Actor Charlie Sheen Makes Announcement On Today Show During Interview With Matt Lauer (Photo : Getty Images)
"Two and a Half Men" star Charlie Sheen blamed sex trade workers he hired for his HIV diagnosis that he disclosed in his Monday interview with "Today."
In a commentary on the interview with host Matt Lauer, Daily Beast writer Samantha Allen notes that while it was brave of Sheen to come out and admit his ailment, at the same time he transferred the stigma of the sexually transmitted disease to the prostitutes he used. Sheen, in the letter he read, describes the sex trade workers he got as "unsavory and insipid types."
But despite their "saltless reputation," Sheen insists he had protection by using condoms and was honest by allegedly revealing to them his diagnosis, although he had said that the HIV did not show up in blood tests.
With his public confession, Sheen says it is a challenge for other men with HIV diagnosis to also come out and admit their real health condition. But in doing so, Allen points out that he just promoted "whorephobia."
Allen commends Sheen for raising public awareness on HIV, but she stresses, "sex workers shouldn't have to bear the stigma that Sheen no longer wants on his shoulders." She adds, "There's room in the world for HIV advocacy that respects the humanity of everyone who contracts the virus, whether they make a living on a sitcom or in between the sheets."
LA Times points out that Sheen's admission brings back memories of 1991 when basketball star Magic Johnson also revealed he was HIV positive. But while Johnson then was viewed as the victim of a "cruel, ravaging disease," the daily says the world has changed since then.
Rather than gain public sympathy like Johnson did then, LA Times says eyes rolled, noting that it came out while public focus was on the Paris terror attack and the US presidential campaign that Sheen "came across as an aging Bud Fox, the petulant and insatiable stockbroker he portrayed in the 1987 film "Wall Street."
