Apparently Oprah Winfrey is giving a platform to Playboy-bunny-turned-MTV-starlet-turned-anti-vaccine-activist Jenny McCarthy, and plans to help her have her own talk show. This is the height of irresponsibility. As Arthur Allen explains:

Celebrities take on all kinds of causes. They campaign for presidents, and they rally to save the women of Darfur and the hungry masses of Bangladesh and Africa. Some of these appearances may do some good, while others are merely benign grandstanding. But wealthy, toothsome, vivacious, and sexy Jenny McCarthy's impassioned campaign is actually harmful. Why? Because she is spreading dangerous misinformation—and that could bring some once-controlled diseases back into play.

Or, as Gawker puts it, "Oh, good, Oprah is going to give Jenny McCarthy a talk show, because she wants your kid to die of the measles."

Here's a potential silver lining: McCarthy's quite dingy and can't spell to save her life -- "grimmess" for "grimace" in this blog post -- so maybe people will stop taking her anti-vaccine ravings all that seriously and the Oprah-enhanced part of her career will be short-lived. For our children's sake, I hope so.