Rocks: Two and a Half Men and Charlie Sheen Essay

Submitted By rocks135
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About
Charlie Sheen’s Rant refers to a series of controversial remarks made by actor Charlie Sheen on several radio and television interviews in late February 2011. The 45 year old actor, who has been publicly struggling with substance addiction and scandalous partying habits, initially called in during The Alex Jones Show to rail against Chuck Lorre, the producer of long-running CBS sitcom “Two and a Half Men.” Since the actor’s decisive media blitz across major TV networks, Charlie Sheen’s memorable quotes inspired a variety of parodies on YouTube, Twitter and other hubsites.
Origin
On February 24th, 2011, Charlie Sheen called into The Alex Jones Show[1] radio program to talk about his views on Alcoholics Anonymous and the future of his sitcom Two and a Half Men[22], which has been put on production hiatus since Sheen’s hospitalization in late January 2011. During the phone interview, the actor lashed out against his colleague / executive producer Chuck Lorre as “AA Nazi” and “blatant hypocrite,” while calling the show a “pukefest that everyone worships.”

In response to Sheen’s assail against the producer of “Two and a Half Men,” CBS and Warner Bros have announced that they are canceling production for the rest of the season. The show had been on production hiatus since January 2011 after Sheen was hospitalized and put into rehabilitation for substance addiction. Prior to entering medical care earlier this year, New York Post[2] reported in October 2010 about Charlie Sheen’s arrest and hospitalization after a night of “destructive partying” at a hotel in New York city.
Spread
Media Coverage
In the following days of back-to-back public appearances[3], Charlie also declared he had beaten addiction 100% and denounced the Alcoholics Anonymous program, which he described as a “bootleg cult.”
On February 28th, Sheen appeared on a special edition of ABC’s 20/20[4], feeding his recent media scandals with more exploitable quotes while refusing to give an apology for his behaviors. The ABC interview gained its first million view within first 48 hours of upload, flooding YouTube and Tumblr with dozens of song parodies, mashups and image macros of Charlie Sheen.
In another interview with NBC Today[5] on the same day, Sheen publicly