Weasel of the Week: Charlie Sheen

Lindsay Lohan should take notes and try not to follow the lead of this week's weasel.

Charlie Sheen may have just flushed his career right down the toilet in one fell swoop. In an interview with radio shock jock Alex Jones, Sheen dared CBS to pull his hit sitcom, Two And a Half Men, off the air because of his off-air antics, which have become fodder for the tabloids.

Twice in the last few months (at the very least), Sheen, son of actor-activist Martin Sheen, has landed on the front pages of the tabloids after being either arrested or hospitalized---or both---after violent berserker rages following binges on drugs and alcohol. In one instance, he trashed a hotel room and locked up his roommate du jour, a 20-year old porn actress, in a closet, naked. Sheen just can't stay away from the vices that are ruining his career. He's grown up in the decadence of Hollywood, and doesn't know how to live any other way. He's gone through one marriage after another for the same reason. Rehab, anger management course, therapy. None of this is helping him at all.

Earlier today, Sheen called into the Jones show and fired off a rant against Alcoholics Anonymous, CBS, & Chuck Lorre, the creator-producer of Two And a Half Men, and issued his challenge to CBS to pull the show. Real smart, Charlie. NOT! It seems fitting that he chose Jones' broadcast to vent his spleen. Jones is one of those conspiracy nuts who has written books and produced videos presenting his viewpoints, however skewed they might be. Sheen may have given Jones enough ammunition to launch into some vitriol of his own toward the television industry, or Hollywood in general. A short time ago, CBS called Sheen's bluff, and placed Two And a Half Men on hiatus for the rest of the season, discontinuing production.

In truth, it's the prudent thing to do. Sheen, on the surface at least, is unwilling to listen to reason, and while he had reportedly entered rehab to address his issues, it doesn't appear as though he's taking it very seriously. If he did, he wouldn't have put his career in jeopardy with his antics over the last three months.

Think back to his role as erratic pitcher Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn in "Major League". Substitute Charlie Sheen's personal life for the baseball diamond. Sheen has let the success of his television show---and the Hanes commercials with Michael Jordan---go to his head. Off screen, however, Sheen has forgotten one important asset. Self-control. He either is unwilling to fully immerse himself in rehabilitation to cure his addictions, or would rather embrace those addictions at the risk of his career, if not, at worst, his life. Insofar as we know, he hasn't been accused of shoplifting, unlike Lindsay Lohan, who's half Sheen's age, and yet is also putting her career at risk because she can't seem to stay out of trouble. Ms. Lohan's facing jail time for supposedly stealing a necklace, and is wearing one of those ankle bracelets that are supposed to guard against the use of alcohol.

As I said at the beginning, Lindsay should pay close attention to Charlie Sheen's situation, and, using reverse psychology, commit herself to rehabilitating her career before it's too late. In Charlie's case, if it isn't too late, it may be sooner than anyone thinks. In his 1984 hit, "The Authority Song", John Mellencamp wrote that "I fight authority, authority always wins". Today, CBS was the authority, and all Charlie Sheen gets as a consolation prize is a set of weasel ears.