Congratulations everyone, we’re winning! We’ve had a front row seat to the outrageous meltdown of the life and times of Charlie Sheen, and we should be incredibly grateful.
Charlie Sheen is a pretty good actor. After all these years, none of his roles gave any indication that the man himself has tiger blood and Adonis DNA.
Not even Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn or Charlie Harper, two of the finest bad-ass characters in pop culture history, gave any inclination that Sheen himself had “parts of him that were Dennis Hopper.”
I guess it’s a little crass of me to take so much delight in a man whose life has gone through such a downward spiral of shit, though it’s also a little crass of Charlie Sheen to simultaneously have two porn star girlfriends. So we break even.
In only a speck of time, Charlie Sheen went from being the highest-paid actor on television and a man who found a lot of success after a rocky history to an unemployed, delusional loser.
Feel how you will about Sheen’s recent crack-up and concurrent whirlwind of a media tour, but don’t pity him. He doesn’t deserve your pity and probably wouldn’t want it anyway.
The man was at the top of his game — making over $3 million an episode for “Two and a Half Men,” the most successful comedy on television, Sheen wasn’t exactly in dire straits.
So what happened? It appears that if you simultaneously date two porn stars, do some drugs that share your namesake and call Thomas Jefferson a pussy, suddenly the world turns on you.
And honestly, it doesn’t really go deeper than that. Watching Charlie Sheen’s interview on “Piers Morgan Tonight,” I got the sense that he believed what his life had become was normal and awesome. He had a real sincerity about himself.
Here’s what differentiates Sheen’s personal avalanche from the more deplorable ones of recent history: Aside from an unintentional anti-Semitic jibe at his show-runner Chuck Lorre, he hasn’t offended a group of people (think Mel Gibson), nor has he been involved in lawsuits or faced jail time (think Lindsay Lohan). He’s only messing with himself and his own psyche.
Charlie Sheen’s meltdown and termination from “Two and a Half Men” hasn’t hurt me or you in any way. That is unless you’re a fan of the show. Though, if that’s the case, you’ve been hurting yourself for years.
And I only feel the tiniest bit guilty about deciding to take the Charlie Sheen route instead of focusing on something more culturally important. There are protests in Libya, protests in Wisconsin, protests on protests, and I’m protesting it. Charlie Sheen is your perfect diversion.
Perhaps you think it’s a shame that he’s been headlining the news more prominently than these other stories in recent weeks, and now I guess I’m also to blame. But his plight is fun. Nobody has any personal stake in Charlie Sheen or a special connection to him.
His implosion is the fluff on top of what has been a very serious year for the world thus far. There is no reason to take seriously anything this man has done.
You probably don’t want to live the Charlie Sheen life, but take pleasure in witnessing it. He’s “tired of pretending” he’s “not a total, bitchin’ rock star from Mars.” You too should stop pretending.
If you haven’t, the world already has. Chuck became the fastest Twitter user to reach one million followers, he’s inspired spot-on impersonations from Jimmy Fallon and “Saturday Night Live’s” Bill Hader, and he’s even garnered some sympathy from the godfather of crazy, Gary Busey.
And if Gary Busey is worried about how loony you’ve become, you might have a real problem on your hands. As for the rest of us, he’s entertainment. As Charlie Sheen himself said, “just sit back and enjoy the show.”