PREACH IT! Oh, just knock it off -- Charlie Sheen is *not* getting a free pass

It begins.

“It's OK for Sheen to batter a woman,” a commenter on Perez Hilton’s blog has ranted, “but Chris Brown is torn apart in the media. If you are Charlie Sheen you can do whatever you want.”

The online Sanctimony Squad never fails to mobilize in instances like these, the implication being, of course, that if you’re white, you can do whatever you want, and the media will cower in a corner and decline to pounce.

For the record, Sheen is actually Hispanic, his real name being Carlos Estevez, the same name that showed up on his arrest report over Christmas -- and in our report on it here -- after he allegedly threatened his wife with a knife during a family stay in Aspen. (His TV show is godawful; does that even things out for you, you White Knights of the Internets, you?)

It is true that at first glance, the media might seem to be throwing Sheen a pass. If you do a proper search for stories mentioning Brown’s assault of Rihanna -- limited to stories with the actual word “assault” -- you get about 1,000 media hits. (That includes, fascinatingly enough, 26 mentions in scientific publications.) If you do a similar search regarding Sheen, Brooke Mueller and a knife, you get fewer than 250. This may sound somehow unfair, even considering that the Brown story is almost a year old.

Unless you really know how the media works and what gossip hounds really look for in a good story.

It isn’t the race. Seriously. It isn’t. It’s the fraud.

Anyone who doesn’t live in a yurt knows that Sheen has never professed ...

... to live the Rick Warren-style purpose-driven life. He has enjoyed relationships with not one but two porn stars, Heather Hunter and Ginger Lynn. It is quite public that Sheen once tried injecting himself with cocaine -- a hobby that didn’t really work out and that eventually sent him to rehab. His own father, Martin Sheen, has reported him for a violation of parole. I won’t even get into how Sheen managed to accidentally shoot his onetime fiancee Kelly Preston. That would be piling on the poor fellow. Just look at Sheen’s wiki instead. It’s really good times.

Meantime, contrast Chris Brown. Until his arrest, Brown was so clean he made little squeaking noises as he danced. Reporters wrote about him the way Walt Disney told stories about baby deer.

“He caught a cold two days earlier in Los Angeles while playing with a puppy,” a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle reported back in 2006, when Brown was still a teenager.

“He may hate me for saying it,” a British reporter cooed that same year, “but he’s a nice, sweet kid.”

Brown was, right up until he used a dashboard to make a meat pie out of his girlfriend’s face. It was that contrast -- the Bambi boy-turned-monster -- that fascinated fans, not Brown’s race.

(Remember how Hugh Grant went from bewildered English charmer to seedy cad overnight during the Divine Brown scandal? You should. Or maybe you don’t. You’re reading a blog; maybe you were a blastocyst or a fetus during those months. Either way, get educated. The media freaked out about Grant’s lily-white buttocks pretty completely.)

Same thing with Tiger Woods. He was a just a nice young bazillionaire with a wife and kids before he started hanging out with all those random ladies.

The public just couldn’t wrap its head around the contradiction; it was like Superman coming out and saying he likes to snort coke off of hookers’ backsides. The slow parade of mistresses helped drag that story out too -- with Sheen it was only one knife and one wife -- and with Brown, stars kept emerging to defend the kid and call the assault a “mistake,” assuring that the story stayed alive for weeks.

Charlie Sheen can’t get much badder than he is already. It’s almost boring. But whenever a goody-goody comes crashing to Earth, it’s utterly mesmerizing to millions of people.

Who will be the next to fall? I dunno. You tell me in the comments section below.

-- Leslie Gornstein

Photos: Charlie Sheen's Dec. 25 mug shot, left, and Chris Brown at a Nov. 19 probation hearing. Credit: Aspen Police Department / EPA, left; Gina Ferrazzi / Associated Press, right.

Other Charlie Sheen and Chris Brown and Rihanna dispatches from the Ministry of Gossip:

Brooke Mueller wants restraining order against Charlie Sheen changed

Brooke Mueller's 911 call about Charlie Sheen released [AUDIO]

Charlie Sheen, Brooke Mueller plan to go to counseling

Charlie Sheen arrested on felony charges in Aspen, Colo.

Charlie Sheen is fourth-highest paid in primetime TV

PREACH IT! Chris Brown is his own fail whale, a.k.a. 'Another star quits Twitter and demands a purple pony'

Chris Brown to tell all (again) on "20/20"

Chris Brown getting gold stars during probation

MTV goes deep with Chris Brown on Rihanna assault

A lot of celebrities get their day in court -- or close to it. Click here for more. Or are you digging the Preach It! vibe? Click here for lots o' Leslie Gornstein. 

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Comments

[janet]

I would agree with you however it is know that a few white celebs have been getting off. He may have spanish in his blood but he also has white in it too. David Letterman had sexual relations with more than four of his employees and yes Tiger Woods went crazy but to cheat is to cheat so why hasn't he lost out on anything. You all even had a nerve to have a poll stating that he deserves a second chance. Lets not excuse wrong. Wrong is exactly that. Wrong. Not only that Chris Brown has one offense for domestic battery and that is all that we have heard for a year. Charlie has four, so yes he has had several passes already.

[Lily]

Leslie, Charlie Sheen isn't a bad boy, he's a serial abuser of women. Among the "good times" on his wikipedia entry that you left out: the fact that Denise Richards also accused him of abuse and that he was on probation in the 1990s for assaulting an ex-girlfriend. The guy has a long track record of violence against women that dates back to before Chris Brown was even born. And yet the public still likes him enough to watch his show every week and make him the highest paid actor in television. That's the free pass that these commentators are talking about.

The Grant and Tiger situations simply aren't equivalent to this. Neither one allegedly threatened to kill their wives or girlfriends- they merely cheated.

[Hargrove]

Stop making excuses for racism! If the media even pretended to report fairly, they would compare the last celebrity case of spousal abuse with the Charlie Sheen. But nooooo, they compare Charlie with Tiger Woods!!! Can you tell me the relationship between a man who is unfaithful to his wife and one who beats women? Also, if they mention Sheen's past run-ins with the law, they conveniently leave out the one in which he beat a woman bloody and burned her clothes, and threatened her with death if she told, even though his wife said he threatened her with death if she told . . . Also, no one's reporting that Gloria Alred, who represented his battered girlfriend, has come forward to say that the restraining order should not be lifted.

As for Charlie Sheen as Hispanic, it's glamorous to say the blood that flows in the veins when one looks white. What you see is what you get in America. If Charlie looks white, with a powerful white father, for all intents and purposes, he is white.

[CDZ from the Ministry]

@Hargrove -- Hey, Christie D'Zurilla from the Ministry here. Stop me if I'm wrong, but this point of this post is to compare Sheen with Chris Brown, who did beat a woman? Leslie's comparison with Tiger is not regarding physical abuse but rather regarding hypocrisy -- i.e., Tiger and Chris both had sparkly reputations, Sheen did not.

If you want to read about the parties who don't want the Sheen restraining order lifted, which at the time of publication didn't yet include Gloria Allred, attorney for Brittany Ashland, click here:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/gossip/2009/12/brooke-mueller-restraining-order-yale-galanter-charlie-sheen.html

Also, we did not "conveniently leave out" Sheen's attack on Ashland in our initial report of Sheen's arrest.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/gossip/2009/12/charlie-sheen-brooke-mueller-alleged-domestic-violence.html

Thanks for reading and commenting. Just wanted to make sure you had all the facts.

//cdz

[Boston girl]

Okay, of course Charlie should not at all get a pass if he indeed is guilty. However, you are dead wrong about his show, Two and a Half Men. It is fabulous -- consistenly funny, well written and acted. It may be a bit over the top for some, but still, you have to admit the show is very funny.