Sheenism

I'm trying to figure out what it is about Charlie Sheen's recent behaviour that makes me warm to him instead of denounce him as an utter cock.

I think it largely stems from the fact that he is at the top of his game. His game is comedy acting and love his work or hate it, he was the highest paid working tv actor when this whole furore emerged. The weird quirky outbursts seem to be the domain of washed up has-beens. Sheen's wasn't. He was quantifiably the top of his game. And while this smacks of psychological issue ridden, drug fuelled egomania, Sheen disregards this possibility and announces himself, in current pop-lingo, to be simply having a great time. He is epically winning. He is on a massive salary, massively popular and massively desired and he makes no bones about this and flaunts it. And I think this appeals to us all in a little way.
Hedonism with the consequences, maybe through a fluke of media, and maybe through his own unapologeticness, downplayed. He may have had access to his kids restricted and been in trouble with the law, but by sheer force of arrogance, he denies that he's having a bad time. And the media picks up on those soundbites and he comes off smelling of roses.

The Hoff was filmed by his daughter paralytically failing to eat a hamburger. Sheen was never filmed in the lows that must surely have occurred. Sheen WAS caught scaring the bejesus out of a porn star he was partying with. But it was porn star he was partying with and this appealed to the wish-fulfilment fantasies of enough media savvy males, including journalists and internet memeists that he was a champion big-hitter not a woman-scarer.

It's the who he was with, and the paradigm shift of being on top not washed up and THEN saying "I'm fucking famous and sucessful. Instead of doing my thing and being shamefaced, I'm going to put it to you that instead of being a fuckup, I'm your wish-fulfilment." And having it stick because he did it now, rather than waiting until he WAS a has been.
I think I simply like the fact that he is unashamedly having a great time. And while that time may be judged by us to be hazardous or unstable, he simply doesn't acknowledge this and leaves us unable to judge, as we have never been as publically successful as he.