How Bad Do You Have to Be to Get Kicked Off TV?

June 2, 2008 — -- It's easy to forget that the people we love to watch on TV aren't necessarily the same offscreen. Steve Carell isn't a self-absorbed, narcissistic paper pusher. Sandra Oh isn't a compulsive, overachieving M.D. in training. After all, they're actors -- if they're good at their jobs, we forget everything we've heard about their actual lives -- or, at least, we tune it out for 30 to 60 minutes and get wrapped up in their roles.

But sometimes the discrepancy between onscreen and offscreen is too big to ignore. Take Charlie Sheen. On "Two and a Half Men," CBS' No. 1 sitcom and the No. 1 comedy on television, he plays a bachelor-for-life who loves his brother and nephew almost as much as he loves the ladies.

In real life, he's accused of indulging in prostitutes, downloading underage porn and telling his "whore" ex-wife to "get cancer" and "rot in hell" in a text message, according to several published reports.

Should Sheen be canned, considering his off-camera reputation?

The actor has been embroiled in a bitter divorce with ex-wife Denise Richards for more than two years, and the two haven't held back from dragging each other through the mud. He accused her of sending his fiancée an e-mail asking for his sperm; she retaliated by telling the New York Post he sent her a text message saying, "I hope you and your worthless retarded father get cancer and join your stupid mom. Rot in hell you [bleeping] whore." (Richards' mom died of cancer in January.)

Did Sheen actually send that text message? His representative won't deny it.

"If that text was sent by him, who made it public?" Sheen's publicist, Stan Rosenfield, told ABC News. "He didn't make that public. He might have said it, but he didn't make it public. And there's a huge distinction between something someone said and something someone made public."

Regardless, it's out there. Sheen may play the part of a carefree Malibu lothario but his ex-wife's allegations paint the picture of a bitter, vindictive, potentially violent ex-husband. According to Robert Knight, head of the Culture and Media Institute at the Media Research Center, if CBS cared more about its image than its ratings, the network would fire Sheen.