Like a lot of you, I watched Charlie Sheen's interviews with GMA and The Today Show and was really taken aback by his incredibly out of touch response to all of the questions, but there was something about him that really caught my interest. I couldn't help but think I had heard this same interview at some other time.
http://www.britethorn.com
There was just something so crazy about the way he was jumping around in his thoughts and his total lack of anything resembling decency that left me thinking of any number of middle-eastern dictators who've given interviews to the Western Media. They all sound the same as Charlie Sheen. Out of Touch with Reality. Unable to listen to a question that is in conflict with their World View and actually deliver an answer that is in any way related to the question they've been asked.
For a long time I've believed that human beings were not, with few exceptions, built to handle major celebrity. As the old notion of nobility has faded away in the face of the ever growing popularity of democracy, a new sort of Royalty has sprung up around us: TV stars, Sports Stars, and Media Stars of all stripes have arisen to serve as a new class of demigods all but worshiped by the masses. Just as so many middle-eastern dictators (and a few others around the world) train their people to worship them, so too does our modern media train us to worship people like . . . Charlie Sheen. And this is a very bad thing! No one is really meant to be able to handle the limelight, the money, the never ending snooping by media outlets like TMZ. And all too often these days it leads to a train wreck like Charlie.
The video above presents an amusing proposal for what to do with Charlie in the meantime, but in truth I think its possible that the rise of social media may, in the end, chip away at the aura of celebrity just as its done with actual dictators in Egypt, Libya and soon, I hope, in Iran. With more and more people able to dip into their "15 minutes" of fame because of the rise of the internet, its possible that people will finally come to see that celebrities truly are no different than anyone else. And where that will lead us is anyone's guess.