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Sheen Calls Creator of Hit Show ‘Haim’

Fortunately, there are no other Jews in Hollywood

by
Marc Tracy
February 25, 2011
Charlie Sheen last August.(Riccardo S. Savi/Getty Images)
Charlie Sheen last August.(Riccardo S. Savi/Getty Images)

Say you’ve grown tired of waiting around for Mel Gibson to say something else outrageous about the Jews. Sure, it was fun when, a year ago, on his “comeback” media tour, he accused one (Jewish) interviewer who asked about his infamous 2006 arrest-cum-anti-Semitic tirade as “hav[ing] a dog in this fight.” Yeah, it was nice to be reminded, in the latest Vanity Fair, that the Australian actor has a penchant for telling jokes about “oven-dodgers.” But his schtick was getting tired. You needed your celebrity Jew-hating fix from elsewhere.

Enter Charlie Sheen! For a while, it was difficult not to feel sympathy for him: He is talented; he was a child of fame, and famous as a very young man; he was undergoing alcohol and drug problems. But then, yesterday, he called Chuck Lorre, the creator of Two and a Half Men—the CBS sitcom on which Sheen stars, and which basically put him back on the map—”Chaim Levine” (his given name is Charles Levine); according to one report, he called him “Hymie”. (Fun fact: “Hymie” derives from chaim. To life!) In response, CBS went from merely canceling the rest of the current season of the hit sitcom to, now, postponing it indefinitely.

Lorre will be fine: He still has The Big Bang Theory to work on, anyway (as Tom Bissell reported in an excellent New Yorker profile, Lorre is a rare talent). As for Sheen? I can’t wait for his South Park episode.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.