I live in New York. While I am aware that location slants news coverage, I was surprised when I mentioned to a friend who lives out in the Midwest that I was sick and tired of Lindsay Lohan, and she asked me why. I asked her why she wasn’t disgusted with all the newspaper headlines and TV lead-in stories about the actress’s downward spiral and she replied that the Minneapolis media reports nothing about Lindsay Lohan. My friend didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. No film clips about the series of judges warning her that this was her last warning, no awareness about the white cocktail dress she wore to a morning court date, nothing even about her pulling a Winona and stealing a necklace from a California jewelry store. What makes this such hot news in New York? Lindsay is a local girl. She grew up on Long Island. Apparently the New York media thinks we all want to know what the city’s prodigal children are up to. Of course going down makes for a bigger story.
But now, just as looking at Lindsay is getting stale for the New York media, along comes Charlie Sheen, another Gotham baby gone Hollywood. I don’t know where you live or what you see on TV, but it’s a crap shoot here in the Big Apple as to who leads off our evening news: Gaddafi or Charlie. Or maybe it’s Qadhafi or Estevez. They both have alternate names, and it’s painfully clear they’re both off their rockers. Where one brought down a country, the other merely incinerated a top-rated TV show, but it’s the latter’s troubled countenance and ranting delusions that soak up the airtime. The Sheen saga has gone viral now that he announced his lawsuit against CBS for depriving him of making a living, and demanding they hire him back at $3 million an episode. I can imagine how the country’s tragically unemployed citizens feel, sitting in their one-payment-away-from-foreclosure houses watching the actor implode on television, braying that $2 million a show just won’t cut it anymore.
Like viewing any public disintegration, the instinct is to either turn away in annoyance, or watch with deep pity that no force in the world can pull this tortured and unbalanced human being away from the edge. He’s already lost his dignity along with his job. Addiction specialists have weighed in on how classic his behavior is – the victimization whines, the blame game, the assurance that his cure lies in his own hands. Psychologists and psychiatrists voice their diagnosis of a severe mood disorder, and cite the epic grandiosity and crippling depression the actor swings between. He needs help, everyone agrees. Somewhere there is a succession of judges who will issue him their last warnings before setting him free. And the public will wonder why it needs to stay informed of every nut and bolt that comes loose. Perhaps to reassure itself as it ultimately peers over the cliff at the twisted mess below that there was nothing anyone could do.
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