Alec Baldwin had another public outburst, this time adding a little homophobia to the mix
Rage-stuffed suit Alec Baldwin has been rumpled yet again by a careless press, this time by a reporter from the Daily Mail who accused Baldwin’s wife of tweeting during yesterday’s funeral service for James Gandolfini. And as has become increasingly common, Baldwin’s outrage took a nasty turn. A screenshot of Baldwin’s tweets is below:
In Baldwin’s defense, the Daily Mail seemed to be basing its story entirely on easily misinterpreted timestamps from Twitter—a rare journalistic misstep for the paper that normally relies on meticulously sourced photos of people in swimsuits. As Baldwin’s wife Hilaria, goddess of smoothies and sublimated anger, later pointed out, most of the tweets she supposedly made during the funeral were retweets, saying, “When someone tweets something at a certain time, and you retweet it later, it posts the TIME the first person tweeted.” Hilaria also insisted that she never even brought her phone to the funeral and “never would.” And even the Daily Mail article allows, “Sources close to Hilaria insist to Mail Online that the couple left the ceremony early through a side exit because Hilaria was feeling 'faint' in the heat and she tweeted from her car on the way home.” In other words, the wife of a famous person tweeting may not have been the bombshell it initially appeared to have been.
But as is his nature, Alec Baldwin chose to respond to the admittedly conflicted allegations of a Daily Mail story about celebrity tweeting by going off on a hostile rant, in which he repeatedly threatened to fuck someone up, because he is a man of urbane wit and sophistication. And the fact that he further called the reporter a “toxic little queen,” then suggested he might enjoy having Alec Baldwin’s foot up his ass, has added intimations of homophobia to the accusations of racism that flew the last time this sort of thing happened. With the timing, Baldwin has provided almost-too-perfect example to be held up by those who perceive a hypocritical, liberal media bias in another recent case of a celebrity saying things they shouldn’t have—one who likely will endure a far greater punishment than Baldwin ever will.
As always, there has been only one consequence so far: As with all of Baldwin’s rants, this latest outburst preceded his fulfilling the maxim of “Always Be Closing” by shutting down yet another Twitter account, apparently after also firing his publicists—whose dismissal Baldwin noted somewhat redundantly.
Baldwin has yet to offer further comment on the matter, or viciously insult the next reporter who asks him for one. In related news, this story will never be ameliorated with a self-referential subplot on 30 Rock.