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Last week it seemed no one could get enough of Charlie Sheen. Though

he'd previously made the papers with his drug problems, domestic

violence incidents, and hit TV series, Sheen attained internet meme

status when, after his ravings derailed his show, he responded with spectacularly

outsized references to himself as "an F-18" with "flaming fists" and

"tiger blood" who was in all things #winning.

This led to humorous Charlie Sheen random quote

generators and flow charts as well as outraged remarks, some of

which were pretty astute, and some of which were silly.

You know rightbloggers had to get a piece of this action. In their hands

Sheen became a metaphor for liberalism, homeless policy, union

violence, and America's moral decline in the gay marriage era.

In fairness we must say that many of the brethren obviously used

Sheen's name, couched in anodyne isn't-it-terrible and think-of-the-children angles, just to generate

traffic. This we endorse as part of a timeless journalistic tradition.

We are sympathetic as well toward Christian sites that did Sheen posts,

as they rely on fallen celebrities almost as much as gossip sites do.

Sheen's "public disintegration... reflects the core sickness of an

entertainment-saturated, celebrity-worshipping culture," one typical

analysis by Army chaplain Michael Anthony Milton told us. Milton added, "the

cure for Charlie Sheen is not more Charlie Sheen. The cure lies in less

of him and more of God," which is pretty quote-generator-worthy, itself.

But a lot of them, alas and what a shock, thought Sheen's public

breakdown was political news.

"Charlie Sheen, you are the denoument of the left wing dream," said Warrior of RedState. "Your rant is indicative of

the self-righteous arrogance which characterizes nearly everybody on the

left... If anyone ever wonders what a country dominated by godless,

leftist mooonbats will look like, all they need do is cast a weary

glance your way. The river of putrid sewage which has become your life

would very soon become characteristic of our national ethos." A nation

of #winners!

Also: "You are the harbinger of morbid excess, not George W. Bush."

We're not sure how Bush got into it; maybe Warrior has a random

generator of his own.

"Some might say that Sheen wants this publicity," said Bookworm in Right Wing News. "...There's a

difference, though, between a mentally functioning person (even a low

functioning person) taking appropriate steps to advance his career, and a

mentally ill person treading that same path. It reminds me of the

arguments the ACLU always makes about the paranoid schizophrenics on the

streets of San Francisco: 'They want to be there.'" Sheen's current legal representation is probably focusing

on other strategies, but no doubt appreciates the advice.

The easy layup for rightbloggers was Sheen's association with Hollywood,

which in their universe is a rogue state whose primary exports are

donations to Democratic candidates, pornography, and treason.

"Charlie Sheen is the product of a liberal upbringing," The Right Perspective Podcast Blog said, "his

wide-eyed father slept on a heating grater to show solidarity with the

homeless instead of raising his son in a decent manner."

"[Sheen] finally said aloud what I've suspected the Hollywood crowd

thought about us mere mortals for a long time," said Musings of a Mad Conservative. "When is Hollywood

going to learn that this is what happens when you raise your kids with

extreme liberal 'values'?" beseeched The Alternative Conservative.

"Even in the 'fair city of Detroit', when a man threatens to sever his

wife′s head and mail it to her mother, the man usually winds up either

in a jail cell or rubber-coated room of a psychiatric ward," said Andrew

Zarowny at Right Pundits. "But in Hollywood, such a man sets records

for new Twitter followers and earns millions of dollars." This implies

that Sheen's record-breaking crop of followers are all Hollywood weirdos

themselves, which just makes his achievement all the more remarkable.

The Sheen menace was thought to have further implications. In a video, AlfonZo Rachel showed an angry union demonstrator

and said the man was "Charlie Sheen in 30 more months -- same person,

totally obsessed with how bad-ass they are and how violent they can

get." Also, "Charlie Sheen is another one of those types who hates the

rich and their greed." This doesn't seem to track with Sheen's actual

"bitchin' rockstar" self-assessment, enabled as it is by mountains of

cash, but Rachel insisted, "he's the greedy rich, he's

projecting. He's the same as the unions. It's never enough for them!"

Clearly Scott Walker is right to try to strip Wisconsin teachers of

their excessively generous two-goddess-per-household benefits.

Later Rachel compared unions (or maybe Charlie Sheen, it's not clear) to

pimps and battered women, suggested the word "Sheen" be used as a

synonym for shit, and raged at the Angry Left for attacking him for hate

speech sometime in the future. Red State Report concurred: "With all the sanity

and civility of a Charlie Sheen Tweet, the Unions and Democrats are

relentless in their supposed anger and rage. "

The Sheen menace has formed an alliance with the Kitteh menace. No man is safe. (via)

went for humor, of a sort: Tobytoons offered a one-panel comic showing Sheen in

a tiger suit celebrating his "tiger blood," and a woman observing, "Oh,

great. Now Charlie thinks he is a congressman!" Bob Gorrell did a four-panel strip with the

punchline, "I am on a drug. It's called liberal Democrat!" Sometimes the

jokes write themselves, especially when no qualified author is

available.

You-know-who was inevitably brought into it. "Addiction does strange

things to the mind," wrote Floyd and Mary Beth Brown. "The same is true of

America's addiction to debt... Clearly Obama is addicted to debt the

same way Charlie Sheen is addicted to drugs."

"Obama is WINNING the future, Charlie Sheen style," tweeted Ben Shapiro. "Gadhafi, Charlie Sheen, bin Laden,

Obama, Nancy P., MICKEY MOUSE, and DONALD DUCK can do whatever they

want," asserted Constance Lee, "BUT THEY CANNOT OUT RUN THE HOLY

GHOST!"

Some focused on the liberal media's blame in all this, and not solely in

expected ways. "While the media is doing its best to exploit the

self-destructive train wreak otherwise known as Charlie Sheen," said Press Flak, "reporters, especially those in the

liberal media, are demonstrating a case of selective amnesia about how

cruel Charlie Sheen's father, Martin, was in his comments about former

President George W. Bush's admission of his drinking problems as a young

man." Stop the presses!

Not everyone saw Sheen as an avatar of liberalism, though. A few saw his

bold contempt for political correctness as a distinctly conservative

trait.

"Unlike probably everyone else watching Charlie Sheen these days, we

think this 'train wreck' (as some are calling it) is probably the best

we've seen him, and (having mutual friends) we applaud him mightily for

it," said The Crack Emcee. "His nothing-can-take-me-down

attitude, in the face of this wimpy, middle class, wet rag nanny state

finger-wagging opinion is winning. This is a man, owning his actions and

insisting everyone else come clean and take responsibility for theirs

as well."

So in going crazy, Sheen is actually going Galt. We'd be more inclined to sympathy with

this view were it not for the suspicious tendency of women close to

Sheen to wind up complaining of assault. But maybe The Crack

Emcee took this into account, as he castigated the "cautious,

conformist, inoffensive, non-risk taking, arrogant, lying bunch of

NewAge pussies who think if any woman, like [Sheen's Good Morning

America] interviewer, says she or others don't approve, then some form

of public contrition and apology is called for."

Ann Althouse appreciated Crack Emcee's POV. "It's

funny, I was just saying to Meade that people don't rant against

'conformity' anymore -- not like they did in the 50s and 60s," she

mused.

See? He's pro-military.

us, sheep, willing to give up of freedoms for a little more security. On

the other hand, some of us have become...Tea Partiers," he wrote.

"Another group of rebels, scorned by the media and loathed in polite

society, who yet continue to push forward and succeed in their mission

of taking our freedoms back. 'Live Free or Die,' and 'Don't Tread on

Me'... sentiments that Charlie Sheen espouses in his own sphere

seemingly every five minutes. And the media -- despite their

tongue-clucking at our imaginary excesses -- cannot stop talking about

us, even if only to vilify us."

That'll make the protest signs more interesting, at least: Less "Don't

Tread on Me," more "We'll Cure America With Our Brain" and "If You're

Part of the Tea Party We Will Love You Violently."

WorldNetDaily's Ilana Mercer approved Sheen's non-conformism in

another area: "Unlike the automatons of the entertainment industry - and

the population at large - the intemperate Mr. Sheen refuses to accept

as holy writ the teachings of a therapeutic cult that coerces its

adherents into conformity." The cult to which she referred is Alcoholics

Anonymous. Well, good thing he's out of that!

Perhaps the oddest Sheen reference came at the end of a long video

conversation about gay marriage between Ricochet's James Poulos and National Review's

Jonah Goldberg. The two prominent conservatives, perhaps sensing the

tide of history against them, spent 23 minutes trying to find problems

with gay marriage without outright condemning it. Goldberg, for example,

denounced the "elite populism" of people who "now have decided that

they want to redefine what the institution of marriage is" just because

"they have numbers and influence on their side..." Poulos used Barney

Frank's failure to endorse polygamy as evidence of "tension that exists

on the left." Etc.

Eventually they meandered into Goldberg's idea of a marriage-ready

"homosexual bourgeoisie" (or HoBos as Goldberg is pleased to call them), who in

his view used to just want anonymous sex in clubs like the Ramrod before

they, for some reason, decided they wanted to get married instead.

Poulos suggested that nowadays all bourgeois people, gay and straight,

"especially want to do this kind oscillating back and forth between the

comfy enclosures of their domestic zone and the experience of

transgression that they swore off as a full-time lifestyle when they

went bourgeois. Case in point, Charlie Sheen, right? This is the kind of

guy who wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants the bourgeois

lifestyle, he wants the family lifestyle, but three divorces in he wants

to have two girlfriends..."

Like many another commentator, Goldberg leapt at the chance to change

the subject to Charlie Sheen. "One of the reasons why we're in trouble

in this country is that we don't have as healthy institutions as we

should, to create more decent people," he said. "Though I still think

this is an inherently decent country with vast reservoirs of -- not to

keep repeating the word -- decency to draw upon, but when you have

people like Charlie Sheen out there, when you have this sort of culture

that says you can be both transgressive and bourgeois at the same time,

that we can all be Batman, then you get yourself into trouble."

Well, at least it got them off the topic of gay marriage, and onto the

subject of how they and all decent people are better than, or at least

jealous of, some celebrity. Which is fortunate, as that's mainly what

stories like this are good for.