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Sunday, April 3, 2016

Jenny McCarthy for President?

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism.  

I also discuss how various celebrities have propagated that myth.

At Politico, Luke O'Neil writes of the next generations of celebrities who might run for president.  One is Jenny McCarthy.
Trump has shown us that the electorate is easily distracted by the pretty baubles of glamour and celebrity, so who better to take that concept to its next logical conclusion than a woman who spent much of her career captivating fans with her own considerable assets? Never mind a president with a pin-up wife—just skip the middleman.
McCarthy and Trump have a lot more in common than you might think at first. They’re both TV stars, despite being unable to play any roles beyond somehow less believable versions of themselves. More importantly, they both peddle ignorant beliefs without any reservations about what effect that ignorance will have on the people who take them seriously. For McCarthy’s part, that’s largely come from her tireless activism about the dangers of vaccines and their role in giving children autism, a claim that has no scientific support and that Trump has espoused as well. And both Trump and McCarthy have published multiple books, none of which anyone believes they wrote themselves.