Let's just say that this was crafted better than I would have done it. And maybe softer too. If I were a colmnist and forced to come out with x number of letters or words each week and the topic du jour was Charlie Sheen I can honestly say my editors would be most disappointed when my column was one word long and all of 7 letters; dumbass. That is why I am not a columnist and Mark Morford is.

A grateful nation thanks Charlie Sheen

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

It is a time of great reckoning. A time when an anxious, troubled nation huddles in tight clusters of fear and uncertainty, shot through with far too much war, economic grief, Tea Party idiocy, iffy cell phone reception and low-level karmic doom.

But wait! Just when all seems lost ... look! Yonder! Could it be? It is! A dazzling beacon winks out from the savage darkness. We are saved! Let us now wheel in the hookers and Veuve Clicquot and large bazookas full of cocaine! God bless America.

Behold, he hath risen. Every generation, every year, every gaseous cultural hiccup, a new god/demon/pariah emerges upon whom we can project all our fantasies and neurosis, fears and judgments, outermost Tweets and innermost grunts. Said humanoid must be an attention slut of great self-import who effortlessly flips between conquering hero and ravaged victim, depending on our collective whim. Last year? Tiger Woods, with a Mel Gibson/Lindsay Lohan chaser.

So far, 2011 is turning out to be Charlie Sheen's year, though it's still far too early to call it, and Miley Cyrus appears to be a single Ketamine porn shoot away from total cataclysm, who the hell knows what's happening to Lindsay and doesn't Adam Sandler appear to be on the knife edge of, well, something sadistic and chemically terminal? 'Tis quite the most tremendous thing about American celeb-death fetishism: No one has the slightest clue who might be next. Awesome.

This much we do know for sure: We are enthralled. Sheen came outta seemingly nowhere and exploded like a roman candle made of black diamonds, boundless drugs and unimaginable floods of money, spewing bloody shards of glass amidst hilarious, impossible syntax, happily raising his glistening middle finger to AA, God, the media and even our beloved President Bartlet, all at once.

And lo, the new savior was born. Or rather, revealed. Oozed forth. Popped like a cyst. And so on.

But oh, we have chosen well. Charlie does not disappoint. Much to our collective delight, Sheen has turned out to be some sort of smart-ass PR genius/careening train wreck of mediocre talent hitched to an artistically malformed TV show that freely rapes the brainstems of umpteen million viewers a week as it hawks Round Table Pizza and Toyota Camrys in between ghastly one-liners concocted by Klonopin-popping 12-year-olds who live in Malibu and still masturbate to Penthouse.com.

In other words, "Two and a Half Men" is (or rather, was) absolutely perfect. It is quintessential, premium-grade American schlock, the finest in vacuous, moderately demeaning bulls--t entertainment we can possibly concoct next to "Jersey Shore" and maybe Bristol Palin's upcoming book. It's a huge and blinding cubic zirconium of imminent soul death. What, too much? As if.

Hence and by extension, Charlie Sheen is perfect. A spectacularly middling actor of no real import with decent comic timing, a razor wit and a thing for cocaine, porn stars, polyamory, multiple kids and hilariously nonsensical, megalomaniacal verbal zingers, all oversprinkled with tantalizing dustings of domestic violence and tabloid sensationalism. Like we say about God, the devil and Karl Rove, if Sheen didn't exist, we'd have to invent him.

And why? Because, silly, as already mentioned: We are surrounded by anxiety and distress. We are overrun with Tea Party dingbats who want to arm college students and professors alike, wingnut maniacs who think science is a hoax and the president is a Muslim and/or raised in Kenya, Republicans who so openly despise women, sex, gays and themselves that they just can't help getting busted snorting meth in the gay fetish dungeon with teenage boys.

In short, the levels of hypocrisy and the lack of spiritual and intellectual education on display across the cultural spectrum, from church house to Congress, are so brutal it's no wonder millions of Americans do the only thing they know how to do -- turn to pop culture for salve and distraction, laugh track and a modicum of relief.

Problem is, the distractions must somehow match the level of our ferocious discontent. Gentle entertainments, art, spiritual work, poetry, NPR, a reasonable and calm-voiced president? This will not do. Our tormented and battered souls seek parity with the violent uncertainty we feel all around. Our pop culture Frankenstein must be infused with treacherously high levels of mania, dread, fantasy and looming, melodramatic death.

He hath risen, twitching, sweating profusely and spinning like a top. How long will it last? How long until something gives? Not long. Sheen is the perfect energetic match to what we see and feel all around us right now. He's a spectacularly fractured mirror reflecting the grotesque system that birthed him -- smart, funny, wasted, hugely overpaid, egomaniacal, sexy, violently unhealthy, perverted, overamped, creepy, unhinged, lacking all center, moral compass spinning like a Catharine wheel, entirely unable and unwilling to take a deeper look at root causes. Ain't that America.

You might say: Enough already. You might say: Far too much energy, time, media attention has been spent on Sheen as it is; it's not worth it, leave the poor guy alone, clearly he's spiraling out of control, is disturbingly bi-polar, an insomniac ("I don't sleep. I wait."), a fistful of Ambien and a 3 a.m. gunshot away from an ambulance ride to Cedars-Sinai and the Hollywood Cemetery.

Go ahead, say it's sad, tragic, that you feel bad for his kids or the dingbat women in his life. Or flip it all over and say it's sort of awesome and entertaining and man, what I wouldn't give to live like Sheen for a week, unbelievable parties and gasping media frenzies, babes galore and two million Twitter followers in four days, Scarface-grade piles of blow all leading up to the grand finale: a ferocious, Facebook-ready gun battle with the FBI in the end because, wow, what a way to go.

Doesn't matter. Say any of it or none; you're already in. You're a fragment of that mirror. Are we not proud? What delightful monsters we can create! What nefarious celebrity apparatus we hath wrought!

So thank you, Charlie, for embodying, absorbing and reflecting back all our best and worst tendencies, our darkest, most titillating fears and our wildest fantasies about sex and money, addiction and madness, fame and fiery death. We will surely consume you completely very soon, and you us. This is the good news, the sad news and the obvious news: It will all be over soon. God bless America.