Bieber Cuban Cigar; Justin Arrested for DUI, Drag Racing After Trip to Caribbean
By Benge Nsenduluka , Christian Post Contributor
(Photo: Reuters/Jonathan Alcorn)Pop star Justin Bieber (R) arrives with his mother Pattie Mallette at the 40th American Music Awards in Los Angeles, California November 18, 2012.
Justin Bieber was arrested in Miami on Thursday on suspicion of DUI and drag racing, reports claim.
The pop star, 19, was reportedly leaving a Miami Beach nightclub early Thursday when he was apprehended by police and taken into custody. Bieber, who was behind the wheel of a rented yellow Lamborghini at the time of his arrest, allegedly failed a sobriety test, according to TMZ.com.
The “Heartbreaker” singer is will likely undergo further testing in custody, where he awaits booking, processing and bail.
Bieber was in South Florida following a quick trip to Cuba on Wednesday. The singer shared a photo on Instagram of himself smoking a Cuban cigar.
“I’m in Cuba, I love Cubans,” he wrote in the Instagram photo caption.
The arrest comes one week after Bieber’s best friend Lil Za, real name Xavier Smith, 20, was arrested during a police raid at the singer’s Calabasas home.
A L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept. rep confirmed that Lil Za, who has been mired in controversy in the past, was arrested for felony drug possession. Police were executing a search warrant relating to a recent egg-throwing incident which saw Bieber’s neighbor accusing the singer of felony vandalism, according to TMZ.
During the raid police reportedly seized several items, including the pop star’s high-tech home security system, which could be used as evidence in the egg-throwing case. Bieber’s neighbor, who captured some of the Jan. 9 incident on video, claims the singer caused approximately $20,000 in damage to his home.
Under California law vandalism that causes more than $400 in damages automatically results in a felony charge. Bieber has not been charged over the incident and the investigation is ongoing.
Bieber’s troubling behavior has reportedly raised concerns for his wellbeing in recent months as insiders claim his management is urging him to seek professional help.
“Justin’s team has been encouraging him to go to rehab for a while… He won’t listen to his team,” a source told E! News.
“His ego has gotten out of control,” the source continued. “[rappers] Lil Za, Milk, and Lil Twist are particularly bad influences on him.”
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Calm Down About Justin Bieber’s Arrest
By Jody Rosen From Vulture
The most surprising thing about the news of Justin Bieber’s arrest on DUI charges is that it’s surprising at all. Bieber’s Miami Beach drag-racing spree is the latest in a series of antics that include alleged hotel graffiti tagging, alleged monkey smuggling, alleged public urination, alleged “egging,” and an alleged visit to an alleged Rio de Janeiro brothel. These incidents suggest that Bieber, 19, is going through an assholish phase, as young men often do. They are also, in the annals of famous-young-male misconduct, pretty tame, and may tell us more about the magnifying effect of the Internet’s omniscient eye than the wanton character — or as some are whispering aloud today with a vampirish gleam in their eyes, the inexorable death spiral — of Justin Bieber.
They certainly tell us something about how well-mannered our popular musicians have become. Not long ago, we expected pop stars, particularly male ones, to do asinine things, like take leaks in mop buckets while exiting Manhattan restaurants, as Bieber apparently did sometime last year. This, and far worse, was expected, even encouraged, and viewed as part of the gig — relished as rapscallion and “rock ‘n’ roll.” It is pleasant to think that, today, we’re more spiritually evolved: That we hold stars to higher standards, that we’re no longer charmed by young men (or, much less frequently, young women) swaggering around, treating people badly, and acting like morons. The more likely case is that (with some infamous exceptions) pop stars have become, like the rest of us, careful careerists — too focused on brand management to risk the dip in market share that would come if, say, TMZ aired cell-phone footage of a television being lobbed through the window of a hotel suite. These days, when stars act out, they do it like Miley Cyrus: onstage and in video, in meticulously plotted, big-budgeted product relaunches. For Cyrus and others, “bad behavior” is careerism in action.
In this respect, Justin Bieber is conspicuously uncalculating. Which is not to excuse Bieber racing his Lamborghini down a city street: The little shit could have killed someone. But it’s worth noting that nothing Bieber is accused of doing approaches the appalling track records of dozens of members the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a body with an arguably higher percentage of creeps and wife beaters than the average state penitentiary. To take just one obvious example: Keith Richards’s autobiography Life catalogs decades’ worth of foul deeds, arrogance, misogyny, firearms possession, child endangerment, etc. But the rave reviews of Life savored Richards’s “raffish legend,” and the chattering classes lined up to see Richards “in conversation” in the august surroundings of the New York Public Library’s Celeste Bartos Forum. (Scumbaggery + time = cuddly pirate.) Another fact worthy of mention: Bieber’s latest album, the compilation Journals, is excellent: sleek, insinuating pop-R&B. It’s his best record yet. In music, as in his messy life, this almost-20-year-old is proceeding — according to the old-fashioned model, at least — exactly on schedule.
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