Alec Baldwin announced very publicly yesterday — in a 5,000-word screed in New York Magazine — that he was taking his larger-than-life personality and petulant I’m-the-only-one-who-matters attitude and retiring from public life.
It’s hard to know what this means — is he forever forsaking guest spots on SNL or his absolutely brilliant turns in the Capital One credit card commercials? Or is he just going to keep a low profile and stop being a very public jerk? Hard to say and, really, does it matter?
Probably not, though I am intrigued by some of the criticisms he levels, especially at the liberal news media as typified by MSNBC. His critiques are not just the ravings of a lunatic or the parting shots of a wounded ego. Many of them are on target and deserve more than the dismissive wave the media is offering.
The relevant critiques are contained in this Salon sum-up — and thanks to Salon for providing an alternative to reading the entire, painful missive.
Here is what he had to say about MSNBC:
I watched MSNBC, prior to working there, very sporadically. Once I had signed a contract with them, I wanted to see more of what they were about. It turned out to be the same shit all day long. The only difference was who was actually pulling off whatever act they had come up with. Morning Joe was boring. Scarborough is neither eloquent nor funny. And merely cranky doesn’t always work well in the morning. Mika B. is the Margaret Dumont of cable news. I liked Chris Jansing a lot. Very straightforward. I like Lawrence O’Donnell, but he’s too smart to be doing that show. Rachel Maddow is Rachel Maddow, the ultimate wonk/dweeb who got a show, polished it, made it her own. She’s talented. The problem with everybody on MSNBC is none of them are funny, although that doesn’t prevent them from trying to be.
If MSNBC went off the air tomorrow, what difference would it make? If the Huffington Post went out of business tomorrow, what difference would it make?
In a broader sense, Baldwin says, it is a larger cultural failure, an American one. The United STates, he says, “is so preposterously judgmental now.”
The heart, the arteries of the country are now clogged with hate. The fuel of American political life is hatred. Who would ever dream that Obama would deserve to be treated the way he has been? The birth-certificate bullshit, which is just Obama’s version of Swiftboating. And all for the electoral nullification that seems like a cancer on the American system. But this is Roger Ailes. And Fox. And Breitbart. And this is all about hate. It’s Hate Incorporated. But the liberals have taken the bait and run in the same direction—and it’s just as corrosive. MSNBC, in its own way, is as full of shit, as redundant and as superfluous, as Fox.
I think America’s more fucked up now than it’s ever been. People are angry that in the game of musical chairs that is the U.S. economy, there are less seats at the table when the music stops. And at every recession, the music is stopping.
Hank Kalet 