You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
Bill McGurn ·
Feb 15, 2011 at 9:34am
God's gift to tabloid news gave a little more yesterday, when Charlie Sheen recounted to a radio host some colorful advice he had given the UCLA baseball team.
Wonder if the Hollywood folks can help us out. Here's a talented man who is making tons of money, not only for himself, but for his show. Coming from a long line of what we in our family called practicing alcoholics, I'm sympathetic to people fighting a losing battle with their demons. Yet it seems obvious to everyone but the star himself that he is imploding -- and that the big bucks he is making is fueling a lifestyle that seems to send him to the hospital every few months.
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Dec '10
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
What many people do not understand is that Two and a Half Men" is a documentary.
By the way, now that the boy is taller than his father, how accurate is the title?
Dec '10
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
They should give Charlie Sheen a frequent-visitor card for the hospital: 9 visits to the ER, and your 10th visit... to the morgue... is free!
Jun '10
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
I once worked with a man who was a self-destructive time bomb. He was a brilliant businessman who earned money by the bucket. Of him it could be said that what money he did not spend on booze and broads he wasted. The fellow had a penchant for private jets and cat houses, which he rented for weekenders with the “boys.” It was not unusual to encounter ladies of the night in various stages of undress coming out of his office after regular business hours. When the market crashed, the wasted millions, the booze, the broads, the exotic cars, and the cat houses faded into a collective memory of once-upon-a-time stories and exaggerations more urban legend than real and our roué’s story morphed into a long-road-back tale. In my mind the man remains to this day an enigma. I still, like the guy, even though I never did share his taste for exotic sin. But, if there is a moral here, it is that carefree self-destruction can be very attractive. Evil triumphs not because it is evil; it triumphs because it looks and feels so good, so natural, and so nice.
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
I don't know, Bill. Part of me thinks that Sheen is a hero -- he's refusing to parrot a lot of this self-help, rehab-chic nonsense, he's taking responsibility for his actions, he's showing up to work...yeah, okay, he's a drunk and a drug-fiend and a sex addict, but, you know, he can afford it. And if he's a rotten dad and a terrible husband, well, that's not great, but he's not really "imploding." He's a reliably functional bad person. The people around him who want to "help" him "overcome" his problems have a huge financial interest in him. But at some point, don't we have to let a guy drink himself to death if that's what he wants?
Jul '10
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
I just think he horribly over-pays for the companionship of porn stars, which distorts the market for the rest of us.
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
Rob, if it's true that he put a knife to his wife's throat -- plausible at least, given that he did show police a switchblade locked in the open position, has a record of threatening his previous wives and accidentally shot one -- it's hard for me to think of him as a "hero," or even just some kind of over-exhuberant Hunter Thompson, no matter how much we might appreciate the lack of political correctness.
It turns out today that he complained about CBS and Warner Bros keeping him from work.
Sep '10
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
Kenneth
I just think he horribly over-pays for the companionship of porn stars, which distorts the market for the rest of us. · Feb 15 at 12:37pm
You probably have heard this but, he's not paying them for sex, he can get that for free. He's paying them to go away.
Aug '10
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
I'm almost sympathetic to Sheen now. He tells it like he sees it, instead of having his publicist churn out disingenuous press releases to rehabilitate his image.
Is it possible to abhor his lifestyle and at the same time admire his honesty and his unwillingness to apologize for a life that (he says) he enjoys living? I honestly don't know.
On a completely different topic, I caught a recent episode of Two And A Half Men the other day, and Charlie Sheen looked like an emaciated old man. He reminded me of Skeletor. His character on that show is starting to get REALLY creepy. He looks like the kind of "elderly gigolo" that the mother character carries on with. The joke doesn't work any more. Time to cancel the show.
Edited on Feb 15, 2011 at 1:43pmDec '10
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
Bill McGurn: Rob, if it's true that he put a knife to his wife's throat -- plausible at least, given that he did show police a switchblade locked in the open position, has a record of threatening his previous wives and accidentally shot one -- it's hard for me to think of him as a "hero," or even just some kind of over-exhuberant Hunter Thompson, no matter how much we might appreciate the lack of political correctness.
It turns out today that he complained about CBS and Warner Bros keeping him from work. · Feb 15 at 1:27pm
Yes, his exuberance seems to have spilled over several times into the realm of harming others.
There's a fascinating anecdote about Raymond Chandler and his struggle with alcoholism during his collaboration with Billy Wilder on Double Indemnity. He reached a point where he made a deal: if they'd let him give up sobriety and exist for a week solely on alcohol and an IV drip of glucose, he'd finish the script in time to keep the production on schedule.
May '10
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
The danger of the individual as an industry. CBS and Warners are in a bind because the premise of the show is intertwined with those three specific characters. It's impossible for them to pull a Valerie Harper on him.
However, one Angus Turner Jones will be 18 in October. Does he really qualify as a "half" man? He's even past the three-fifths point and ineligible for any indignant rant from the professional left.
Aug '10
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
Do funeral directors sell credit default swaps on this guy's demise ? I've read the Big Short, should be writing the Big Snort bout now. This is white version of Snoop, Lil Wayne, and maybe Tupac/ Biggie. Better clothes, hotels, and publicists.
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
Well, okay. The knife thing is worrisome. To say the least.
So maybe "hero" is the wrong choice of words. But I'm still glad that there's someone out there -- some total and utter reprobate -- who is pushing back against this smothering therapeutic culture. It's not just that he's politically incorrect. It's that he's actively contradicting the "re-hab" and "healing" mantra we're all supposed to swallow, despite the awful success record of these re-hab facilities. Honestly -- and I know this sounds awful, but I'll say it again -- if we had less of a therapeutic recovery culture and more of a let-you-drink-yourself-to-death culture, we might actually see less addiction. There will always be the Charlie Sheens (and Keith Richards) of the world.
Jul '10
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
Amen!!
Freedom at Its Freest.
Jul '10
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
Rob Long: Well, okay. The knife thing is worrisome. To say the least.
So maybe "hero" is the wrong choice of words. But I'm still glad that there's someone out there -- some total and utter reprobate -- who is pushing back against this smothering therapeutic culture. It's not just that he's politically incorrect. It's that he's actively contradicting the "re-hab" and "healing" mantra we're all supposed to swallow, despite the awful success record of these re-hab facilities. Honestly -- and I know this sounds awful, but I'll say it again -- if we had less of a therapeutic recovery culture and more of a let-you-drink-yourself-to-death culture, we might actually see less addiction. There will always be the Charlie Sheens (and Keith Richards) of the world. · Feb 15 at 6:31pm
Preach on, Brother.
Rob, I couldn't agree more.
"..smothering therapeutic culture...." Just makes Me so nauseas.
Dec '10
Re: You're a Good Man, Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen's publicist said the actor suffered from, "exhaustion and a hernia" - a classic PR euphemism for, "overdose and a sprained taint."
Edited on Feb 16, 2011 at 5:02pm