Tag Archives: domestic violence

The Disposable Woman

Anna Holmes has an excellent op-ed in today’s New York Times about the Charlie Sheen debacle as it relates to his numerous episodes of domestic violence.

The piece begins with a short summary of Sheen’s publicly known assaults on various wives, girlfriends, and associates and then frames those incidents with the frat-house nature of many of the “interviews” he’s done over the last few weeks.

In “The Disposable Woman,” Holmes writes:

The privilege afforded wealthy white men like Charlie Sheen may not be a particularly new point, but it’s an important one nonetheless. Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears are endlessly derided for their extracurricular meltdowns and lack of professionalism on set; the R&B star Chris Brown was made a veritable pariah after beating up his equally, if not more, famous girlfriend, the singer Rihanna. Their careers have all suffered, and understandably so.

This hasn’t been the case with Mr. Sheen, whose behavior has been repeatedly and affectionately dismissed as the antics of a “bad boy” (see: any news article in the past 20 years), a “rock star” (see: Piers Morgan, again) and a “rebel” (see: Andrea Canning’s “20/20” interview on Tuesday). He has in essence, achieved a sort of folk-hero status; on Wednesday, his just-created Twitter account hit a million followers, setting a Guinness World Record.

But there’s something else at work here: the seeming imperfection of Mr. Sheen’s numerous accusers. The women are of a type, which is to say, highly unsympathetic. Some are sex workers — pornographic film stars and escorts — whose compliance with churlish conduct is assumed to be part of the deal. (For the record: It is not.)

You really should read the whole piece, and not just to atone for the traffic you gave TMZ earlier this week when you gave in to those links on facebook and watched Sheen in action.