Charlie Sheen: Hero of the hour?

As you have undoubtedly heard, Charlie Sheen's live shows didn't go over so well over the weekend. Practicing alcoholics are never as funny as they think they are, in the long haul. With editing, yes. For a whole show, no. From ABC:

After all but getting booed off stage at the Detroit, Mich. debut of his live show, "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option," it's unclear if or how Sheen's month-long tour will proceed.

Anticipation ran high for the event. Ticket holders milled about the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit before the 8 p.m. start time, sometimes yelling Sheen catchphrases like "tiger blood" and "winning" to rev up fellow attendees. As of Saturday afternoon, all 4,700 seats at the theater had been sold.

...

Sheen managed to up the crowd's enthusiasm for the start of his act. Before his official debut, he played a montage of video clips including scenes from "Apocalypse Now," the film starring Sheen's father that Sheen claims to be obsessed with. He then strutted on stage with his "goddesses," Bree Olsen and Natalie Kenly, who proceeded to engage in a passionate kiss, much to the delight of the crowd.

They then went backstage to burn a bowling shirt similar to the one Sheen wore on "Two and a Half Men." While footage of the shirt on fire in a garbage can played on the big screen behind him, Sheen urged the crowd to hold up their lighters, asking, "Doesn't anyone smoke cigarettes anymore?"

The spectacle mirrored the ranting and raving Sheen's done online and in interviews over the past few weeks. But after that, things took a turn for the weird.

Sheen stood at a podium in front of a pseudo-presidential looking seal saying "Warlock States of Sheen" and launched into a nonsensical speech seemingly directed at his critics.

He started, "Tonight I am delivered by cyber cloud, with the stomp and glisten of heaven's produce section." He then talked about burning something "down from the mount of olive" and "gasoline rainbows." He frequently damned "trolls" -- presumably, "Two and a Half Men" creator Chuck Lorre and his former bosses at CBS and Warner Brothers. He called Sarah Palin a "whore" for no apparent reason.

No apparent reason? Of course there is an apparent reason, that you media-swine refuse to take seriously: He's a misogynist pig.

The fact that so many people find his woman-hating amusing and worth celebrating, lets us know exactly how far we have to go.

Anna Holmes' piece in the New York Times, linked above, details all the woman-pounding Charlie has humorously engaged in over the years. And as a rich, privileged white man, he gets by with all of it (paging Chris Brown! Chris Brown, call your office)... and of course, since so many of the women getting pounded are mere actresses, models and sex workers, they 'deserve' it:

A woman’s active embrace of the fame monster or participation in the sex industry, we seem to say, means that she compromises her right not to be assaulted, let alone humiliated, insulted or degraded; it’s part of the deal. The promise of a modern Cinderella ending — attention, fame, the love and savings account of a rich man — is always the assumed goal.

Objectification and abuse, it follows, is not only an accepted occupational hazard for certain women, but something that men like Mr. Sheen have earned the right to indulge in. (Mr. Sheen reportedly once said that he didn’t pay prostitutes for the sex; he paid them “to leave.”)

Haha, ain't that funny? Is he serious or joking?--go the predictable onlooker-comments... ohhh, he's just being funny. Actually, I think he means everything he says, and he has repeatedly proven that he is willing to back it up with a nice right to the jaw, if any nearby female should argue.

Indeed, it’s difficult for many to discern any difference between Mr. Sheen’s real-life, round-the-clock, recorded outbursts and the sexist narratives devised by reality television producers, in which women are routinely portrayed as backstabbing floozies, and dreadful behavior by males is explained away as a side effect of unbridled passion or too much pilsner.

And so, a pricey live show-tour by a woman-hater, or should I say ANOTHER woman-hater (there are oodles of rock stars and hip-hop stars and country-and-western stars who have gotten plenty rich off of women-hating... paging Eminem! paging Ted Nugent! etc) ... and then I see Phyllis Schlafly (barfs for emphasis) on C-Span over the weekend, telling us that feminism is over with and no longer necessary, and what are these harridans and harpies still so pissed off about?

One wonders if she has flipped her channels lately, over to ABC (live video of Charlie at above link) or to the millions of other outlets that have advertised Charlie's zealously-sexist antics over recent months. Hello? What planet is Schlafly on?

They deserve each other, most assuredly.