With Alec Baldwin’s paranoid, vaguely-comprehensible essay on the pitfalls of New York celebrity tearing up the Internet traffic Monday, an unavoidable truth has emerged: Alec Baldwin is an unintentional conservative hero.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Alec Baldwin is awful. He is a stain on mass media and his fervent liberal politics are truly abominable. But does anyone really care what he has to say about politics? If the ratings on his short-lived MSNBC show were any indication, even liberals didn’t give a flying Maddow about Alec Baldwin’s trite progressive views, and they ended up attacking and ruining him with all the ferocity they’d normally bestow upon Sean Hannity.
Alec Baldwin’s political impact, despite his best efforts, is conservative.
Here are seven reasons why Alec Baldwin incompetently blundered his way into being a better conservative icon than many of the people who actually want to be:
1. Penned a scathing internal tell-all about MSNBC
MSNBC president Phil Griffin never takes notes in meetings and “couldn’t give a flying fuck about content” because “All he wanted to talk about was Giants tickets, Super Bowl tickets, restaurants, movies.” Also Rachel Maddow is “a phony who doesn’t have the same passion for the truth off-camera that she seems to have on the air.” Where did we learn these things? From conservative talk radio? No, we learned them from Alec Baldwin’s pissy rant on New York Magazine’s “Vulture” site about his estranged former employer. Was he attacking them out of a personal grudge and not for political reasons? Sure. But in so doing, he’s given us a few more things to joke about this year at CPAC.
2. Fought back against the P.C. police after getting attacked by Andrew Sullivan for possible use of gay slur
“Anderson Cooper, the self-appointed Jack Valenti of gay media culture, suggested I should be ‘vilified,’ in his words. I didn’t feel bad about the incident…glaad comes after me and Anderson Cooper comes after me and Andrew Sullivan comes after me, all maintaining that I’m a hateful homophobe. All based on what Harvey Levin told them.”
These are the words of one Alec Baldwin, who hates the way the liberal media attacks people based on trumped-up or falsified accusations of political incorrectness. Is Alec Baldwin attacking these cretinous demagogues from the political right? No. But on this issue, he’s as right as Rush Limbaugh.
3. Played iconic TV Republican
Satire or not, Baldwin’s portrayal of corporate executive Jack Donaghy on “30 Rock” was one of the most entertaining mainstream depictions of free-market, bottom-line conservatism, and conservatives liked it (so much so that Occupy Wall Street even staged an “Occupy Jack Donaghy” protest at the 30 Rock set). Few people remember how Norman Lear’s liberal politics informed “All in the Family.” But a lot of people still cheer on Archie Bunker against know-nothing “Meathead” Stivic in reruns.
4. Harsh words for New York Democrats
“Bill de Blasio, who apparently gets his news from TMZ, too, distanced himself from me,” Baldwin said in his Vulture piece, adding to the list of criticisms Baldwin has dished out for prominent New York Democrats. The actor’s New York mayoral ambitions may have been laughable, but his putdowns of Michael Bloomberg, Eliot Spitzer, and Anthony Weiner on the “Howard Stern Show” should at least get him a nametag at the next Heritage Foundation event.
5. He was the face of men in custody battles
Divorced men across the country get screwed in custody battles by a legal system that blindly rewards the mother. Who spent years trying to expose this progressive injustice? None other than Alec Baldwin, whose book “A Promise To Ourselves” details his fight to change child custody laws after his divorce from wife Kim Basinger.
6. ‘I loathe and despise the media’ and ‘can’t live in New York anymore’
2 for 2, Alec
7. Reads Breitbart
Baldwin admitted his familiarity with Breitbart.com in his “Vulture” piece. No, he didn’t have nice things to say about the site. But who cares? There’s at least one site you’ll find on both my and Alec Baldwin’s “Bookmarks” tab.