Bill Maher was his usual understated self on Real Time tonight, urging everyday Americans to begin “a class war” on Wall Street. And he illustrated the need for such a fight by drawing a comparison to the backlash received by one Charlie Sheen after his disastrous show in Detroit. And as much as we groaned initially about having to hear Sheen’s name again, we’ll admit Maher got in some good lines.

Thanks to our friends at BuzzFeed, here’s a run down of all the funniest, weirdest, most disturbing, and all around best viral stories of the past week!

Potential Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty may not have the ego of Trump or the name recognition of Romney, but he sure knows how to talk to college kids. At an appearance of Iowa College Republicans in Des Moines, TimPaw got things fired up right off the bat with a reference to Charlie Sheen: “Now, we may not in this room have ‘tiger blood’ like he does, but we do have something else in common with him. There’s going to be a lot of winning on the Republican side in 2012.” According to Kay Henderson, news director at Radio Iowa, the joke got some applause and a few cheers.

Charlie Sheen‘s first live performance in the “Violent Torpedo of Truth” tour took place last night in Detroit, Michigan and judging from the fans reaction to this show, the only thing torpedoed seems to be Sheen’s promise to deliver an entertaining show. Fans booed Sheen and walked out when it became apparent he hardly had anything planned, and one fan told a reporter “this show sucks.”

As James Franco continues to be everything Charlie Sheen is struggling to become, a new chapter in the ongoing quixotic art project that is Franco’s career unfolded today as his Twitter account mysteriously disappeared. The event would not have prompted as many raised eyebrows had Franco not recently complained of anonymous forces pressuring him into complacency on the medium, and his declaration that, in its entirety, “social media is over.”

It may not have been what Chris Brown had in mind, but it appears the disgraced star has finally found an ally in the celebrity world: Rosie O’Donnell, who on her radio show this week accused his detractors (and ABC host Robin Roberts) of racism for maligning his window-breaking behavior more than, she argues, the equivalent by white stars. A name notably absent from O’Donnell’s analysis? Rihanna.

If you simply sit down on a Friday night and watch NBC’s Dateline, you’re missing out on part of the experience. Increasingly, people are gathering to watch a favorite show like Dateline or CBS’s Survivor–and also to talk about what they’re seeing, live, via social media. “We’re seeing real time communities forming,” said Ryan Osborn [...]

Thanks to our friends at BuzzFeed, here’s a run down of all the funniest, weirdest, most disturbing, and all around best viral stories of the past week!

Leave it to Daily Kos to dig out the most disheartening poll for Sarah Palin‘s presidential ambitions possible: according to data compiled by the group Public Policy Polling, Palin doesn’t even stand a chance against known trainwrecks with no aspirations and even less qualifications to live in the White House. Yes, Sarah Palin is now trailing Charlie Sheen in certain presidential polls.

CBS’s “Selection Sunday” went in a different direction than usual on “Saturday Night Live,” with a March-madness style Crazy Bracket, in which various insane celebrities and political figures battle for the title of biggest trainwreck. Honorees included Muammar Gaddafi, Melissa Leo, Michele Bachmann and Keith Olbermann.

It appears that “live show” is the new go-to hobby for TV personalities who suddenly find themselves off the airwaves. Taking a page from the Conan O’Brien playbook, Charlie Sheen announced via Twitter that he will now be going on a live tour with a new show entitled “My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not an Option Show.” I guess he couldn’t choose which hiiiiiilarious title he liked more. For a similar tough choice, many people are having a hard time choosing which news outlet to use for coverage of the deadly earthquake in Japan that is affecting the entire world right now as you read this.

Charlie Sheen does not plan on going away anytime soon as he reveals in this hilarious Funny or Die video that “my plan is to be the first person to have made an appearance on every television network.” With this anything goes cooking show, Sheen proves he is very willing to make fun of absolutely everything about himself, even joking “this won’t be a kosher meal, not because I’m anti-semitic, but because my Tiger Blood needs meat.”

It’s an ultra high profile gig: providing social media services to one of the most widely followed Twitterers in the world, and catapulting you right into a nonstop reality show being covered by 24/7 tabloid and mainstream media. Run for your life.

Charlie Sheen posted his ad for a social media intern Monday (“hardworking, self-motivated, creative, resourceful and social media savvy individual to work closely with him to leverage his social media network”), and the response–as expected–has been intense. Aol’s David Moye reports thousands have already applied. But is it a smart career move?

I know, I know! The instant I saw “Charlie Sheen” in the headline, my eyes started to gloss over too. However, this story is kind of awesome. A group of witches and warlocks in Salem, Massachusetts have held a “magical intervention” for the actor to get him to stop using terms like “warlock” in “foolishness and irreverence.” Now, I don’t believe in spells or any of that, but these people have gotten me to be interested in something involving Charlie Sheen and, if that isn’t dark magic, I don’t know what is.

It seems that Charlie Sheen‘s ubiquitous media presence as of late might reap some benefits for the actor. Although his hit series, Two and a Half Men, was recently canceled, there are rumors circulating that he might return to the show… as long as a few changes are made.

Perhaps you heard that troubled Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen did some media interviews last week? Now NBC booking producer Katie Distler’s revealing the work that went into landing the Sheen interview for TODAY, which turned into a weeklong saga and a Friday night hour-long special on Dateline. “Love or hate the coverage,” Distler says, “the entire nation has been captivated by Sheen.” No argument there.

Distler describes trying to convince Sheen to do the NBC interview, and hearing that he’d already agreed to sit down with ABC. Why ABC? It turns out the interview was all part of Sheen “master plan:”

Bill Maher was not the only one to notice that this was a big week for anti-semitism. Harvard law professor and renowned defense attorney Alan Dershowitz wrote an op-ed in the New York Post today, where he suggested he’s not shocked that such bigotry is emerging from underground, and more surprisingly, expressed his opinion that former President Jimmy Carter and Bishop Desmond Tutu were responsible for helping to legitimize Jew-bashing.

On CNN’s Reliable Sources Sunday, host Howard Kurtz interviewed ABC News’ Andrea Canning, whose 20/20 interview of troubled actor Charlie Sheen kicked off a week of phosphorous-hot Sheensploitation™. While Kurtz did touch on the exploitative nature of the media’s Sheen coverage, Canning defended her interview, and revealed that she was “in a fog” during the interview that made Sheen’s behavior seem almost normal to Canning.

Saturday Night Live brings us the exhausting news that Charlie Sheen has been given his own talk show! His bandleader is Christina Aguilera, fitting since the singer has been having her own banner week after being arrested for public intoxication. Among Charlie’s other “warlock” guests were fellow winners John Galliano, Muammar Gaddafi and Lindsay Lohan. [...]

Charlie Sheen. John Galliano. Julian Assange. Muammar Gaddafi. What do all these names have in common in the week that was? Somehow, in one way or another and to varying degrees, they ended up saying something totally offensive about Jewish people. To Bill Maher, it appeared that there was no facet of the news cycle this week in which Jewish people were not maligned, and he put it to his panel to figure out whether there was something in the air.

Greg Gutfeld gave his eponymous “Greg-alogue” a rest this week to make room for this week’s biggest #winner: Charlie Sheen, his trials and tribulations, his victories and catchphrases. Tired of hearing contrived concern for Sheen in a media that’s enjoying the ride as much as he is, Gutfeld takes a stand for Sheen, while the panel try to balance Sheen’s personal freedoms with the damage he has allegedly done to family and friends alike.

Despite having evaded being of any particular relevance in the past couple of decades, Charlie Sheen has somehow become the single most important person in the media. Whether he’s “living a grandiose life” or having a breakdown or being so erratic he’s creeping out other sitcom stars on Twitter, the media have embraced him with open arms (at the expense of, say, crises in Libya and Cote d’Ivoire). But Sheen knows that with great power comes great responsibility, and is taking his spotlight all the way to where people need it the most: Haiti.

Bill Maher gave viewers a list of New Rules tonight on Real Time, as he is wont to do. As Maher is also wont to do, one item on the list in particular targeted a prominent Republican – this time likely 2012 presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich. And, like everyone who has said anything in the past week, Maher found a way to work Charlie Sheen into it, too.

Today on Hardball, Chris Matthews further discussed Mike Huckabee’s “claptrap narrative” in a recent radio interview in which he talked about the Mau Maus and theorized how President Obama’s views on the British were affected by “growing up in Kenya” (a Huckabee spokesperson has since said he “misspoke”).

Cable news producers are in a bit of a predicament when it comes to Charlie Sheen. Yes, there are ethical questions raised by enabling the embattled actor’s megalomania with continual coverage, but America’s appetite for “Sheen Mania” still seems insatiable. So what’s a producer to do? At America Live the answer is booking Stephen Baldwin; another embattled actor — though one of a completely different stripe — who ends up giving as insightful a take as anyone else has thus far.