Anger Over Anti-Vaccine Jenny McCarthy as View Host

The View has, apparently, traded one controversial blonde for another. As expected, Jenny McCarthy was officially named as Elisabeth Hasselbeck's replacement on the daytime talk show yesterday; she'll start appearing as co-host Sept. 9. But quite a few people are less than pleased that McCarthy has been given such a huge platform from which to air her well-known belief that childhood vaccines cause autism, the Los Angeles Times reports.

One author and critic describes McCarthy as "a homicidal maniac" and the View audience as "impressionable" moms with young kids—a bad combination, in his opinion. Indeed, when McCarthy's hiring was rumored, at least two anti-McCarthy letter-writing campaigns to ABC were organized, and both left- and right-leaning media decried her as a threat to public health. Clearly, the efforts were in vain. After McCarthy was confirmed, Twitter exploded with snark; the Hollywood Reporter has a roundup of reactions. (More The View stories.)