I've ignored the whole debacle up to now. An overpaid TV star says insane, egomaniacal shit and everyone tunes in to cluck their tongues and confirm how awful celebrities are; then we make online mashup jokes: Charlie Sheen and Muammar Gaddafi; Charlie Sheen and New Yorker cartoons. Etc.

It didn't have any meaning for me. The opposite. It showed how meaningless our culture is.

Then I read an article in the New York Times yesterday, “The Disposable Woman,” on Charlie Sheen's long history of domestic abuse. I posted it to Facebook under the title, “Time to stop laughing...” I expected others would chime in on the awfulness of it all.

I didn't expect a friend to suddenly defend Charlie Sheen. 

He wrote:

This column is completely and utterly missing the point about Charlie Sheen. He is mentally ill. He has bipolar disorder. It is a disease. Blaming him for his disease is like blaming someone for having a kidney stone.

He wrote:

Anyone who has ever been close to someone with bipolar disorder — especially someone in the midst of an unmitigated, unmedicated manic attack — can watch about 10 seconds of these Sheen interviews and make the diagnosis.

He wrote:

All these journalists are making fools of themselves by failing to recognize what's going on.

He wrote:

There should probably be some kind of law against holding up someone's mental illness for public inspection, condemnation and ridicule, even if it does make for riveting television.

Initially I resisted this line of thought. “Yeah, blame it on 'bipolar disorder.' Like a husband blaming his infidelity on 'sex addiction.' Next.”

But I Googled it anyway. I'd certainly heard of the disorder but I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know, for example, that bipolar disorder type I is what we used to call manic depression. Its symptoms:

• Inflated self-esteem (delusions of grandeur, false beliefs in special abilities)
• Little need for sleep
• Noticeably elevated mood
  • Hyperactivity
  • Increased energy
  • Lack of self-control
  • Racing thoughts
• Over-involvement in activities
• Poor temper control
• Reckless behavior 
  • Binge eating, drinking, and/or drug use
  • Impaired judgment
  • Sexual promiscuity

So I asked: Has he been diagnosed with it? If so, why is he off his meds?

My friend:

People with bipolar disorder are notorious for not taking their meds. When they are manic, they feel as high as a kite. They feel invincible.

The exchange made me rethink the little I'd thought about Charlie Sheen up to then. It actually restored meaning to the entire, week-long episode for me. Instead of an ass surrounded by cameras and guffaws, a scenario in which no one comes out clean, we have a mentally ill person surrounded by cameras and guffaws, a scenario in which at least one person comes out clean.