Three ways of looking at Charlie Sheen

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:06:00 +0000

The Uses of Charlie Sheen: A Wittgensteinian Investigation

1. As a Cautionary Tale

Acutely problematic. Since Sheen's biography bears little relationship to the experiences of most civilians, it's hard to know how exactly he went wrong or how, under the circumstances (father a hyper-observant Roman Catholic political activist thinking-person's movie star; brother a frozen-in-pop-culture-time non-thinking person's teen-dream idol; face a peculiar demonic composite of both of them that's somehow been robbed of its individuality; ex-wife a robotic sex kitten projection deemed real only for legal and gossip purposes; TV show a fiendishly exploitative mechanism that invites the viewer to superimpose what he knows to be Sheen's degraded consciousness on a generic asshole background of a character), he might have avoided going wrong.

Yes, in theory, cocaine abuse is something human beings should avoid, but Charlie Sheen does not exist in theory. He exists in what one might call a "problem space" that is singular, novel and largely incommunicable. Inside of it and according to its rules "cocaine abuse" may well resemble what we on the outside, in the consensus problem-space, think of as "light and healthy eating" or "preparing for the hero's journey."

The year of inverted socialism

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:01:00 +0000

From each according to his need, to each according to his greed. It pains me to say it, because I voted for him, manned phone banks for him, and gave to his campaign, but Obama (in truly flabbergasting cahoots with Goldman Sachs, the Citibank alumni club, and the jet-setting Ivy-League long-range-thinking all stars who love to convene at Aspen, Davos, Sun Valley and other ritzy spas and ski resorts to discuss, over cocktails, the global common good) has managed to perfect, in just one year, an ingenious socioeconomic system that might be called "inverted socialism" and which makes the free-market conservatism it succeeded seem, by comparison, principled and simple.

As though he believes that the best way to redress a ruinous, massive private-sector theft is to rehabilitate the thieves by putting them to work as Cabinet members and high-ranking public policy officials, Obama has licensed the bungling robber barons who managed to gamble away the loot amassed in their attempt to fleece the world to recoup their squandered booty by "borrowing" from the taxpayers and homeowners (lots of them former homeowners by now) the money that they failed to grab the first time -- and then lending, with interest, the borrowings back to them!

Salon.com > Walter Kirn

Three ways of looking at Charlie Sheen

The year of inverted socialism