Dept. of Free-form Ranting

When I read the news of the Jim Carrey/Jenny McCarthy split, I wondered what would become of their mutual crack-pot crusade to keep America safe for infectious diseases. After all, his face used to be plastered all over her lunatic anti-vaccine website. One wonders how strongly he will fight for the cause now that he and the movement's pneumatic queen are no longer in love.

However, I resisted the urge to do some kind of schadenfreude-induced dance of glee. Even people I detest have a right to a certain degree of respect, and to kick people when they're down shows a lack of class. I kept my cackling to myself.

It seems Carrey has kind of gone a little crazy in the wake of their relationship's demise. On that note, I just need to vent a little bit of spleen. (Bear with me.) As I never tire of reminding people, my most successful post over at Ordinary Gents was a fisking of a piece Carrey wrote for Huffington Post about the "evidence" linking vaccines and autism. It made me positively luminescent with rage that a man with no science background at all was peddling dangerous misinformation about scientific material he patently misunderstood (if he had even bothered to look at it at all, which I doubt).

None of this would matter if nobody paid them more attention than they deserve. But the Empress of All Media has decided to give McCarthy a platform, and people pay attention to what celebrities say. Including celebrities who clearly have a screw loose. Watching Carrey ramble incoherently since his break-up with McCarthy, it makes me wonder what the hell is wrong with people that they would pay any mind to the baseless "expertise" of an overpaid funnyman.