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A Jenny McCarthy Follow-Up: Way to Double Down on the Dumb

By Vivian Kane | Celebrity | November 19, 2015 |

By Vivian Kane | Celebrity | November 19, 2015 |



Last night, I gave you all a window into my daily process of seeing a story, giving a dismissive middle finger to said story, then spending an evening finding literally nothing else worth writing about before finally caving to that story. I’m bringing this up only to say that I didn’t start out this day wanting to write two headlines about Jenny McCarthy, but it was basically this or Oreo churros.

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So here we are.

As we talked about earlier today, Jenny McCarthy doesn’t understand how the human body works. Obviously, this is something we already knew from her staunch, very vocal anti-vaxxer stance, but now she’s extended that ignorance to HIV, saying she worried that she may have been at risk playing Charlie Sheen’s love interest on Two and a Half Men.

Playing even his love interest on the show, back in the day, I go, ‘Ick! That’s not fair. It’s scary.’ I have sympathy for him because, you know, he’s sick and it’s awful, but man, he’s going to have to take some major accountability with many people in his life.
Ick? Really? McCarthy went onto say that while “obviously” you can’t “get it through kissing,” still, somehow, “that’s a big deal.” That if Jenny McCarthy has to disclose her “herpe” (singular), Sheen should had to have told her about his HIV.

As most people reading this are probably already thinking, unless McCarthy had unprotected actual penetration, needle sharing, or some other exchange of fluids written into her sitcom contracts, pretending to be attracted to an actor does not put you at risk for contracting HIV. That sort of logic, though, is no match for McCarthy’s “ick,” a fact she decided to go ahead and double down on.

Okay, first of all, Charlie Sheen’s manager responded to McCarthy between her first statement and this one, to say that Sheen contracted the virus “long after he left Two and a Half Men and long after he worked with Jenny.” So, you know, moot.

Secondly, and more importantly, THAT’S NOT WHAT DOUBLE STANDARD MEANS. She specifically says in this tweet that both female and male actors have to disclose issues that may be harmful to their costars (like open mouth sores!). Maybe I’m putting my unwavering feminazi reputation at risk by saying so, but this is not a gender issue. This is not a case of a man not having to play by the same rules as a woman. This is a case of HIV and oral herpes being VASTLY DIFFERENT THINGS.

Jenny McCarthy, ladies and gentlemen, getting me to defend the patriarchy.