Charlie Sheen signed on for the next season of Two and a Half Men for a reported 1.78 million dollars per episode and he has pled guilty to assault. Whenever I flip on Time Warner Cable’s On Demand services, they’re touting Roman Polanski’s Ghost Writer as a rental. And, lately, every time a New York City bus passes by me, it has Chris Brown plastered on the side, advertising Takers. Oh, Hollywood, how subtle you are in telling us the worth of a man who abuses women. In one breath, this industry decries the behavior of Mel Gibson and distances itself from his insane ramblings, in another it legitimizes the careers of men it can’t write off as crazy and continues to hold them up as stars.

Meanwhile, look at how thoroughly the scrutiny has been turned on Lindsay Lohan, who, as near as I can tell, has done more damage to herself than to anyone else. People are salivating over her downfall, taking glee in her jail time and her court-ordered rehab. Do you think we’ll see a heralded comeback for her like Robert Downey Jr.’s? I sincerely doubt it. I remember when her problems really started coming to light, her film Georgia Rule was released on DVD…and she was nowhere in the TV commercials for it. How is that Lohan can be stripped from the promotional material for a film so easily and yet Sheen, Polanski and Brown are still seen as marketable? How is Shia LaBeouf still an industry sweetheart? I mean, people think it’s downright hilarious that he was drunk and disorderly at a Chicago Walgreen’s in 2008. What causes this attitude? Is it that people think “boys will be boys”? So society gives them a free pass to be violent asshats…at least until somebody leaks an audio tape that makes it impossible to pat them on the head and call the behavior cute?

It’s revolting, and it really speaks to an institutionalized misogyny: that enough time, money and influence will absolve you of violence against women. But god forbid a woman fall from grace…