Lee Aronsohn Paley Festival Red Carpet - P 2012
Getty ImagesNow that Charlie Sheen is long gone, Lee Aronsohn has stepped in to replace the controversial actor as Two and Half Men’s resident bad boy.
The co-creator of the CBS sitcom stirred outrage when he managed to out-Sheen the show’s former star with brazenly tone-deaf remarks aimed at female-centered comedies. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Aronsohn slammed such shows as Whitney and 2 Broke Girls, the Kat Dennings-fronted comedy that also airs Mondays on CBS.
“Enough, ladies. I get it. You have periods,” he said. While Aronsohn gave kudos to show creators such as Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler and Whitney Cummings for addressing previously off-limits subjects on TV, he sniped: “But we’re approaching peak vagina on television, the point of labia saturation.”
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Earlier, during a keynote address at the Toronto conference, Aronsohn refused to back down from Men‘s superficial depiction of women.
“Screw it,” he said. “We’re centering the show on two very damaged men. What makes men damaged? Sorry, it’s women. I never got my heart broken by a man.”
Aronsohn’s remarks quickly spread online, with Martha Plimpton, star of Fox’s Raising Hope, tweeting: “Um, Lee, women are 51% of the population & a coveted demographic for advertisers. What are you thinking?”
“The rise of female writers and performers in television is a result of demand. So we’re taking our place at the creative table,” she said. Meanwhile, The Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead tweeted: “You realize that if we are at Peak vagina, the prices at the pump are gonna skyrocket.”
Aronsohn later addressed the uproar on Twitter.
“Yes, yes – it was a stupid joke. I’m sorry,” he wrote.
