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Music

Justin Bieber vs. the memory Anne Frank

Child popstar-cum-adult human man Justin Bieber doesn’t seem especially shy about making enemies.

First he showed up to receive the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal dressed down in Marky Mark-style overalls. Then there was the back-and-forth with Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney, who bravely dismissed Bieber at the Grammys, as if the Black Keys are something other than just the Justin Bieber of whatever genre of music they consider themselves (blues pop? Garage-jock?). Also, he maybe spit on a guy?

So Bieber was walking a fine enough line between Andy Kaufmanesque living conceptual art prank and high-functioning autistic when he invited the ire of basically all of humanity by allegedly leaving an idiotic comment in the guest book at – where else? – the Anne Frank House. On Friday, Bieber apparently toured the Amsterdam museum – which housed universally beloved Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank while she and her family hid from Nazi tormentors – and thought it was totally fine to leave the following message: “Truly inspiring to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.”

Yikes.

The museum posted the comment to Bieber’s Facebook page, inviting such stunned responses as “What an idiot to make it about him and not Anne” and “I beliebe [sic] this kid is justin idiot.”

Given that Bieber basically matured inside of the BeDazzled iron lung of his own tween-pop celebrity, it’s impossible to know if he can even conceive of how astonishingly tasteless piggybacking on Anne Frank’s legacy for self-promotion is. Though he once exhibited difficulty understanding the word “German.” So maybe the fineries of the Holocaust are lost on him altogether.

Despite everything, let’s all make a conscious decision to believe that Bieber’s really good at heart. (He’s probably not though.)

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