March 7, 2011
The Cannibalization of Charlie Sheen by Anthony Gregory
To add to the perfect storm, the TV star has violated one of the greatest doctrines of political incorrectness. Although Sheen himself is Jewish, he has committed the grave sin of involuntary anti-Semitism. This piece in the Telegraph, drawing a bizarre link between Sheen, the Pope and Julian Assange, describes the key allegation as "Charlie Sheen's renaming of the producer of his former sitcom Chuck Lorre as 'Chaim Levine', carrying with it as it does two suggestions: one, that Jews are the controlling forces behind the US media, and two, that they have disguised this fact about themselves and need to be outed."
Lorre himself has referred to his own Hebrew name in a "vanity card," aired in front of millions at the end of one of his television shows:
How did Chaim become Chuck? How did Levine become Lorre? The only answer I come up with is this: When I was a little boy in Hebrew school the rabbis regularly told us that we were the chosen people. That we were God's favorites. Which is all well and good except that I went home, observed my family and, despite my tender age, thought to myself, "bull$#*!."
Sheen elaborates that Lorre used to call him Carlos Estevez. If true, both men called each other the names they were born with. Without knowing whether Sheen is telling the truth about this, we can still get some perspective here. Would it be scandalously wrong to call Sheen "Carlos Estevez"? Does it carry with it suggestions about Spaniards being embarrassed of their origins? Even if so, would we expect this kind of mild anti-Spanish slur to rise to the level of a small international controversy? Would people presume not only to pass judgment on a man's state of mind, but to identify a general societal trend toward bigotry, all because someone called someone else by his given name? That is what has happened here.
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