It’s a joke
: NY Times critic Alessandra Stanley gets all PC about Two and a Half Men, a sitcom I happen to like. If she were merely unamused, that’d be one matter. But she’s offended in a way that’s laughable in itself: It’s funny when people get all PC and haughty about jokes. She calls it not merely unfunny, in her view, but “hateful” and “ghastly” and why? Because Charlie Sheen shtupps:
But actually, the show is alarmingly anachronistic: it has been decades since a libidinous cad seemed harmless or endearing; in the age of H.I.V. and S.T.D.’s, Charlie’s heedless promiscuity seems like a health risk, not a hobby.
Get rid of drunks, fat people, and the stupid in sitcoms; they’re not allowed to be funny and we’re not allowed to laugh at them. We’re supposed to disapprove instead. And if the women aren’t all role models — if there’s a mom, as there is in this show, who’s screwed up and screwed up her sons, that’ is “misogynistic.”
It’s a sitcom. It’s a joke. Sorry you don’t think it’s funny. I do. But don’t be making me into a hateful, ghastly, STD-spreading, mysogynist if I laugh.
