Trying… to… resist… posting… about… Charlie… Sheen…. will…. failing… UPDATED

I held out as long as I could on the Charlie Sheen fiasco — but damn Will Winecoff and the IR-relevant horse he rode in on!!

From yesterday’s Global Times, Hao Leifeng provides a peculiarly… Chinese take on the whole brouhaha:

Actor Charlie Sheen is a classic example of the difference in Western and Eastern values and norms.

Ignoring public pleas from his father, Sheen has continued a weeklong media blitz, exhibiting obvious signs of mania. With no firm hand to guide them, Western media has deliberately goaded him into making increasingly delusional statements, more concerned about "winning" higher ratings than Sheen’s own sense of pride, or the negative example his brash public admissions about his private sex life and unverifiable international conspiracies could be setting for society.

How many young people have been led astray by Sheen’s boasts about his substance abuse and freewheeling sex life? And that was when he was in character on national television, as a randy bachelor in Two and a Half Men.

Sheen attracted 1 million Twitter followers in just 24 hours, yet more evidence that microblogs spread the most unhealthy contagions in society like a disease. Chinese family, coworkers, or the authorities would have taken firm steps to make sure someone like Sheen did not make a public spectacle of himself.

It’s true:  the Obama administration has been ridiculously slow on getting a handle on the Charlie Sheen issue.  I mean, you know that if Hillary Clinton got Sheen in a room for an hour, this whole problem would go away.  This just reinforces the administration’s slowness on handling matters of serious popular culture.   

OK, seriously, as I understand it, Global Times is not the same kind of official mouthpiece as, say, China Daily or People’s Daily, so I wouldn’t take this as the official Chinese Communist Party position.  Hell, it might be a parody.  Still, a few revealing things from this.  There’s the swipe against Twitter, and the emphasis on familial loyalties. 

I see two other interesting reveals, however.  The first is the proposed "Chinese" solution to this problem:

His employers are unhappy that he was distracted with prostitutes and drugs, and didn’t show up to work on time. Why not take a tip from the Chinese business community, and make visits to a KTV parlor part of Sheen’s workday?

And instead of epic parties at his home with porn stars, why not keep Sheen occupied with business banquets?

Sheen goes on television and boasts that he has two girlfriends, who both sleep in the same bedroom. Is he too poor to set up his wives and mistresses in different houses?

In Chinese society, these problems are dealt with delicately and privately. Sheen is like a typical Westerner throwing fuel on the fire with each interview and tweet. It is almost as if he feels no shame and is loving the attention.

Racism, spousal abuse, addiction, politics, mental illness, boasting about mistresses, – these are all subjects best dealt with behind closed doors.

Er… as near as I can determine, Sheen’s bosses have been using this playbook for the entire run of Two and a Half Men.  It’s only when Sheen thoroughly rejected all outaside intervention that everything blew up.  In other words, the Chinese solution to this was exactly the same as the American solution to this — well, minus the massage parlors.  This continued right up until the moment when Sheen decided that the "Charlie Sheen" drug could defeat all comers.  And then he was suspended and subsequently fired.  Perhaps the fact that the government decided not to send him to the countryside and instead just got his children out of his orbit is peculiarly "western." 

Second — and this is a genuine question to readers — is Charlie Sheen actually a folk hero to anyone other than substance abusers at this point?  I see the attention he’s getting now as in the category of, "Wow, look at that massive 12-car pileup on the other side of the road!!!  It’s horrific, but I can’t look away!"   Granted, he’s now a prime candidate for his own reality show — but I’m not really sure that’s winning the future. 

This is the only time I will ask this about Charlie Sheen:  what do you think? 

UPDATE:  A commenter suggests that this must be a parody, albeit one that the editors of Global Times can’t detect.  But the commenter provides an excellent additional takeaway point: 

[I]t’s way easier to slip a humour piece disguised as a bizarre anti-US rant past the Chinese censor than it is to get a serious piece that is even vaguely critical of CCP policy published.

LAST UPDATE:  According to the Shanghaiist, the editors at Global Times were  in on the joke — in which case your humble blogger will join Al Jazeera and admit to being punk’d.