One thing is now clear: Sheen’s 15 minutes are over. Kaput. I don’t mean his 15 minutes of fame, of course, or even of infamy. I mean his 15 minutes of being a Rebel. For that, let’s make no mistake, is what this whole hellapalooza has been about: the prospect that Charlie Sheen, by saying whatever damn thing floats through his tiger blood and into his bizarrely semi-lucid crackpot brain and down to his hair-trigger mouth, could sort of, perhaps, just maybe be the Last Honest Man in a paralyzingly bogus media culture.
In the early stages of his madman meltdown phase, when he played the talk shows like a seasoned provocateur, or even on his public-access-style Webcasts, he created the sex-and-dope version of a Howard Beale mad-as-hell moment. He held out the prospect of danger, of saying the things that we aren’t allowed to say. And that, let’s be honest, became — at least to some of us — an addictive prospect, a slumming form of performance-art entertainment for an overly controlled, rule-bound, PR-driven, terminally politically correct, spin-cycle America. Which leads one to ask: What does a Howard Beale who has already had his mad-as-hell eruption do for an encore?
I just want everyone to know that I was really rooting for him to pull this off. I wanted at least one honestly arrogant, holier than thou, I can say and do what I want, slightly intelligent, celebrity out there. I would not have begrudged him his women, his drugs, his bad behavior, his sheer craziness, if only he could continue to be honest with a small semblance of sanity. Now he is ruining it, like a dying star he has exploded in a flash of light. He is bound for ridicule and pity, now, bummer.
A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.
Robert Frost
In Retaliation 