4.13.2010

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.

1 comment:

  1. Just read Carrey's tweets. Wow. But at one point, it was kind of a busman's holiday:

    "Tiger Woods owes nothing 2 anyone but himself. 2 please his father he gave up his childhood and his freedom in the world. That's enough!"

    Okay, I've heard about crazy parents and insurance companies and what have you. But just so you know, statements like this are actually part of my job. When I teach ethics, I have to address, with some sort of sincerity, these sorts of statements regularly. Are you pitying me yet?!

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