No one was surprised even a smidgen at Charlie Sheen’s confession to Matt Lauer on the Today show that he is the rumored HIV-positive “Hollywood bad boy” hinted at by numerous tabloids. For decades, this talented and good-looking scion of the Sheen family has been destroying his health, his reputation, and his career with clichéd Hollywood vices: drugs, alcohol, promiscuous sex, and selfishness.
There’s only one place to go from here: victimhood. Whether it works or not, Sheen will undoubtedly go to rehab, both for his poor life choices and for his tattered reputation. His name still draws attention and he still has enormous acting talent, so he won’t yet be discarded. Yet a victim needs a villain.
Sheen’s chosen villain? Women. Evil, evil women. Because they chose to sleep with him, knowing he had HIV, they took advantage of him. In Matt Lauer’s and Sheen’s words, he “dazedly” chose “unsavory and insipid types.” Of course, despite his daze, he stated he always was honest and offered to wear a condom. Thus he has inoculated himself in public when the inevitable parade of HIV-exposed women (up to two hundred since his diagnosis, according to at least one source) begin to sue him.
And then? ”We’re talking about shakedowns,” Sheen said about hush-money paid thus far. “I’ve paid people, not that many, but enough to bring it into the millions and what people forget is that’s money you’ve taken from my kids.” Yep, it’s always all about the children, isn’t it? Of course, money’s more important than parenting or setting a good example, anyway.
So that’s the story, or what we’ve been told of it. But the unsavory and insipid Sheen will be held up as a hero-victim, just like Bruce Jenner, just like Lamar Odom. This convenient sentimental fiction will recreate Sheen as a liberal media hero. He’ll star in a movie extolling the evils of war — sort of an anti-Platoon — and talk about his support for Hillary Clinton. Thus he will be redeemed and become a media-anointed hero. His medical status, his bankrupt personal morality, his self-destructive behavior will all be swept away in the cleansing fire of a newfound Progressivism. All the women he may have harmed, all their subsequent sex partners and their family, his terrible life choices and the impact they’ve had on the people who love him, they will be forgotten.
Watch it happen.
Meanwhile, the real villain is squatting in the corner. Sure, it’s an old-fashioned thing to say, but anyone who treats people, including “unsavory and insipid” women, as things brings misery into his own life. How many personal problems could be solved by these hero-victims if they’d just keep their pants zipped a little more often? Promoting restraint, of course, won’t be part of Sheen’s rehabilitation. He’s already made that clear by talking about having doctor-approved HIV-positive sex without a condom. Because we all know that will work out well in the end.
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