Black People

Love Charlie Sheen!

No one knows how unfunny addiction is more than black people. It's a tragic disease that devastates families and whole communities. We know crackheads. They are our neighbors. They are in our families. We are the ones who invented laughing to stop from crying over it. That's why even the cracked-out panhandler I just passed in traffic was shaking his head, no doubt finding some comfort and solace that someone is more self-destructive than he is.

There is a perverse thrill in watching a pale, $2 million-per-episode TV actor (until CBS halted production on Two and a Half Men, that is) win the deadbeat sweepstakes so definitively. And the defiant, swaggering way he's going down -- all Tony Montana "Say hello to my leetle friend" -- is pure hip-hop.