Since when are spanish people not white? Let alone half spanish ones who carry no accent and could pass as a brunette Aryan?
Yes. he’s a quarter Spanish, but that doesn’t mean he is non-white in any way. Galician Spaniards are caucasian.
It isn’t, as far as I know. Who said it was?
I have no idea whether he is or isn’t. People are accusing him of it because he referred to Lorre by his Jewish name in the middle of a rant against him.
I disagree. It has to with “rich” and “celebrity” and not “white” and “male”. Paris Hilton is not male and she got off scott free a couple of times. Nicole Ritchie got off a couple of times. OJ Simpson got off scott free for murder.
Robert Downey Jr. who according to you has “rich white male privilege” did several stints in jail.
Also Lindsay Lohan got off scott free a couple of times. One was driving under the influence and chasing people and she had coke on her. She had a couple of dui’s before she was 21. Sure she did rehab a few times but if she was not rich and a celebrity like us she would have done jail time. Thankfully it looks like she is finally going to get punishment for stealing a necklace.
I think part of the “free” pass he is getting is because he pretty much plays the same asshole character that he is in real life on TV and movies.
It is expected.
You mean like OJ Simpson was given a pass? He beat his wife even before his trial and people gave him a pass.
Michael Vick? I think he’s gotten a pass. He was widely defended after the dog-fighting incident, and he’s still making more money than the average white person will ever see in his life.
Find anyone on this board who has defended OJ or expressed the desire to live his life, or has pleaded for leniency towards him (“because life is hard!”) like people on this board have done, and then maybe this question of yours would make sense. The truth is just about everyone hates OJ.
You mention this guy with a straight face?
How many threads like this, this, and this do we expect for Charlie Sheen? Because if you think the level of outrage directed towards Vick has been light, surely ole Charlie should surpass him. And yet, there is no SBDM threads for him that come close to what Vick has generated.
He’s also the most villified. He was arrested, served a ~2 year prison sentence, gave thousands to charity, compelled to make tearful apologies, and yet still has plenty of people who wish him dead. You are clearly living on a different planet if you think Vick has been given a pass.
Just curious. How many days did Charlie serve in prison for knocking one of his exes unconscious? Or shooting his ex fiancee? Anything close to 2 years?
I’m not just talking about jail time. Mainstream society doesn’t give OJ a pass. He’s a social pariah for the most part.
Paris Hilton and Nicole are not even the same ballpark as Sheen based on their criminal histories. That you even think to make these comparisons speaks volumes. Has Paris or Nicole shot anyone or had a history of domestic violence or similar acts of abuse? AFAIK, they aren’t felons like Charlie is, so even if they did get off lightly relative to him, there’s a good reason for that!
Meh. Plenty of Black celebrities are given similar slack by fans, for just as egregious behaviour. Michael Jackson springs to mind - he is as big now and just as loved by fans as when he was alive, in spite of his obvious pedophillic propensities which would have the average person (Black or White) slung in jail. Being a pedophile is far worse than doing drugs and generally acting like an asshole, or even assaulting other adults (And MJ did plenty of drugs, too): it is pretty well considered the ultimate in disgraceful conduct by the public. Yet a Black man “got away” with it, so quite obviously it is not a case of “White Male Privilege”.
The key is celebrity, not Black or White, or even male or female. Be the right sort of celebrity, and the fans and public will put up with stuff from you they would never tolerate from a normal person.
Is there a cite for this name? Both the Wiki and IMDB give his birth name as ‘Charles’.
IMHO, now that Jake has grown up and Charlie has shown his true colors, they could re-title the show to “Two Men and a Baby”.
This is it. Somehow, Sheen has “it,” with “it” being the personality to carry it off. I remember back in my late teens, I knew a guy who could get laid on a regular basis with lines like, “Hey baby, what’s goin’ down, besides your pants?” He was a bad boy, and girls loved him for it. He later was arrested, and I found out he died in prison by his mid-20s.
Sheen’s like a movie anti-hero, like Dirty Harry, or Rick in “Major League”. It has nothing to do with race, in my opinion, but instead an indefinable quality.
Still, I wonder how much more of it the public will accept.
Even if I conceded that Jackson got a pass*, you seriously can’t be saying the existence of one example proves me wrong. Celebrity certainly gives one an advantage, but it doesn’t eliminate the advantage associated with being a white male.
Here’s a challenge for you: Can you think of any woman or black celebrity with a track record like Sheen’s, who hasn’t been roundly derided and villified on this board or similar ones? Who hasn’t been locked up for months? Who has actually been defended by posts like don’t ask’s?
When fandom is associated with race and gender, that’s the breeding ground for discrimination. You are actually making my point for me. Sheen gets a pass from mainstream society because he appeals to the mainstream demographic (hint: not white and not female), so his offenses are downplayed as being “run of the mill” (to use your phrase) hijinks . When someone who doesn’t appeal to the mainstream demographic does the same thing, it’s no longer “run of the mill” offenses. It becomes “oh hell naw, we gotta jail this mofo thug for life and throw away the key”.
I don’t think that’s it. Don’t forget about these three non-white celebrities, all of whom received lucrative endorsements from multi-million dollar firms after their respective indictments, the first two for murder, the third for rape.
I think part of it is Lohan putting non-involved parties at risk of serious injury or death by some of her misdeeds, so she’s viewed by some (certainly myself) as more of an out-of-control menace as opposed to merely a self-absorbed asshole, like Sheen.
I think another part is that - like all three of the individuals I referenced in my first paragraph - he is among the very best in his field at what he does. I daresay Meryl Streep would probably get a surprising amount of slack vis-a-vis Ms. Lohan if she got a DUI or trashed a hotel room.
The issue isn’t the existence of “white male privilege”, the issue is whether public acceptance of badly-behaved celebs is a good example of “white male privilege”.
Fact is that it is a crappy example, since it is quite easy to think of any number of counter-examples - that is, of non-White celebs behaving badly and being publicly accepted.
I chose MJ as simply the first to spring to mind. Look at other posts above for futher examples.
In fact, in terms of “privilege” theory, I’d be tempted to say that celebrity is the exception that proves the rule: the average nobody who is White and male can count on “privilege” to a certain amount, but celebrities are their own category. Hence the cognitive dissonance when Oprah gets treated like crap at a French designer store: she’s a (Black, female) grade-A celeb. If the clerks had known that, they ought to have served her with the fawning deference a grade-A celeb, Black or White, ought to receive, according to our society.
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Thing is, white celebs who behave badly do get “roundly derided” on the SD in many cases. What makes you think they don’t? Sheen is the topic of several threads right now, and most of the comments on him are negative. What about how Mel Gibson has been pilloried here? Naturally, many defend them as well - same as with Black celebs.
Claiming that those celebs who don’t appeal to “mainstream demographics” get treated differently is moving the goalposts. Obviously, many Black celebs appeal to “mainstream demographics”. Those who do not, Black or not, simply are typically or generally not as prominent as celebs. The more obscure and smaller a market the celeb appeals to, the less of an A-list celeb they are. What matters is the prominence or fame of the celeb, and the type of fame, not whether they are Black or White.
Again: do you think that fans would fail to overlook or excuse Oprah, should she behave badly, because she’s Black and female? What an absurdity. Of course they would.
I’m talking about societal attitudes about people, not about corporate endorsements (which follows a different set of rules). Yes, all these men got a whole lot of money after they were either acquited or their cases were dismissed, but this is not quite what I’m talking wrt Sheen. (Why should it be surprising that they had endorsements anyway when they weren’t convicted of crimes?)
I’m talking about the soft tones people use when talking about Sheen. I’m talking about how people make light of his behaviors, as if he’s just a misunderstood alpha male instead of an abuser.
In my opinion, the fact that Lindsay hasn’t deliberately assaulted anyone automatically puts her in a much safer class than Sheen. Both are addicts and therefore, both can potentially do harm to innocent bystanders, and none of us know enough about them to say that Lindsay is more out of control than Sheen on this level. But we do have evidence of physical harm inflicted by Sheen. His actions have put exes in the hospital. That spells “out-of-control menance” to me.
I’ll also go out on the limb and say that Lohan is not talentless at all. Sheen has an advantage by playing roles that appeal to Gen X white men, just like Tom Cruise and anyone else who rose to stardom in the 80’s and 90’s. That’s it. He’s not that much greater than Lohan. Just because its easy to dump on young actresses who appeal to the Nickelodian crowd, doesn’t mean they are talentless.
You really think Sheen defenders are going to admit to harboring sexist/racist bias? Has anyone EVER done this on this board?
Why would attitudes towards celebrities be immune from the same influences at work in the rest of society? If anything, I think the way we judge the actions of public figures is the best reflection of our unconscious biases, because our fascination with celebrities is largely irrational and therefore most susceptible to bias.
And I’ve challenged all of them. OJ, Michael Vick, and all the others. It was pretty easy to do too. Counter evidence that these guys get “a pass” can easily be found on this board.
Here’s another thought experient: Charlie Sheen and Tiger Woods. Why in the hayle was so much time spent on castigating Tiger for his party boy ways, when Charlie Sheen is having coke parties and beating up women with nary a mug shot of him in sight? I know, I know, they have two different images. But come on now! If Tiger had slugged Elin and knocked her unconscious, I can only imagine the outrage that would have ensued. Sheen has been accused of doing this and similar multiple times, plus sleeping with hookers and doing briefcase loads of coke.
It would be one thing if people were saying “eh, what do you expect…the man is an animal.” But I keep hearing people say stuff like “why are they picking on Charlie…he’s just partying, man!”
You haven’t made this case effectively. The reason some people are celebrities and other people are not is not decided in a vaccuum, and the popularity of celebrities isn’t either. These things spring out of society and are shaped by societal thought process. Hence, you can have a black boyband like New Edition and a white boyband like New Kids on the Block singing the same kind of songs and doing the same kind of dances (being produced by the same producer), but one will have a harder time matching the success of the other. Because the black boys don’t appeal to white girls with the ease of white boys.
And black bad boys don’t appeal to white people the same way that white bad boys do. Black bad boys scare white people.
And women are crazy bitch whores.
There are plenty of people that consider that when he hired prostitutes they were high-paid escorts who had choose that line of work and had good working conditions rather than the exploited women who are compelled by force to work in the sex industry a positive character trait on Charlie Sheen’s part. I think part of the reason Charlie Sheen “gets away” with so much of the bad boy behavior is that he’s fairly open and unapologetic about it and he’s never tried to prohibit or censor others from enjoying those same vices.
You’re right. But I bet you $10 that people who are reading this thread (even if they aren’t participating in it) are going to start paying a little bit more attention to public discourse about Sheen and imagining how things would be if he were a black guy.
I parsed this:
to mean that the name Lorre is Jewish. Obviously, you were refering to the person rather than the name based on your more recent post.