If a local reporter with a migraine mumbling about “burtations” is worthy of two posts, I think America’s new philosopher-poet of addiction merits at least one. Jonah Goldberg described my feelings about this exactly:
I’m trying to decide what I think about all of this Charlie Sheen nuttiness. If you take the position he doesn’t have serious mental-health issues — an implausible position, I think – and you don’t care one bit about his drug problem, he’s still an absolutely ridiculous person who doesn’t “deserve” a fraction of the attention he so clearly enjoys. But if his drug problem and his mental health aren’t issues, then he is also an immensely entertaining or at least engrossing spectacle. It’s rare to see someone own his idiocy and self-destruction so completely, never mind so boldly. He makes it hard to look away.
He’s like Bruce Campbell in “Evil Dead 2” — sometimes disturbing, sometimes entertaining, often both at the same time, and always, always quotable. (Check Twitter whenever a new interview with him hits the wires.) And the media can’t get enough. He did two long interviews this morning on “Today” and “Good Morning America” and wrapped up an hour-long chat with Piers Morgan on CNN just a few minutes ago. He’s a bona fide national news event. And somehow, between his career immolation and his porn “goddesses” and the endless what-exactly-is-wrong-with-him guessing games (he passed a drug test today), he’s never been more famous. Good lord.
Two clips in case you’ve overlooked the madness thus far. Exit question from PopEater: Who’s watching his kids?
Update: Says reporter Heidi Moore: “Charlie Sheen is exactly the character he played when he seduced Ferris’s sister Jeannie in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
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