BartBlog

March 12, 2011

The Tattlesnake – Defending Charlie Sheen Edition

Is it crazy to stand up to corporations and media parasites that are trying to tell you how to live your life?

Charlie Sheen’s gotten a bum rap from the media lately because he refused to play the corporate and tabloid-TV game: the Shamed Celebrity is supposed to enter rehab and emerge contrite and chastened and just so gleefully grateful his corporate employer stuck by him during his time of need. Instead, Sheen called CBS and his producers on their ‘we care’ bullshit, and told the media hypocrites that parasitically cover celebrities to stuff it where the moon don’t shine. Here’s a news flash you won’t see on the MSM: When celebs enter rehab, it’s mainly for PR, career, or project-insurance purposes and there is no shortage of drugs and alcohol at any of the well-known rehab ranches that cater to the famous. What are they going to do, kick them out and lose all of that money? No, they turn a blind eye and cooperate in the fraud that the celebrity is ‘cured,’ and everybody goes home happy. Charlie Sheen just refused to indulge in this fetid game and, for that, he should be applauded.

Is he crazy? Maybe, but no more than most of us, and he’s not advising that we hurt or hate anyone. If you read his quotes below, he often makes considerable sense and he frequently lampoons himself, which the TMZ-style media are apparently too obtuse to recognize. He’s certainly more honest and lucid than the demented wolfpack of politicians and pundits that appear on Meet the Press every Sunday and are treated as sane and reasonable.

If a Hunter S. Thompson had given Charlie’s recent interviews, some of the same people pointing the ‘nutjob drug addict’ finger at Charlie Sheen and ‘tsk, tsk’ self-righteously shaking their heads over his sure demise, would be laughing with or praising him. But because he’s known as a film/TV actor, and many of them don’t want to offend Viacom/CBS for professional reasons, they toe the corporate line that Sheen is spinning out of control and needs help. Haven’t we learned by now that large corporations do not have compassionate souls that take pity on their employees, and neither do the heads of Hollywood production companies? It’s all about the money.

Aside from that, when did Charlie Sheen’s personal life become the concern of anyone but himself and those around him? How would you like your personal problems exaggerated and splashed all over the TV beast and the Internet?

As you read the poem below, pretend they are the words of a beat poet rather than a movie star. It might give you a whole different perspective; “Droopy-eyed armless children” by itself is a line worthy of a Jack Kerouac novel or Allen Ginsberg epic.

“Winning”

The words of Charlie Sheen edited into poetry

I so desperately wanted to be
Mr. Somebody.
Instead, I was the little brother…
As kids we’re not taught how to deal
with success; we’re taught how to
deal with failure.
If at first you don’t succeed,
try, try again.
If at first you succeed,
then what?
C’mon, bro, I won best picture at 20!
I wasn’t even trying.
I wasn’t even warm.

Fame is empowering.
My mistake was that I thought
I would instinctively know
how to handle it.
But there’s no manual,
no training course.
The run I was on made Sinatra,
Flynn, Jagger, Richards,
all of them look like
droopy-eyed armless children!
Sure, I did a lot of things in excess.
But if you look at the core,
the foundation of what I pursued,
what red-blooded young American
male in my position wouldn’t?
But you can’t focus on things
that matter if all you’ve been
is asleep for forty years.
Funny how sleep
rhymes with sheep.

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September 18, 2009

Rush the Ingrate

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Toon — Tags: , , , , , — RS Janes @ 4:55 am

cartoon-rush-aclu

September 1, 2009

The Tattlesnake Presents: Devon Keester’s ‘Under the Beltway’

All the Dirt That’s Not Fit to Print

The ‘Meth’ of American Exceptionalism

Under the Beltway by Devon Keester

Ass-Crackers: What is it with Right-Wing Squawkers and their anal cysts? Limbaugh dodged the draft because he had ‘em back in ’71; Glenn Beck had some removed in January of 2008 and whined about his medical treatment on the air. Now a deep, dark rumor is circulating that Loofahboy Bill O’Reilly had a case about a decade ago and secretly had them removed while he was ‘on vacation.’ Anal or ‘pilondial’ cysts can be hereditary, but they can also be caused by repeated acute irritation, acute irritation of the type that results from way too many drag races on the Hershey Highway, especially those proctological cruises without lubrication. Is this what’s going on behind the backstage closet door of these starboard goofballs? (Inquiring minds don’t want to know that badly, except for the extreme hypocrisy quotient and comic value.)

Beck is Ready for the Fork: Fox Babble-Boy Glenn “Dan Quayle” Beck has now lost 46 major advertisers as well as the ‘c’ from ‘Oligarchy’ the other day. What’s the deal – will Beck end up with only boner pills, penis pumps and Wrestlemania as advertisers? Sure, he’s rated Number 3 at Fox, but don’t bet against Number 2 Hannity and Numero Uno O’Reilly wanting to give him the heave-ho – he’s cutting into the dwindling audience for right-wing wiggery and how much more demento can he get before he just has a complete psychotic meltdown on the air and has to be restrained? His teary, over-emotional ‘schtick’ has no place else to go and if his fans don’t get the Jerry-Springer-Gaper’s-Block-train-wreck-pay-off they’re expecting, they’ll join Beck’s advertisers and move elsewhere.

Meth Use on the Rise in the Southern & Western States. What else is there to say? In the most blank-eyed, soul-sapped, over-medicated nation on the planet, the most ‘conservative’ regions, as it turns out, are also the areas most susceptible to the ‘poor man’s crack’ and now it’s even easier to make than ever. Instead of the smelly and dangerous meth lab of the past, now you can mix the stuff up in a two-liter plastic soda bottle while you’re driving. Of course, this won’t stop the government from stuffing even more billions down the rathole of ‘War on Drugs’ arrest, prosecution and incarceration – whether the draconian drug war works or not for its supposed purpose, it’s a good patronage system for politicos and gives them an issue to campaign on, it’s a golden goose for the privatized prison industry, and it keeps the cops and courts busy, aside from making sure the cost of drugs are high, so that the corrupt can get a nice cut of the hefty profits. Works for everybody but the addict and the taxpayer, so Washington loves it. Speaking of which, there’s this:

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