by Rachel Krueger
This is me trying not to write about Charlie Sheen and failing. Not writing about Charlie Sheen is more difficult than deciding whether to laugh at or pity him, which is weirdly hard.
Because on the one hand, the man is a barrel of allegedly sober monkeys. He’s funnier now than he ever was on Two and a Half Men (which, ok, my dog wearing socks is funnier than Two and a Half). Tiger blood? Warlocks? WINNING? Such is the stuff that memes are made of, and memes are what the internet eats, so.
And while on the other hand, he has CLEARLY misplaced his marbles, my pity will do him no earthly good. The Sheen is too old and too rich for anyone’s pity (or sensible arguments) to derail his crazy train, not that anyone has been trying. Britney’s kids we take away, Lindsay we throw (however temporarily) in the clink, but His Royal Sheenness can trash hotels and smack hookers and we’re all, That guy is such a rascal. Let’s see what he’ll do next.
And I don’t want to Cassandra this shit but given the usual Celebrity Wheels of Fortune (shame spiral — come back, shame spiral — comfortable obscurity, shame spiral — probably dead by April) I’m afraid what he’ll do next is die, so we might want to ration our LOLs. There’s good odds we may come to rue them. Remember how we all had to feel bad for a second after Michael Jackson R.I.P.’d?
We are never going to stop rewarding insanity with fame (or infamy, which have become kissing cousins) and we aren’t going to stop laughing because it isn’t funny (it is), but for the sake of our future selves who don’t want to feel like assholes, let’s temper our hilarity with a bit of restraint. At least until we see what he does do next.
See also, John Galliano. The fact is, too much money + too many yes men + drugs = Colonel Gadaffi in the making. Do I worry about feeling bad when he runs amok permanently? Uh, no.