Jenny McCarthy has blasted Charlie Sheen for not telling her he was HIV positive when she was his costar on Two and a Half Men, but not only is her complaint invalid, it’s also dangerous.
McCarthy definitely did not throw her support behind Sheen after his HIV confession, but rather ranted about him on her SiriusXM radio show and hinted there should be legal repercussions for him not revealing his status to her.
“Now being on Two and a Half Men myself, I feel like in playing a love interest, you would think there would be some type of, I don’t want to say criminal issue, but I don’t even know how to feel about that,” she said.
“I was like, ‘Wait a second, if I have to be upfront about a herpe, how could you not be upfront about HIV?’ I look back and I’m like, ‘OK, that would have been some valuable information.’ I mean, look how many people have played his love interest on the show.
“I’m STD-phobic, just because of all the stuff I went through with Evan’s [her son’s] health. I said to myself, ‘There is nothing I want to do that would be dumb enough to get any type of disease. I have to live forever for my kid.’ So I wouldn’t sleep with anyone until I got the right paperwork, so even playing his love interest on the show back in the day, I go, like, ‘Ick, ugh, that’s not fair and scary.'”
More:Martin Sheen speaks out about Charlie Sheen’s HIV reveal
She added, “I have sympathy for him because 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.”
There are a few problems with McCarthy’s ignorant rant. First of all, HIV can not be passed through casual contact. McCarthy admitted she knows the virus can’t be contracted via kissing, so we’re unsure what other sort of “icky” things she was doing with Sheen either in front of the cameras or behind the scenes. If it was nothing other than what we saw onscreen, she is being a hysteric.
Secondly, according to both Sheen’s own timeline as given to Matt Lauer during his confessional interview and Sheen’s manager, he was not infected or diagnosed until after the show wrapped in 2011.
“Charlie was infected long after he left Two and a Half Men and long after he worked with Jenny,” rep Mark Burg told People.
Thirdly, McCarthy’s statements are yet another example of her amateur medical opinion hurting people, much like her statements on vaccines and autism. Her statements are a throwback to 1980s AIDS hysteria and that does nothing but hurt the 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States alone today.
Also, what is “a herpe”? We assume she meant an active herpes sore, but her misnomer only served to highlight her ignorance.
More:Charlie Sheen’s HIV reveal doesn’t make it OK to mock him
McCarthy later tweeted a statement backtracking on her comments.
Expanding on my Charlie Sheen actor/actress disclosure statement….. pic.twitter.com/DGlvLdXHc8
— Jenny McC-Wahlberg (@JennyMcCarthy) November 19, 2015
For more information on how HIV is transmitted, please visit the CDC website.
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