You won't have Alec Baldwin to kick around anymore. He's done with you pests bothering him all the time. The evil media, a ravenous public, the gay lobby: They've ruined his sense of self so he's taking his ball and going home. Your loss, public!
I admit, I have a shred of sympathy for Baldwin's frustration with being tarred a homophobe for lashing out at people stalking his family. However, it's not like he's come to the defense of anyone who isn't him who has been attacked in the same way. And he uses this very piece to denigrate anyone who would dare question the greatness of Barack Obama. So, you know, it's a very small shred.
I really must insist that you read Baldwin's entire rant. It's a pretty fantastic first person view of the revolution eating its own. And it offers a window into Baldwin's self-absorption and complete and utter inability to deal with anything that didn't conform entirely to his whims. Here are my four favorite moments of Baldwin's nuttiness.
1. Baldwin Makes Shia LaBeouf a Sympathetic Character
Shia LaBeouf vs. Alec Baldwin is essentially the Iran-Iraq War of celebrity catfights. In a shocking turn of events, however, Baldwin managed to make LaBeouf seem, well, eminently reasonable. Here's Baldwin's own description of what transpired when the two tried to work together on a play:
There was friction between us from the beginning. LaBeouf seems to carry with him, to put it mildly, a jailhouse mentality wherever he goes. When he came to rehearsal, he was told it was important to memorize his lines. He took that to heart and learned all his lines in advance, even emailing me videos in which he read aloud his lines from the entire play. To prove he had put in the time. (What else do you do in jail?) I, however, do not learn my lines in advance. So he began to sulk because he felt we were slowing him down. You could tell right away he loves to argue. And one day he attacked me in front of everyone. He said, "You’re slowing me down, and you don’t know your lines. And if you don’t say your lines, I’m just going to keep saying my lines."
Emphasis mine. Just to be crystal clear here: The actors were told to learn their lines in advance. Shia did this. Alec did not. Shia was understandably annoyed that his coworker had failed to do the work he had been assigned. What was the result of this whole kerfuffle? Shia got fired! Baldwin somehow thinks he comes off looking good in this vignette. It's really stunning.
2. Baldwin Makes MSNBC Producers Sympathetic Characters
Remember Baldwin's short-lived MSNBC program? Judging from the description he gives of the program it was intended to be less of a newsy endeavor than a chance for Baldwin to self-indulgently wank with people he—he, not the general public—finds interesting. Here's how he described his first meeting with the poor guy producing his program:
MSNBC assigned a producer to me, Jonathan Larsen. ... When I told him I wanted to interview Debra Winger, Larsen looked like, We’re here on a set, with an expensive crew and studio time, and you want to talk to Debra Winger? There was nothing less interesting to him. Most of the guests I suggested—Ellen Barkin, Neal Barnard from PCRM, JFK-conspiracy icon Mark Lane—he couldn’t care less. As we went along, Larsen would simply stare at me after everything I’d suggest and say, "Well, let’s see what Phil says." Larsen was sent there to babysit me.
I mean ... Larsen's "look" makes a pretty keen point. Television shows, even news programs, are pricey endeavors. And you want to sit down with conspiracy theorists and aging rockers and aging actresses? I don't even know who Neal Barnard is. Considering MSNBC's struggles in the ratings, I can't imagine any producer looking at that list of guests and screaming, "Guys, we've hit the jackpot!"
3. Uber-Liberal Alec Baldwin Planned to Run for NYC Office on a GOP-Friendly Platform
In the piece, we learn that Alec Baldwin wanted to run for office "at some point in the next five years." Good for him! Lots of famous people with too much money decide that running for office is a good use of their hard-earned funds. I don't begrudge him a vanity project.
What I did find ... interesting ... was the platform he wanted to run on. It was essentially rightwing. Seriously. Here's what he wanted to do:
I wanted to find a way to lower the cost of the city government and thus reduce New York’s shameful tax burden. I would have decentralized the schools. My father was a public-school teacher. He always told me that although you could encourage a child to work hard, you could only go so far; that half the goal had to be achieved at home. As progressive as I’ve been in my politics, there are other things I don’t think of as liberal or progressive, just common sense. Of course, another thing I would have done—and this will not surprise anyone—is change the paparazzi law.
In brief, he wanted to: lower taxes, break the teachers unions, and squelch press freedoms. I mean, that's even more rightwing than I am! I'm all for lower taxes and less union interference in the schools but I think using the power of the state to enforce repression of the media is a really bad idea. Baldwin obviously disagrees. Some First Amendment rights are more dear than others, I guess.
4. Baldwin Wants to Escape the Paparazzi by ... Moving to Los Angeles
Seriously:
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.
If you want to be left alone, it's probably foolish to move to the one city in the world that has more celebrity photographers than New York City.
Alec Baldwin, ladies and gents!