I don’t know why I did it, but I read Alec Baldwin’s long farewell to public life. I don’t really have strong opinions about the man, and I don’t much care about his public life. I heard the recording he made seven years ago when he said unforgivable things to his daughter. I’ve read about various run-ins he’s had over the years with the paparazzi. I noticed the recent brouhaha over anti-gay (some merely alleged) remarks he made that cost him his job at MSNBC and his contract with Capital One. Sometimes his behavior has disgusted me, and other times I’ve felt sympathetic.
I don’t think he’s a homophobe, although he has learned the hard way that calling people “cocksuckers” and “little queen” will make people think you have a bad attitude about gays. I enjoyed the hit-show 30 Rock, although I’ve probably seen no more than a half dozen episodes. Off the top of my head, I can’t even name more than two movies Baldwin has been in, although I have enjoyed some of them. Over the years, he’s done a great job of hosting Saturday Night Live. I thought he was great interviewer during his brief stint with MSNBC.
In short, Alec Baldwin just doesn’t mean that much to me. I understood and agreed with most of what he wrote in his farewell piece, but I was put off by how much he made it about himself and his career and the axes he wants to grind. I don’t give a shit about why his Broadway play failed. for example. I don’t care about the shortcomings of the management at NBC, for another.
By all means, he should defend himself and point out his many philanthropic activities. It’s good that he reached out to a Hawaiian LGBT group to better understand how his actions have been hurtful. I certainly understand that he feels unfairly maligned and that an incomplete and unbalanced picture of him has been promulgated. But he still comes off as a complete narcissist.
If he were less self-consumed, he’d realize that the best course of action is to continue to do the good things and to stop using anti-gay epithets to denounce people who are critical or irritate him.
Maligning New York was unnecessary, but if he can’t handle the cameras everywhere, maybe he should move to a gated-community in L.A. If it causes him fewer problems and less stress for his family, that might be the right solution for him.
Overall, I’m not going to say that he shouldn’t care what people think of him, but he should learn to care a lot less than he does. He managed in this piece to cement my impression that he’s a dick even though I didn’t disagree with most of what he had to say.
No one likes the “I’m-taking-my-ball-and-going-home” editorial, and this piece didn’t succeed where others have failed.
The weirdest about Baldwin is that his show on WNYC radio, Here’s the Thing, was fantastic for precisely the reason you wouldn’t expect: he kept out of the way and let his guests do the talking. Casting against type?
… I’m sure we won’t actually hear any less from him. Unfortunately.
I don’t pay much attention to celebrities. I had to google for a photo of Alec Baldwin to make sure I had the right Baldwin brother. I had caught a bit of the swirl in passing: homophobic comments, yelling at daughter, show on msnbc, show cancelled, goodbye cruel world essay. But that was about the depth of my knowledge and I am not invested in Alec Baldwin, one way or another.
I’m not quite sure why, but after reading this post from BooMan, I decided to read the Alec Baldwin essay. Iinterestingly enough, my response couldn’t be more different from BooMan’s. I found his essay to be convincing, and I thought he mostly took responsibility for his part in things while still lamenting the rest.
I don’t see him as a narcissist, at all. We are all self-absorbed when we are in crisis, so I will give him a pass on that. I didn’t see a man who was maligning New York; instead, I see someone who loves new york and is sad to have to let go of the new york he has always loved. Kind of like a wonderful relationship that has somehow gotten off track, and you have to let it go even though you don’t want to.
Baldwin believes he has been labeled as something he’s not and I see this essay as him trying to speak his peace as he accepts that his life has changed, however unfairly, and he is moving on to a different life than the one he’s had for 30 years. I believed him when he said he’s not what the pack of wolves is saying he is.
So, yes, things like this elicited some of my sympathy for Alec:
“I didn’t feel bad about the incident. He lied about my wife. They say this is what comes with stardom–I don’t agree with you. A journalist isn’t supposed to write a lie about you…Every time people throw this mud on me, there are very serious consequences in my life.”
And he’s entertaining. If Baldwin wasn’t so incredibly touchy, he would be a better raconteur. I wish his ego was large enough and his perspective well-adjusted enough that he could let more of the show biz bullshit roll off him. I’m glad he said “I’m self-aware enough to know that I am to blame for some of this.” Maybe he’ll stop taking the incredibly irritating bait the reporters and paparazzi strew before him, hoping they can report the latest eruption of Mount Baldwin Volcano.
But, Good Lord, there’s a whole TON of “get off my lawn!” old fogeyisms (camera phones!) along with wealthy white privilege (shamefully high tax burden!) here. And there’s the bizarre side stories about LaBeouf and others involved in that Broadway production, and the willingness to use anonymous sources to make claims about Maddow that appear borne out by zero evidence. For someone concerned about lies, it’s interesting that Baldwin doesn’t consider the good odds that someone who resents Maddow made that up. Overall, it’s like Alec treated this as an opportunity to uncharitably bury everyone who’s irritated him in the last six months.
I think the photos accompanying the story are making a completely reasonable editorial comment on Alec.
I thought it was very interesting that while blasting Maddow he still said she was good at her job.
Also my favorite Alec Baldwin movie was The Shadow. Classic!
Isn’t this a bit like a GBCW post? He’ll be back.
I’ll probably have the same reaction about the piece when I get to reading it. Is Baldwin a bad guy? I don’t think so. My guess is he’s a product of the environment he grew up in. Isn’t one of of his brothers a wingnut? That’s not to excuse his rants and comments. He really should try some anger control classes or something along those lines.
Smackdown.
Agree with the GBCW comments. And people have short memories when it comes to celebrity bad behavior. Unfortunately. The weirdest thing to me is that he really expects people to believe that calling a guy a “toxic little queen” isn’t a whole lot better than actually calling him a faggot. They’re both homophobic slurs. He doesn’t feel bad that he said it – he feels bad that he got caught.