CSotD: A demonstration of the proper use of scandal
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The Charlie Sheen phenomenon has gone from curious to overdone in a very short time. There have been a couple of genuinely inventive applications of his disjointed comments — notably the sequence of cat photos at Medium Large and the Peanuts parody by Jimmy Kimmel's crew — but it is, at heart, a freak show and we really ought to be above pointing and laughing at freaks.
Mind you, I was appalled before his latest plunge into self-destruction, simply by the fact that "Two and a Half Men" was on so early in the evening (The Family Hour apparently having long since been turned over to the Manson family) and was such a ratings success.
There's nothing new or surprising about this, but neither is it uplifting or inspiring. I mean, while it's true that you would find stupid, vulgar entertainment in the marketplaces of the Middle Ages, the toothless, gormless peasants standing around laughing were not permitted to vote and their influence on the direction of civilization was pretty negligible, except inasmuch as they kept it stalled. Their chief contribution to history was catching the plague, at which they proved adept, probably because they crowded around the puppet booths howling at the entertainment, exchanging fleas and inhaling each other's germs.
And now they can vote and influence the mass media, all the while continuing to keep the direction of civilization stuck in the mire.
In any case, Scott Stantis seizes upon the Sheen scandal to comment on what is local news for his Chicago Tribune readership but that has, Sheen-like, managed to become a nationally known example of academic excess that will, I'm sure, be trotted out whenever the liberal arts need flogging.
Given that the Northwestern scandal is a local story and thus does call for commentary, this is an excellent application of one appalling scandal to the other.
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