Alec Baldwin Says He Wants To Retire From Public Life

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Alec Baldwin is fed up. He's done. He'll have not one more second of it.

Baldwin penned an open letter, which serves as the cover story in the latest issue of New York Magazine that went on newsstands today. "It’s good-bye to public life," he says, taking a page out of the Shia LaBeouf playbook, after spending most of the letter sending shots at basically every person who spurned him in 2013—including Shia, whom Baldwin says carries a "jailhouse mentality wherever he goes." Rachel Maddow wasn't spared either: Baldwin calls the MSNBC host a "phony who doesn't have the same passion for the truth off-camera that she seems to have on the air." Anderson Cooper, according to Baldwin, is the self-appointed Jack Valenti of gay media culture. And, MSNBC as a whole? "Full of shit, as redundant and as superfluous, as Fox[News]."

Baldwin's departure from the public life—and New York, a city he says is turning into Beverly Hills— is because of basically two things: Accusations of being a homophobe, and the paparazzi. "Am I a homophobe? Look, I work in show business. I am awash in gay people, as colleagues and as friends," Baldwin says, in a valiant effort that...well, really does not help his case at all.

Neither does calling somebody an "F-M-Tranny" in the same essay in which you say "I want to learn about what is hurtful speech in your community," because that just so happens to be the definition of hate speech.

The accusation that Baldwin had called a paparazzi a homophobic slur led to him losing his talk show on MSNBC and an endorsement with Capitol One. 

Baldwin recalls a run-in with a paparazzi in which a photographer followed his wife on a bike causing her to slip and fall, hurting her leg. "He laughed at her and said, 'See what I made you do?'" Yikes. Maybe one day Alec Baldwin will band together with Kanye West, and head a super coalition task force to battle the paparazzi?

Baldwin ends the letter with his declaration that he is through with fame:

None

If he asks nicely, he could probably get LaBeouf to lend him that "I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE" paper bag from Berlinale.

[via Vulture]

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