What's Jenny Advocating?

["She] has a lot of balls to come forward and be on that side, because there is an angry mob on my side." This statement was Jenny McCarthy's, on actress Amanda Peet, who according to Time magazine, had said that parents who don't vaccinate their children are "irresponsible." Read it here in an article by Hollie McKay on the FoxNews website. In fact, apparently what Ms. McCarthy said in an interview was, ""She (Peet) has a lot of [nerve] to come forward and be on that side, because there is an angry mob on my side, and I like the fact that I can say she's completely wrong."

To be fair, Ms. McCarthy and others objected to Ms. Peet's characterization of non-vaccinating parents as "parasites," a term for which she later apologized.

Does Ms. McCarthy believe that angry mobs are always right? I don't get the logic. And what about the First Amendment? Does it only protect her and people who agree with her? Assuming that the FoxNews website piece has her statement right, is Jenny advocating a new "McCarthyism" in which only her opinions count? One would hope not. Check out Ms. Peet's opinions here. Of course both Ms. McCarthy and Ms. Peet are entitled to their opinions on the subject of child immunization. Of course the lobbying group Autism United can suggest to audiences that they boycott Ms. Peet's films (but if they do that they're also sanctioning everyone else who appears in or works on her films). I found mention of this boycott on the net, but no mention of it at the group's website.

This celebrity spat also highlights the general fascination some of the public seems to have with the opinions of the famous, whether or not the famous have any particular and special knowledge that informs those opinions. I find it interesting that many people would rather listen to celebrities speak their minds on these subjects than to those who have studied and thought and taught and written on the issues.

As for the general interaction of crowds and mobs and critical thinking, Charles MacKay studied this phenomenon more than a century ago. His book Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a classic, and it's available online. Some of his topics include tulipomania (the craze for buying up tulip bulbs in the seventeenth century), witchcraft and witch hunting, the crusades, alchemy (the search for the philosopher's stone), and fortune telling.