The Popcorn Stand: This punishment came ‘Justin’ time

It seems this using musician/celebrity types as punishment for drunk driving is catching on.

A while back I wrote about how a Canadian police department was forcing those arrested for drunk driving to listen to Nickelback as part of their punishment. I also wrote my version of cruel and unusual punishment would be to force anyone to listen to the entire more than 7-minute long version of “MacArthur Park” for any offense.

Again, I couldn’t name one song Nickelback sings, although if I heard one of their songs, chances are I’d recognize it. Now add Justin Bieber to the “cheap shot” artists, celebrities we love to take cheap shots at.

On Super Bowl Sunday, residents in Wyoming, Minn., who were caught drinking and driving were forced to watch the T-Mobile commercial in which a tuxedo-clad Bieber evidently was doing some kind of touchdown dance routine with injured New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski.

Bieber and Gronkowski awkwardly doing touchdown celebrations was apparently supposed to demonstrate how T-Mobile provides unlimited service.

I normally don’t pay that much attention to Super Bowl commercials, but for some reason, I watched the one with Bieber and Gronkowski, and yeah, that definitely classifies as cruel and unusual punishment.

It was my understanding Bieber was a lot better dancer than that unless he was intentionally trying to dance that bad. Actually, the little girl featured in the commercial did have some moves.

But if the police department of Wyoming, Minn., really wanted to use that commercial as a punishment, it could have just shown about the last 10 seconds of the ad with Bieber dancing over and over again.

And the tweet describing the punishment “if you drink and drive, you will be subjected to Bieber” was apparently so popular it received 1.1 million views. People across the U.S. and Canada and as far away as Europe and Australia responded to the tweet.

So the consensus seems to be the stupidity of this ad was unlimited.

— Charles Whisnand