Alec Baldwin says suspended MSNBC show might not return

Alec Baldwin says his MSNBC show might not return after the network suspended him for berating a photographer with a gay slur.

"Whether the show comes back at all is at issue right now," Baldwin wrote in a blog post on Saturday, the day after the cable network shut down "Up Late" for two weeks on the heels of a video — published by TMZ — that showed Baldwin confronting photographers camped outside his apartment. "If the show dies, its fate ends up being no different than the vast majority of start-up TV programming, and so be it."

In a statement published on the show's website on Friday, Baldwin apologized for his "choice of words."

"What I said and did this week, as I was trying to protect my family, was offensive and unacceptable," Baldwin wrote. "Behavior like this undermines hard-fought rights that I vigorously support."

But in Baldwin's blog post on Saturday, he denied using the slur.

"I never used [the word] in the tape recording being offered as evidence against me," Baldwin wrote. "What word is said right after the other choice word I use is unclear. But I can assure you, with complete confidence, that a direct homophobic slur (or indirect one for that matter) is not spoken."

In June, Baldwin apologized for calling Daily Mail reporter George Stark a “toxic little queen” after Stark accused Baldwin's wife of tweeting during James Gandolfini’s funeral. On Saturday, the "30 Rock" actor offered that incident as proof he didn't use a similar gay slur last week.

"I would never allow myself to make that mistake again, nor would I expose my wife and family to the attendant ridicule," he wrote. "My friends who happen to be gay are baffled by this. They see me as one who has recently fought for marriage equality and has been a supporter of gay rights for many years. Now, the charge of being a 'homophobic bigot,' to quote one crusader in the gay community, is affixed."

Baldwin then bashed the "tabloid press" and paparazzi for hounding his family and "Internet news" consumers for accepting it.

"My wife is a young mother with a newborn child," he wrote. "Yet reporters harass and hector her and our baby outside our home in ways that approximate a hockey brawl. It is shameful. And it should be illegal."