Stop Jenny

As you may know, I’ve grown very troubled by the rising media presence of Jenny McCarthy lately. She’s really taken the lead role in the antivaccination movement’s PR. Very rarely do any other figures in that movement make television appearances.

It got me thinking about how Robert Lancaster established a great model for skeptical action by targeting a specific prominent figure within a specific field of woo instead of trying to take on the whole field with his website Stop Sylvia Browne. In doing so, not only did he ensure that virtually anyone Googling professional “psychic” Sylvia Browne would also find the skeptical response but he gave the mainstream media a specific go-to guy to invite on as the token skeptic. Lancaster sort of became the arch nemesis of Sylvia Browne in the same way that James Randi became “psychic” Uri Geller’s arch nemesis. And since the mainstream news media is looking for conflict and a good story Randi and Lancaster have made the media’s jobs easier by giving them one clear, obvious choice when seeking a critic of either of Geller or Browne.

Now lately Jenny McCarthy has been allowed to speak her nonsense on various TV programs without anyone invited on to challenge her. Fair and balanced seems to have gone out the window. So maybe the media just doesn’t have anyone specific to turn to, so they just do the softball interview with Jenny because it’s easy.

And so last week I came up with an idea. Inspired by Robert Lancaster, I was thinking that it might be a good idea to create a website specifically scrutinizing Jenny’s claims as opposed to the general criticisms of the whole movement. But unfortunately, I wasn’t not web savvy enough to create and maintain a website where the heavy lifting was already taken care of (Thanks WordPress and Myspace!), so I proposed the idea on the JREF forums and got a few people who responded really well to the idea and were willing to lend their time and energy to this cause. And before I knew it, only days after thinking it up, my idea has been made manifest and STOPJENNY.COM IS NOW LIVE!

It still needs a lot of work and heavy promotion but it’s remarkable what a few dedicated skeptics can do in only a few days. One of my partners chooses at this time to remain anonymous and since it was necessary for someone to step forward as the official face of the site, I agreed to fill that role, so my name will be featured on the site shortly. Though the third member of the Stop Jenny team, the Australian educator and skeptic who is often known among other skeptics simply as Kiless has also lent her name to the site.

And I think the beauty of following the Lancaster model of honing in on just one prominent figure within the larger movement is that we give the media a clear go-to critic to invite on to challenge Jenny’s claims, essentially creating an arch nemesis. This topic really isn’t Randi’s forte. Steve Novella and Orac have certainly done a phenomenal job refuting the claims of the larger movement but they’re not likely to be invited onto some crappy talk show like Larry King to debate Jenny head-to-head. Dr. Paul Offit seems like the obvious leader against the antivaccine movement but for whatever reason he’s not getting invited, maybe because the antivaccination movement has so effectively instilled in the public’s mind that he’s in “Big Pharma’s” pockets. And even if Amanda Peet became Jenny’s arch nemesis, do we really want to pass that kind of immense responsibility to a movie star? Granted, she seems to be a smart movie star but still. So right now there’s no good, clear opponent on our side for the media to choose from.