Lay off of Alec Baldwin, people! He's been shamed! He went on The View! Besides: he's not in politics, he's apologized, and it's none of your business. Judge not, etc.!
Besides,why should I have to pay for Baldwin's domestic issues or Kim Basinger's intransigence? Tell me that. Why should I suffer? Because critic Stephanie Zacharek says this:
[quote begins from Salon.com, Stephanie Zacharek, When Good Actors do Bad Things."]
[T]he embattled celebrity is wedged uncomfortably, like a shamed monkey, between Barbara Walters and Rosie O'Donnell on "The View.".... Without ever mentioning ex-wife Kim Basinger's name, Baldwin makes it clear that, in his view, she's an unreasonable cow who'll do everything in her power to prevent him from seeing his daughter. Walters, always the brilliant voice of reason, notes that there are two sides to every story.....
Somewhere in there, Baldwin drops a mini-bomb: He has asked NBC to release him from his "30 Rock" contract, since he wants to spend the next few years concentrating on a subject that, for obvious reasons, has become very important to him, that of parental alienation as a component, or a result, of divorce litigation. (He has a book on the subject, from St. Martin's Press, coming out within the next few months.) "If I never acted again, I couldn't care less," Baldwin said on "The View." He's been in the game for a long time, and you need only scan his IMDb listing to recognize that the guy has been working, a lot, for about a quarter of a century. Who could blame this clearly intelligent and articulate guy for wanting to leave a profession he's good at, when more people have an opinion about a voice mail message he left for his daughter than they do about his actual work?
[quote ends; links in original; emphasis mine]
AAAAAAAAAGH! No! No! No! No! No! 30 Rock without Jack Donaghey? HE DOESN'T MEAN IT. No, NBC! No! No! No! No! Alec Baldwin may not care if he ever acts again, but I care. Furthermore, Nick cares too. So does every single person I know he who really knows anything about him.
And to answer Zacharek's question, I could; I could blame him. For leaving 30 Rock, Alec Baldwin, I will never, ever, forgive. Don't punish your fans.
Man, this is so DAMN UNFAIR.
I have already defended Alec Baldwin regarding his eruption of fury at his daughter. [Father/Daughter Dynamics: In Defense of My Hero, Alec Baldwin.] I felt kind of sheepish about blogging about the personal life of a favorite celebrity---I try not to know too much about people I admire--- till I realized that certain Baldwin lovers and 30 Rock lovers are as exercised about the attacks on him as I am.
On Friday's Real Time, Bill Maher defended Alec pretty eloquently, I thought. "Wait till the next time you're on a plane," he intoned in response to the protests of a guest on his panel who is one of those mothers. "You'll wish Alec Baldwin was there!" Maher clearly feels the same way I do about children today: envious. My parents didn't negotiate with me or feel I was entitled to any respect. In my household, respect was a one-way street: it went from child to parent, end of. My mother still doesn't worry she might hurt my tender feelings when she tells me off. Like Bill, we think the world was a pleasanter place for everyone when parents were keenly aware of just how annoying---I mean in the rest of the world's eyes----their little cherubs really were.
Bill Maher, Alec Baldwin, and I are all approximately the same age, so I'm guessing their recollections of what parents used to get to say (and do) without the press or a bunch of 21st Century parents calling them "abusive" are probably similar to mine. I mean, there's "abusive" and then there's "abusive." It's not that you don't retain your wounded feelings toward a parent who crosses the line; it's that those wounded feelings are the preparation you need for confronting the world outside your home. Certainly celebrities need to develop thick skins; otherwise, how will they cope with the drubbing they take in the press when a piece of private correspondence (of a sort) gets circulated all over the internet and by all the news channels.
The one thing that came through to me when I heard the tape was this: "The good man loves his daughter." For kids of my generation, love often took the form of vigorous moral drubbings. We're the better and the sweeter for it, I think, underneath the natural surface bitterness. What's life without a little bitterness among family members? Two-dimensional, that's what, like the pages of People Magazine.
But enough rationalizing! I don't watch The View, my friends, and Alec B certainly doesn't need to explain anything to ME. He'll have enough trouble dealing with the family court and Dr. Phil. But I don't care! I don't care! He can do that in his spare time. What about me? What about what he owes to me?????
This is what you get when you start feeling entitled to judge everyone by your own standards: no more Jack Donaghy. "Oh no," said Nick when I told him. He is a parent and doesn't approve at all of what Baldwin did, but he doesn't want to be punished EITHER.
As Video Dog's "Rabbit Bites"videotape at Salon demonstrates, we're all Alec Baldwin.
UPDATE 29 APRIL 2007: REVIEW OF THE FINAL EPISODE AT SALON BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS.
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