F.A.M.E. Monster

Not long ago, Charlie Sheen told 20/20 that other people couldn't handle his brain, that it wasn't from this "terrestrial realm." But really, it seems like a lot of celebrities have brains like Sheen's. With the way Chris Brown's been acting lately, he could be Sheen's long-lost brother.

After his recent post-performance meltdown at Good Morning America, in which he allegedly threw a cooler at a window, shattering it, Chris Brown has put up an apologetic-yet-defiant front. On 106 & Park, he said he’s sorry, but also that he was put off by GMA host Robin Roberts' questions about Rihanna. He said he had to release his anger over the interview.

Although he claimed on GMA that the assault wasn't really "a big deal" to him anymore, Brown has yet to put it behind him. His guest verse on Diddy Dirty Money's "Yesterday"alludes to the event: "Today feels like my funeral / I just got hit by a bus / Shouldn't have been so beautiful / Don't know why I gave my heart."

The effect is hardly flattering. In the context of his violent relationship with Rihanna, it's ironic and unfunny that Brown views himself as a victim.

At his 106 & Park appearance, Brown exhorted his fans to "be more positive and kind of focus on the real issues in life and the real positive side of things." That makes it all the more surprising that Brown reacted with violence at GMA. (He claims that GMA promised his prior charges would be off-limits, while the show says otherwise.) In some ways, Brown is in an impossible position.

While he sees every public event as an opportunity to promote his new album—which seems to be working; F.A.M.E. is set to debut on top of the Billboard chart—the media is not always complicit in the promotion game. Brown would understandably like the media to focus on his new music. To get to that point, though, he'll likely have to continue to discuss Rihanna, even if to just apologize again. Acknowledging his violent feelings and outbursts with words would make him a sympathetic character. Placing creepy references to Rihanna in his songs and reacting with violent outbursts to interview questions only shows he’s not ready to move on.

As with most things these days, it all comes back to Charlie Sheen. Chris Brown made a salient point on Twitter shortly after his shirtless exit from the GMA premises, that the media continuously gives chronic woman abuser Charlie Sheen a pass in interviews. (A phenomenon noted by Anna Holmes, in The New York Times earlier this month.) Sheen has a long and storied history of assaulting and degrading women, but by talking about it at length with any (every?) interviewer on television, the radio and the internet, he's become something of a folk hero.

Chris Brown's situation is like Charlie Sheen's in another way: Both of their publicists quit in the window opened by their recent meltdowns. Brown's publicist quit without comment while Sheen's said he couldn't "work effectively" with the deranged star.

Another celebrity who had made a poor showing on a morning talk show lost his publicist shortly afterward: Kanye West's "media trainer," Susie Arons, parted ways with the rapper shortly after his altercation with Matt Lauer on theToday show. Just like Sheen, Brown, and many other publicly irascible stars, Kanye redoubled his efforts to talk directly to his fans on Twitter.

It seems possible that the days of the publicist are actually waning. When media outlets can't be trusted to toss softballs to their star subjects, celebrities are opting to take the shortest possible route to their fans. The whole appeal of doing a large television or radio interview is to leverage the media to reach millions of fans, but the likes of Charlie Sheen and Kanye West can gain that sort of following in a matter of days on Twitter. Add in the fact that a celebrity's tweets themselves become the subject of large media stories, and there's almost no reason to take the risk of sending out a message through an intermediary.

Still, most celebrities' interests in Twitter are purely mercantile: "Buy my new album or come to my concert." Twitter is a great tool for self-promotion; it's a great medium for pithy self-expression. But it's still better at getting people into trouble than out of it. Chris Brown—like Charlie Sheen—has gotten himself into trouble by his failure to engage honestly with reality. Retreating into a virtual world seems like the last thing he should count on.

Fuse March 29. 2010