DC Trawler

Alec Baldwin is done with you, America (again)

Jim Treacher Blogger
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Between this and the wonderful news about Piers Morgan, I hardly know where to start. So I’ll begin at the beginning: Alec Baldwin is completely delusional and a huge crybaby.

I know, that’s not exactly a news flash. But it’s still good for a laugh. Baldwin has an “as told to” piece in the latest New York Magazine, and as Taylor Bigler points out, it’s really funny because he says stuff like this:

Am I a homophobe? Look, I work in show business. I am awash in gay people, as colleagues and as friends. I’m doing Rock of Ages one day, making out with Russell Brand. Soon after that, I’m advocating with Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Cynthia Nixon for marriage equality. I’m officiating at a gay friend’s wedding. I’m not a homophobic person at all. But this is how the world now sees me.

I know, right? And that false perception is based on nothing but copious documentary evidence, including the following.

WARNING: FOUL LANGUAGE AND ALEC BALDWIN

In the same piece, Baldwin refers to “Andrew Sullivan, Anderson Cooper, and others in the Gay Department of Justice,” and to “an F-to-M tranny” who said something he didn’t like.

Does all that stuff make him a homophobe? I have no idea. I can’t read his mind, and I doubt that even he knows for sure. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do or say until it’s already happening. All I can go by are his words, and he’s said a lot of crazy stuff about gay people. It’s always educational when an uber-lib starts spouting off like Archie Bunker.

But to me, the funniest thing is that the piece is titled “I Give Up.” He gives up! After everything he’s done for you, America, you treat him like this?

Toward the end of his petulant 5,000-word rant, Baldwin threatens promises to finally go away. Again:

I probably have to move out of New York. I just can’t live in New York anymore. Everything I hated about L.A. I’m beginning to crave. L.A. is a place where you live behind a gate, you get in a car, your interaction with the public is minimal. I used to hate that. But New York has changed. Manhattan is like Beverly Hills. And the soul of New York has moved to Brooklyn, where everything new and exciting seems to be. I have to accept that. I want my newest child to have as normal and decent a life as I can provide. New York doesn’t seem the place for that anymore.

It’s good-bye to public life in the way that you try to communicate with an audience playfully like we’re friends, beyond the work you are actually paid for.

See, you guys? All this time, he’s just been communicating with you playfully. Lighten up, you toxic little queens!

This is hardly the first time Baldwin has taken his ball and gone home. He infamously threatened to move to Canada if George W. Bush got elected. He probably could’ve made a decent living up there, starring on his own CBC show. Maybe one of their cute little detective dramas that we’re supposed to like down here because they’re not American. But no, he chose to stay here and make a bunch of movies nobody saw, and a low-rated sitcom, and whatever else he’s been up to. He was just spouting off, and he stayed where the money was.

He’s quit and rejoined Twitter at least three times by my count, after flaming out over one damn thing or another. And when that tape of him seething into his then-11-year-old daughter’s voicemail got out, he tried to bail then too. As Ashley Phillips of ABC News wrote on April 26, 2007:

After the media frenzy that followed the release of the voice mail message, Baldwin asked NBC if he could leave the cast of “30 Rock.” The actor recently won a Golden Globe award for his portrayal of an abrasive corporate executive.

“I don’t want those people to be negatively impacted and for them to be hurt by the situation, so I’ve asked NBC to let me out of my contract and let me leave the show,” he says. “If I never acted again, I couldn’t care less.”

Not that America disagrees. It’s been a long time since Baldwin was a box-office draw, and now he’s much more famous for being a walking time bomb.

The point is, this is just part of his pattern. He may withdraw to the comforts of a Beverly Hills mansion, well hidden from our porcine eyes and witless ingratitude. He may become a sort of Norman Desmond, privately reliving that bygone era when people still wanted him around.

But he’ll be back.

Let’s hope!

Update: And how was your day, guys?