“As kids we’re not taught how to deal with success; we’re taught how to deal with failure.
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. If at first you succeed, then what?”
Charlie Sheen is probably crazy.
Either that, or he’s on something strong.
Regardless of what’s addling his state of mind, his zany one-liners have taken the nation by storm, showing up in a large amount of recent Facebook statuses, tweets and texts from last night.
But his popularity isn’t just a result of the fantastical quality of everything he says—his popularity also stems from a kernel of truth throughout all of his statements, no matter how insane.
And he’s certainly popular- a million Twitter followers in one day? Two million hits on the YouTube video of his interview with ABC?
The interviewer tried her best to talk him into a corner and force him to regret his drug binges, but all she did was give him the proper ammunition to make himself some sort of national anti-hero.
Not that anyone in their right mind would try to imitate Sheen’s lifestyle.
He himself said he did more drugs than “anybody could survive” and that the only reason he has lived to tell his tale is because of his “tiger blood” and “Adonis DNA.”
America’s love for Sheen does not stem from a love of his outlandish lifestyle any more than Sheen’s popularity has caused a spike in substance abuse or promiscuity.
People just like to see someone who is, in Sheen’s words, “winning.”
After years of training in manners, sharing and inside voices, it’s exciting to see someone unafraid to be arrogant.
Why do you think Kanye West is always in the headlines? He sells records, but so does Bruno Mars, and most people don’t care about a single word Bruno Mars hasn’t sung.
His confidence, not just his insanity, makes him compelling. He dodges accusations but never denies them.
He doesn’t apologize, he mythologizes. On his partying: “the run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards, all of them, just look like droopy-eyed, armless children.
When asked how he ended his addiction to drugs, he states “I just blinked my eyes and cured my brain.”
Any rational person that has seen an episode of Intervention knows that blinking your eyes never cures a physical dependency on crack; so, should we humor Sheen by believing him when he says, “I am on a drug. It’s called ‘Charlie Sheen.’”
Probably not.
But therein lies the dilemma: watching him spiral into a delusional public ego trip, which will most likely end in relapse, is entertaining.
It really makes you root for him and his family of two porn star girlfriends – the goddesses – and twin sons.
Only the richest television actor in history would expose himself so completely to psychoanalysis by doing interviews on Good Morning America, TMZ, the Today show, Radar and CNN in one day to make the case that he’s not just a party-prone Hollywood actor but that his brain “fires in a way that is…not from this terrestrial realm.”
We love Charlie, but at the end of the day, this will be a story about a superstar