ADL: Charlie Sheen’s Rant ‘Borderline Anti-Semitism’
Actor Charlie Sheen’s rant against the executive producer of his hit TV sitcom is “borderline anti-Semitism,” the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman said.
Sheen, in a radio interview Feb. 24 and in a letter posted on the TMZ website, called the “Two and a Half Men” executive producer Chuck Lorre a “contaminated little maggot,” said he was a “clown” and “stupid,” and referred to him several times as Chaim Levine.
Lorre’s given name is Charles Michael Levine.
“By invoking television producer Chuck Lorre’s Jewish name in the context of an angry tirade against him, Charlie Sheen left the impression that another reason for his dislike of Mr. Lorre is his Jewishness,” Foxman, ADL’s national director, said in a statement. “This fact has no relevance to Mr. Sheen’s complaint or disagreement, and his words are at best bizarre, and at worst, borderline anti-Semitism,”
Sheen went on the defensive over the weekend, saying his statements were not anti-Semitic. He said in his letter to TMZ that he was “referring to Chuck by his real name because I wanted to address the man, not the bulls**t TV persona.”
“So you’re telling me, anytime someone calls me Carlos Estevez, I can claim they are anti-Latino?” Sheen continued, referring to his given name.
The CBS network on Feb. 25 canceled filming of the final four episodes of the popular sitcom starring Sheen and could cancel the show all together.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
