Baldwin bashes Bashir, TMZ, NY Post, 'fundamentalist wing of gay advocacy'
Alec Baldwin says the cancellation of his MSNBC show was an overreaction to a gay slur — which he claims he did not say — triggered by the "fundamentalist wing of gay advocacy," according to TMZ and the New York Post.
Earlier this month, the "30 Rock" star was caught on video berating a photographer outside his New York City apartment. MSNBC initially suspended Baldwin for two weeks over the incident before canceling the show on Tuesday.
"Showing a video in which I call someone a 'c---sucking something' — you can't really tell what I'm saying," Baldwin told Gothamist.com late Tuesday. "And we live in a world in which the phrase 'TMZ's enhanced audio' exists. 'TMZ's enhanced audio.' And then with the Post ... there's nothing you can do when you get thrown in this washing machine, nothing. You know? Nothing. All you end up doing is just defending yourself all day long."
Baldwin also criticized MSNBC's decision to allow Martin Bashir to remain on the air despite Bashir's suggestion that Sarah Palin be defecated on for comparing the federal debt to slavery.
"Martin Bashir's on the air, and he made his comment on the air!" Baldwin said. "I dispute half the comment I made ... If I called him 'c---sucking maggot' or a 'c---sucking motherf---er' ... 'faggot' is not the word that came out of my mouth. That I know. But you've got the fundamentalist wing of gay advocacy — Rich Ferraro and Andrew Sullivan — they're out there, they've got you. Rich Ferraro, this is probably one of his greatest triumphs. They killed my show. And I have to take some responsibility for that myself."
Both Sullivan, a prominent gay blogger, and Ferraro, GLAAD's vice president of communications, had spoken out publicly against Baldwin. (Sullivan called the actor a "raging, violent bigot.")
Baldwin, currently in Hawaii filming a new Cameron Crowe movie, did not entirely dispute a report by the Post that he demanded a "30 Rock" staffer be removed from a dressing room, but he said it was taken out of context.
“I don’t give a f--- if she has cancer or not," Baldwin said, according to the Post. "I want that f---ing makeup room.”
"There was somebody on the staff who I did not want to work with," Baldwin told Gothamist. "There was somebody on the staff who I thought wasn't a good fit for me. And I wouldn't rule out if that person went to the Post and gave them that story. These stories with the Post, the way they work, they have to have some kernel of truth. So if I complained, as I did ... I didn't ask for a humidifier, I asked for humidification.
"My voice would crack, it was heavily air-conditioned, I found it tough to talk," Baldwin continued. "I did not demand someone put a humidifier in. And the woman using that dressing room, I was told she's allergic to some chemical, no one ever ever ever said to me that somebody had cancer, and I never said 'I don't give a f---.'"
