, a guy named Simon helped Jesus carry the cross (an actual wooden object) as the Jews cheered on his suffering. In Justin Bieber’s roast, a guy named Chris D’Elia (Who? Oh. Him. Why does he keep getting cast in things? He seems terrible!) helped Bieber carry the cross (the burden of being a douchebag) as showbiz people (some of whom were Jews) cheered on his suffering. At the end they hugged, but I really wanted them to kiss like Judas and Jesus.
6. Bieber falls the second time.
Throughout the night, Bieber put on his best “This is fun and I’m cool with this” face, but every once in awhile, the facade cracked. Like at this moment, when you almost feel sorry for him, a little, because he looks like he just remembered that his dog died. Sometimes he’d hide his near-tears by standing up and clapping. Everybody who has ever tried to stop themselves from crying knows that trick, Justin. I know you’re trying to dry out your tear ducts with a mini whoosh of air circulation.
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