Watching Charlie Sheen’s Career Crumble Before Our Very Eyes

Why does this always happen?

A household name. A star. A celebrity. Hits the big time. Has a lucrative career. And then something inside them snaps.

Is it destiny? Are personalities who crave attention merely ripe for a fall? Predestined for substance abuse? Ego is programmed to override sensibility?

Sometimes you see the snap coming years before it actually happens. Think Michael Jackson.

Other times, it catches you by surprise. For me, it was with Bill Cosby and Tom Hanks.

Sometimes the snap is illegal. Oh, for example, drugs, murder, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud.

Other times it’s just an ego, too big for the interview room surrounded with 14 adopted children, a God-like authority on every subject matter, peppered with condescending comments about the little people.

But it’s undeniable. Something happens when a celebrity gets too big for his or her britches.

They begin to feel, they start to believe, that they are untouchable.

I have admired many a celebrity who seemed so down-to-earth. So real. And then watched them in an interview, years into their career, bantering with Barbara Walters with an over-inflated air of superiority.

Such a disappointment.

But they’re human. I can only imagine what it must be like to be told day after day, awards show after awards show, how wonderful you are. You finally believe it. You believe you are untouchable, a class unto yourself, unstoppable.

The sad cases are the Charlie Sheens. The Michael Jacksons. The O.J. Simpsons. Being told day after day, awards show after awards show, of your brilliance. Believing you are infallible. Believing that your reality is ethical and moral simply because you say it is so.

And we sit back and watch the fall. From our cozy living rooms. Dripping with reality.

And we  judge.

Forgetting the role we have played putting celebrities on that pedestal in the first place.

In the News – Whaaaaa?

I’ll never forget when my parents moved to a small town just after retirement and my father opened up the local paper. Front page news – Man Indicted In Puppy Abuse Case. Now abusing puppies is a horrible, despicable thing. This man ran a puppy mill and the poor animals lived in horrid conditions. But my father had just moved from the murder capital of the world. “Now this is where I want to live, ” he said, “Where the worst you see in the headlines is puppy abuse and everyone is up in arms.”

There are days that I avoid reading the news. I just don’t want to know what’s out there. I remember a journal entry I wrote just after my daughter arrived. I wrote “I haven’t seen the news in days. I haven’t read a newspaper. I saw something on t.v. last night. It seems there’s something huge going on in the Middle East and we’re in the middle of it. But I have no idea what it is and I really don’t care.” To this day I have no idea what I was talking about because the Gulf War had ended.

What I find startling is the fact that as soon as my child arrived I tuned out the world. This is/was so against my nature. I was a news junkie in college. The university I went to was huge. The campus was massive. Many days it made no sense to run back and forth between my apartment and campus between classes. So I went to the library. And because I’m the master at procrastination, instead of doing homework I’d read newspapers. And a lot of ’em. On any typical day I would read, scan, peruse the school paper (which was a daily), the local paper, two major papers from the largest city in the state and one major paper from out-of-state, usually The New York Times. I loved finding the different takes on world events based on whether the paper was conservative or liberal. I like analyzing why one paper chose to include certain information, why another would leave it out. Who got the best quotes? Which story broke first?

But then children. And three of them. I have little time to scan 5 newspapers a day. But I have the internet! And you wouldn’t believe what’s out there today! C’mon, I’ll show you…..

HIV-Positive Man Injects Sleeping Wife – I’m a deep sleeper. This scares me. Thank goodness my husband doesn’t have HIV.

Bill O’Reilly Outraged By Law & Order Episode – Seriously? This is news? Bill O’Reilly = Conservative. And as much as I don’t like over-the-top, extreme views in a medium that is supposed to be entertainment yes, Law & Order = Liberal.  And Bill O’Reilly is surprised?

Blair: I Would Have Removed Saddam Hussein Anyway – Ok. This isn’t shocking news. It’s just good to see that Blair doesn’t switch rhetoric to appease the climate.

Americans Arrested in Pakistan Had Bright Futures – And in the very first sentence they’re described as “wholesome.” Wholesome? Since when is a jihad wholesome?

Jon Stewart Calls Out Gretchen Carlson For “Dumbing Herself Down” – Good for him. Apparently, she ‘admits’ to googling the words ‘ignormous’ and ‘czar,’ trying to appear as if she’s just another mom trying to make sense of this crazy world. Apparently, she has a degree from Stanford and is a classically trained violinist. First of all, us moms out here? We’re not stupid…OR ignoramouses. Second? Oh forget…I’ve lost interest.

Chinese Man Gets Remote Control Stuck in Bottom After Drunk Prank –  There are even x-rays to prove it! I’m not kidding!

So there you have it. Top stories of the day. And you’ll notice I left out the plethora of Tiger Woods stories still circling. That news was so…….yesterday.