Lessons from Alec Baldwin’s Tirade

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You see it’s easy: If you’re a progressive left-liberal Democrat, you can have all the nasty homophobic outbursts you want and Hillary Rosen, GLAAD and the rest of the party fronts will give you a free pass.

I don’t often agree with Andrew Sullivan these days, but this time he’s absolutely right.

More. James Kirchick weighs in:

If a white woman’s [Paula Deen] muttering the N-word in the hot aftermath of an encounter with a robber is a “revelation of actual attitudes,” how could a straight man calling a gay man a “toxic little queen” in the safety of an online social network not amount to the same sort of “revelation”?

Never mind that she stumped for Barack Obama in 2008; ridiculing Deen — this plumpy, white, Southern purveyor of comfort food — makes white liberals feel good about themselves. The same schadenfreude doesn’t apply to Baldwin, star blogger at the Hollywood insane asylum that is The Huffington Post, perpetually rumored New York City mayoral candidate and vocal advocate of all things right and liberal. For Queen Alec, the rules just don’t apply.

Furthermore. GLAAD’s last major bout of publicity was its condemnation of Fox News hosts for attending and supporting its annual Media Awards gala, following the Democrat’s Media Matters playbook. Now GLAAD defends a liberal’s anti-gay tirades. GLAAD is giving new meaning to “partisan hacks.”

19 Comments for “Lessons from Alec Baldwin’s Tirade”

  1. posted by Doug on

    What a surprise. Some on the left want to give a free pass to Baldwin’s Tirade. I don’t. But what about you Stephen, you gave a free pass to Romney et. al. and supported him didn’t you?

    Don’t caterwaul at the left Stephen when you do exactly the same thing too. It’s called Hypocrisy.

  2. posted by jared on

    Doug, you are the kind of commenter who just makes things up. Stephen did not endorse Romney. Was this an endorsement?

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      No, but this was a lot closer: https://igfculturewatch.com/2012/10/24/lcr-endorses-romney-with-qualifications/

      Not really an endorsement but a slimy rationalization of LCR’s pathetic “endorsement with reservations” is about as good as and just as slimy.

      • posted by jared on

        There is a big difference between Stephen saying it was right for a self-identified gay GOP group to give a qualified endorsement to Romney, in a blog that often criticized Romney, and for a supposed gay group whose mission is to fight anti-gay defamation to carry water for an actor who happens to be a big Democratic operative and Obama supporter, despite his anti-gay outburst. Can’t see that? Then it’s really not worth discussing.

        In any event, Stephen never endorsed Romney, and as I recall had posts explaining why he couldn’t even though he was more in agreement with him on a number of non-gay-related issues. Doug smeared him, you defend the smear. Hey, you both should work for GLAAD.

    • posted by Doug on

      Apparently Jared you cannot read the english language. I did not say Stephen ‘endorsed’ Romney, I said Stephen supported him, and if Stephen is honey he will admit he voted for him. What kind of commentator does that make you?

  3. posted by Houndentenor on

    How did we get to this point as a nation where celebrity tweets are major news stories while we have to search for news about what’s going on on Capital Hill and our state houses? Seriously, how did we devolved to this point. Baldwin is a hot-head. That’s not news and hasn’t been for decades. He’s in trouble for yelling at someone about something (most notably a voice mail to his daughter) all the time. Why should any of us care what he said? Yes, it was bad to call someone a queen and even worse to threaten violence (although it doesn’t seem like a real threat). So why all this fuss. You are well within your rights not to like Baldwin (which I suspect Stephen already doesn’t anyway) and to avoid his tv and film appearances. I haven’t watched 30 Rock since the Tracy Morgan showed what an idiot he really is. But this really is all a tempest in a teapot and a distraction from real things going on in the various capitals around the country that will actually affect our lives. Celebrity tweets aren’t news. And it’s sad to live in a time when people think they are.

    • posted by Kosh III on

      How? Because the corporate media(for the most part) prefers to distract us with silliness so we don’t notice things like Citizens United, voter suppression, and the relentless creep towards a fascist state.
      So now folks get bent out of shape over the Kardashian bimbos and give Marsha Blackburn(R-TN) a free pass when she helps the crooks on Wall Street ruin us again as they just did with the Bush Recession.

  4. posted by Throbert McGee on

    Baldwin is a lunatic, but how was Andrew Sullivan “absolutely right”? He wrote:

    This is not just hate speech; it’s a specific call for other people to physically attack a gay man. It’s a call to violence against a specific person, which, last time I checked, was a crime

    It seems to me that Baldwin actually encouraged his “Twitter followers” to bombard the journalist with harrassing tweets and email spam, which isn’t the same as a physical attack.

    I’m not even sure it was “homophobic,” since the journalist is British and ALL British men are tea-drinking, umbrella-toting poofs, even the heterosexual ones. So “toxic little queen” merely rehashes the point that the journalist is from the UK.

    The implication that George Stark (the journalist) might “dig” having Baldwin’s foot inserted into his rectum is also ambiguous — because, as regular readers of any gay forum know, LOTS AND LOTS of gay men dislike anal sex, and LOT AND LOTS of heterosexuals enjoy it. Ergo, “foot-fisting” has no intrinsic connection to sexual orientation; Stark would possibly enjoy an “internal prostate massage” courtesy of Baldwin’s toes, if only he’d give it an open-minded try.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      If we’re going to throw everyone who makes threats on twitter or on the internet in jail, we’re going to need a lot more prisons. It’s a silly argument, especially from Sullivan who opposes hate crimes laws. “Hate speech in particular isn’t a crime.” I’m not sure what the law is about making threats that no one in their right mind takes seriously but surely the courts and DAs have better things to do with their time.

  5. posted by Jorge on

    I give Paula Deen a pass. Not a free one (she’s a boor). But a pass. Of course, blacks don’t have to worry about getting physically attacked at random anymore; gays still do.

    Speaking of which, she’s trying to use the Prop 8 Supreme Court decision as a precedent to get the discrimination lawsuit against her thrown out for lack of standing. . . based on the fact the plaintiff is white and wouldn’t herself have any injury from Ms. Deen using the n-word. I think that’s a losing, desperate argument. You can sue sexual harassment if you’re and the harasser both men; that’s been law for decades now.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      There’s a lot more to that lawsuit than the n-word. She’s accused of having staff work at events for free and threatening to fire them if they don’t do the freebies. She makes enough money to afford to pay her staff. What’s up with these rich cheap-ass people! Pay your employees, dammit! But basically I never watched her show or bought anything she sells so my opinion really doesn’t matter. People will decide if they want to support her businesses or not and that’s what will matter in the end. She has a PR nightmare on her hand and frankly I don’t think she’s handling it all that well. Surely there are people who are better at handling damage control than whoever is advising her currently. And of course it seems in hindsight that she’d have been much better off settling that lawsuit out of court. *shrug*

      • posted by Jorge on

        I thought her first response was the right one: fall on her sword, smile, wait it out. But then instead of waiting it out she went on the attack.

        If you’re going to do both, you really should do it in the reverse order. This makes her look like a big giant fake.

    • posted by Kosh III on

      “blacks don’t have to worry about getting physically attacked at random anymore;”

      Hmmm, I could show you some places here in Tn where it’s still dangerous.

    • posted by John D on

      Jorge, if you think black people “don’t have to worry about getting physically attacked at random anymore,” you need to check out the FBI’s hate crime statistics. Racially motivated anti-black violence is still a pretty bad problem (and in the same states you might expect).

  6. posted by Don on

    I know what he meant. but I think Trayvon might disagree if he could.

  7. posted by Jimmy on

    Paula Deen’s brand is synonymous with her as a person, and it ostensibly represents a maternal/grandmotherly image of home, hearth, and southern hospitality. She crapped all over that by addressing this situation with clueless, tone deaf, hick ignorance. Public perception is a market force that can destroy a business if not handled properly. Alec Baldwin may still yet experience a backlash, but his image doesn’t take the hit that Paula’s has because craziness and nastiness is not new territory for him, and his job is to pretend to be other people.

    When Paula’s show started out, she had a parrot in her front room that kept squawking, “cracker!” It occurred to me that the parrot was not was hungry… just too honest.

    • posted by TomJeffersonIII on

      I never really had much interest in Paula Deen or her folksy, fried-with-more-butter, ‘Southern hospitality’ brand. I do think it is interesting how the focus was on what she said, rather then how poorly she was treating her employees — or was accused of doing so. Yes, their is certainly a possible connection, but the big labor/employment issues have largely been eclipsed. I am also just totally blown over that Deen would have actually let the situation get to the point of a deposition. If she has a remotely decent lawyer he (she) would have told her to settle out of court with some sort of ‘don’t talk about it’ agreement in writing. Whatever the former employee wanted was probably pennies compared to what she is losing now.

      Frankly, I never had that much interest in ANY of the Baldwin’s, and I have never been able to look at Alec the same way after what he said to his daughter.

      The main reason that Alec is still a celebrity is because of 30 Rock TV series (which is now off the air). Sometimes that series was funny, smart and insightful. Other times it was dull, dumb and endorsing racism.

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