# Justin Bieber And The 16th Chapel On Letterman **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 22, 2012, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951 "2012-06-22T15:43:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2012, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/41 "2012-06-24T07:28:12Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Per wiki he did go to Catholic school, so you’d think so, and Adam:God has to be one of the most famous images anywhere in the Christian world, but, apparently even for somebody who dropped out of school as an adolescent he’s just not that observant or well read. (I am absolutely positive I’d have known what the Sistine Chapel was when I was an adolescent; I remember reading _The Agony and the Ecstacy_ for a book report when I was in ninth grade.) > > Maybe being embarrassed will make him want to learn. I doubt it- ignorance just doesn’t seem to be something many celebrities are embarrassed about- but it’s possible. Again he did not drop out of school he has a high school degree. He wanted a GED but his mom made him. (Pattie is hardcore. Justin Bieber gets grounded, no lie.) ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2012, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/42 "2012-06-24T08:42:31Z")
> [@voguevixen](#): > > Again he did not drop out of school he has a high school degree. Then he has even less excuse. ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2012, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/43 "2012-06-24T08:45:35Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Then he has even less excuse. I do not disagree with this. Sistine Chapel GREAT SCOTT! ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2012, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/44 "2012-06-24T09:47:48Z")
I’m about to make an “ask tha” Should I? ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2012, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/45 "2012-06-24T19:10:37Z")
> [@voguevixen](#): > > I’m about to make an “ask tha” Should I? Sure. I have a couple. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2012, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/46 "2012-06-24T21:34:09Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > He repeated “German” immediately after the guy said it and he pronounced it perfectly, so I can’t imagine he thought it was some other word. The only explanation that makes any kind of sense to me is that Justin simply doesn’t understand the meaning of the word, and that only makes sense if his level of ignorance is really astounding. Oh, Christ. I lived in Germany for a couple of years, and I didn’t understand the question the first time I heard it, either. The host was a moron. He said “Justin,” and then “Bieber,” as if he was just trying to get his attention, and then asked, “Is German for basketball?”, which makes no sense. Bieber had no idea what he was asking, and when he asked him to repeat the question, the host dutifully repeated, “Is German for basketball?” Bieber then tried to make sense of it by thinking “German” might be slang for “avid” in whatever dialect the host was speaking. I consider it an affront to civilization that 90% of rock/pop/hip-hop “stars” are able to make the money they do, and Bieber IMO is a shining example of that, but I’ll take his side on this one. The Sistine Chapel is a different and excruciatingly embarrassing case, though. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2012, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/47 "2012-06-24T21:57:28Z")
From [this interview](http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/nov/13/justin-bieber-interview): > [@](#): > > “I couldn’t understand what the guy was saying,” explains Justin now. “I know what German is. Obviously.” He pauses. “It sounded like he was saying Jewman.” In other words, he was thrown by the non-rhotic New Zealand accent, which (like 99% of Americans) he was not accustomed enough to to avoid moments of confusion. Which is completely forgiveable. Also, **TonySinclair** raises an excellent point about the confusion with the way the host said “Justin… Bieber… is ‘German’ for basketball, true or false?”, and then just kept saying “Is ‘German’ for basketball” afterwards, never repeating the subject “Bieber” again. It was perfectly reasonable to misparse the initial question, be confused by its ungrammatical structure, and be particularly confused by the repetition of this ungrammatical structure, on top of the accent difficulties, and everything else. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2012, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/48 "2012-06-24T22:03:35Z")
Er, those single quotes belong around “Bieber”, not “German”. I’ve fucked up the same use-mention distinction that confused the kid. Ah, whatever… ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2012, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/49 "2012-06-24T22:11:06Z")
Yeah, but didn’t the host then show him the written question directly? It’s astonishing to me that it’s difficult for some people to believe that he could be this stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2012, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/50 "2012-06-24T22:13:49Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > Yeah, but didn’t the host then show him the written question directly? It’s astonishing to me that it’s difficult for some people to believe that he could be this stupid. Only at the very end, and by then, Justin Bieber was probably so anxious about the confusion, he wasn’t really reading the card, just wanting to move on to the next thing. [Indeed, if you look at the video, at that point after reading the card, he still doesn’t understand the question; he says “‘Is German for basketball?’? I don’t know what that means”. It’s still not clear to him that the word “‘Bieber’” is supposed to be the subject of that question, because he was so thrown by the initial misparsing.] Again, from the interview: > [@](#): > > Soon after [the New Zealand incident] a video emerged, filmed in Germany months earlier, in which Justin counted to 10 in German and spoke lovingly about his German great-grandfather. I think it’s fair to say he knew what German was. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2012, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/51 "2012-06-24T22:18:50Z")
OK, I’ll give him a pass this once… But I’ve got my eyes on all of you. ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2012, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/52 "2012-06-25T00:17:23Z")
He has in fact been to [Bieber](http://www.justinbieberzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Justin-Bieber1.jpg), Germany. ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/53 "2012-06-26T07:47:58Z")
Sorry to re-bump this but this just showed up on Tumblr and I thought it was funny. [In which you mock pop star for not knowing name of famous chapel and you also apparently don’t know name of famous chapel](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m67ldxlwuo1qa6qwxo1_500.jpg). ---
**Author:** ![Beastly\_Rotter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@Beastly\_Rotter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beastly_Rotter)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/54 "2012-06-27T23:31:38Z")
> [@voguevixen](#): > > Yeah he essentially can’t go anywhere or do anything or be friends with anyone because he can’t trust anybody. He has three friends he went to school with and he hardly gets to see them. I think he comes off as clueless because he’s spent the last 3-4 years being so isolated. Add in his somewhat strange childhood and you end up with this odd Michael Jacksonish personality. Yeah, it must royally suck to have your every move scrutinised and obsessed over by hair-collecting weirdoes. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/55 "2012-06-27T23:51:25Z")
The whole premise of this thread may be wrong. On Jimmy Kimmel’s show last night, he showed a clip from “Glass House,” where a couple of women were discussing a third woman, who claimed to be an Art History major. Woman #1 said, approximately, “How can she be an Art History major and not even know who painted the Sixteenth Chapel?” I can only surmise that the Sixteenth Chapel is a work of art that is not widely known to the riffraff, but is famiiar to serious art scholars, like Bieber and the woman on the reality show. Incidentally, the clip concluded with the woman in question admitting that she was not an Art History major, but was really a Psych major, who had concealed it because she did not want to intimidate the other women. Woman #1, still skeptical, challenged her to name a single famous psychologist and his viewpoint. The Psych major responded, “Dr. Phil.” ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2012, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/56 "2012-06-28T08:17:10Z")
> [@Beastly\_Rotter](#): > > Yeah, it must royally suck to have your every move scrutinised and obsessed over by hair-collecting weirdoes. Guess what? I agree. ISWYDT. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2012, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951/57 "2012-06-28T23:52:45Z")
[The Bieb gets put on the table as a pawn in the AZ immigration law debate.](http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/rep-gutierrez-rips-arizona-immigration-law-191856141.html) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justin-bieber-and-the-16th-chapel-on-letterman/625951.md?page=2)