I'm with Alec Baldwin on punching aggressive paparazzi photographers. I'm with him against the word police. I'm with him on the stalker. I'm with him on using an electronic device on a plane before takeoff. I'm with him on Kim Basinger playing visitation games with their daughter.
What are conservatives doing demanding Baldwin's head for calling some pestilential paparazzi a "c*ck-s*cking little f*g." It is perfectly obvious Baldwin was just cursing the guy out with whatever bad words popped into his head, not engaging in "homophobia" against an actual gay person.
Conservatives attacking Baldwin for his latest fit of (justified) anger are being small-time and shortsighted. You think this sets liberals back? They don't care about Baldwin. You're just reinforcing their worldview, where careers are ended over a word.
Liberals don't mind abortion, sexual promiscuity, adultery, lying or criminal behavior. They save all their moral indignation for people who use politically incorrect words. Instead of simply filing this one away under "Liberal Hypocrisy" for future use, conservatives are validating the left's next attack on a conservative.
As proof that liberals don't care about Baldwin, I believe I am the only person who keeps pointing out the truth about his fake denunciation of Rep. Henry Hyde back during Clinton's impeachment in 1998. On the Conan O'Brien show, Baldwin thundered, "If we were in another country ... we would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to (Republicans') homes and kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families, for what they're doing to this country."
This is regularly cited as proof of Baldwin's heinousness.
I have friends who were there and saw it: Immediately after this rant, Conan staffers dressed as medical emergency workers rushed out with an oxygen tank for Baldwin. It was a joke -- a self-deprecating one at that.
The oxygen tank proves beyond dispute that it was a joke. If liberals cared about Baldwin, they would have given us this simple explanation.
How about Baldwin's stalker? Baldwin and his innocent wife are being terrorized by a frightening, dangerous lunatic. This woman turned Baldwin's life into a living hell, showing up at his residences in New York City and East Hampton, calling him 30 times a day and bombarding him with hundreds of emails. Like every stalker, she claimed she only wanted "closure." There's never "closure" with a stalker.
But tabloid reporters are leading the vendetta against Baldwin, making Gloria Allred sound like Margaret Thatcher. I've seen a disturbing number of comments about the case suggesting that Baldwin must have had a one-night stand with this loon.
On one side we have a manifestly delusional woman and on the other a famous man with a temper who is not insane. He says he never slept with her. Why do we have to split the baby?
It's the old "there is some truth on both sides."
The same injustice was done to Clarence Thomas, when he was falsely accused by Anita Hill of sexual harassment. Although 70 percent of the public believed Hill was lying after watching the hearings, the media consensus was that Thomas must have done something to Hill, despite Hill being proved a liar over and over again. As Time magazine headlined its article on the case: "He Said, She Said."
No, it was: "He Said, She Lied." Here's a world exclusive for liberals: Sometimes women lie.
This is the advantage aggressive bullies have over their victims. Even when the public can see that they are lunatics, they still manage to dirty up their prey.
Baldwin is also a warrior against colossally useless government regulations. Less than two years after Baldwin was thrown off an American Airlines flight for playing "Words With Friends" on his phone before takeoff, the Federal Aviation Administration finally scrapped this pointless and enraging rule.
(Two years to get rid of a useless government regulation is lightning speed by Washington standards.)
Just this week, George Mason economics professor Tyler Cowen wrote an article in The New York Times remarking on how years of complaints about the no-electronics rule "did not bring concrete change, mostly because of regulatory inertia." He noted that conservatives have long denounced the more than 1 million federal regulatory restrictions and argued that liberals should care, too. ("More than 1 million" is not hyperbole -- that's how many federal regulations there really are.)
Baldwin cared -- and got results! Now we need him to do something about the idiotic instructions on how to use a seatbelt.
The most spectacular of Baldwin's alleged misbehaviors -- the angry voicemail he left for his daughter -- resulted from his absolutely legitimate frustration over divorce laws written by feminists. His ex-wife, Kim Basinger, was jerking Baldwin around on child custody and he exploded in rage.
I know people who were with Baldwin before he made that call. He had been working overtime all week on two TV shows, but instead of kicking back with friends when it was over, Baldwin went out of his way to keep a phone appointment with his daughter.
She didn't answer and he exploded, mostly at his wife, albeit via an angry message to his daughter. Baldwin's voicemail was immediately released to the press by Basinger's people.
The court punished him for leaving the message. It did not punish Basinger for leaking it to the press.
Up and down the family law system, the deck is relentlessly stacked against men. There are state and federal laws against "deadbeat dads" -- rigorously enforced -- but judges rarely enforce a father's visitation rights.
This has real-life consequences. Feminists don't care, just as they don't care about the real-life consequences of women in combat, abortion on demand or insane sexual harassment rules. It's only about their side winning. They're for the Girl Team.
Alec Baldwin: Victim of feminism.
Finally, when Sarah Palin entered enemy territory to appear on "Saturday Night Live" in 2008, Baldwin was an absolute gentleman to her -- unlike the drama queen Tina Fey, who refused to share the stage with Palin.
Bullying is the essence of politics for the left. They bully those they disdain, like Palin, with adolescent insults. They bully everyone with the threat of losing a career because of a word. They bully Americans with more than 1 million federal regulations. They bully men through feminist-designed divorce and sexual harassment laws --magically suspended in the case of President Clinton because liberals approved of his pro-abortion views.
That isn't the rule of law; it's the rule of bullies.
Conservatives believe people have a right to be left alone, whether from the word police, the government or delusional nuts, no matter how much they want "closure." But most of all, conservatives don't think the rules apply only to our political opponents -- a liberal trademark, borrowed from the feminists.
We apply our principles even to people whose politics we dislike.
