Thursday, March 10, 2011

Where Charlie messed up

I heard a theory regarding Charlie Sheen suggesting that part of why he was able to be tolerated and (on some level) embraced by the public despite repeated allegations of abusing women, going back decades, was because that was ultimately not completely out of character with his bad boy image. He played a womanizer on TV and that was popular presumably in part because people figured it was not unlike who he really was.

Tiger Woods, by contrast, was vilified not merely because he cheated on his wife but because he'd had a squeaky clean image up to the point where his infidelity was made public. It's only now that Sheen has gone off his rocker that his behavior changed from amusing to pathetic and troubling.

So the situation is ultimately a matter of expectation management. If you're a sleazeball, but just enough of a charming sleazeball to make that palatable but don't pretend to be a saint.

If you're bonkers (for whatever reason), just keep it on the side of being somewhat funny and you're fine. (Well, keeping your bigotry under wraps probably helps.)

Perhaps Sheen's mistake was ever comporting himself as a person who had it together, failing to properly lay the groundwork of lunacy that would make... whatever the hell one should call his present behavior... people shrug it off with the same blithe disregard for all they've been overlooking since the '80s.

1 comment:

  1. I think he's been on a nonstop coke binge since January. When his body finally gives out and he has to stop, he'll start sounding more normal. Or he'll be dead.

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