Should “liberal homophobes” like Alec Baldwin be held to the same standards as “anti-gay conservatives”?
On Thursday, a video surfaced on the gossip website TMZ.com of actor and MSNBC show host Alec Baldwin allegedly calling a photographer a “c**ksucking fag.” Baldwin later insisted that he had said “fathead” instead of “fag” in a since-deleted tweet, and announced he would retire “c’sucker” from his vocabulary.
1-Rich Ferraro from @glaad informs me that c’sucker is an anti-gay epithet. In which case I apologize and will retire it from my vocabulary.
— ABFoundation (@ABFalecbaldwin) November 15, 2013
However, liberal Daily Dish blogger Andrew Sullivan, who himself is gay, questioned why MSNBC has tolerated Baldwin’s behavior. On his “Best of the Dish” blog post on Thursday, Sullivan pointed that out:
What a bunch of hypocrites and phonies on that propaganda network. They’re almost as bad as GLAAD, which has finally – finally – criticized the bigot. But, of course, they haven’t called on MSNBC to fire him. Baldwin, for his part, actually tried to claim he said “fathead” instead of “fag”!
Sullivan said if Baldwin had been a conservative, the backlash would have been much more severe. He also questioned if Baldwin’s openly gay MSNBC colleagues Rachel Maddow, Thomas Roberts and Jonathan Capehart would have a response to Baldwin’s outburst:
There will be no consequences. With liberal homophobes, there never are. If you’re a conservative and are caught yelling these slurs at random people, you’d be fired pronto or buried in an avalanche of gay protest. If you’re a self-entitled liberal, you’re fine. What, I wonder, will MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Thomas Roberts and Jonathan Capehart say about this? Nothing, I’ll bet you.
What, I wonder, will MSNBC’s @maddow, @ThomasARoberts and @CapehartJ say about Alec Baldwin? Nothing, I’ll bet you. http://t.co/JLo9wsM8LU — Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) November 15, 2013