Alec Baldwin's Romance with Twitter Concludes

At least that’s what rage-fueled thespian tells Vanity Fair:

Are you ever going to open your Twitter account again?

Never. No. I went to Jimmy Gandolfini’s funeral, and when I was there I realized Jimmy Gandolfini didn’t have Twitter. Jimmy Gandolfini was so beloved as a person, and he was so admired as an actor, and he didn’t give a f*** about social media.

I really learned a lesson at the funeral. I said to myself, This is all a waste of time. Meaning it’s fun sometimes, but less and less, and less. It’s just another chink in your armor for people to come and kill you. I stopped and said to myself, I’m going to try where I just don’t do this anymore.

“Chink in the armor?” [Raising eyebrow, Spock-style.] Hey, if Capital One won’t fire Alec for his homophobia, I doubt they’ll do anything about his xenophobia; despite an editor at liberal ESPN have being fired for using such un-PC language.

At least Baldwin’s meltdown caught the attention of the perilously liberal CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, as Kathy Shaidle wrote yesterday:

But of all the people—and they were legion—who rushed to condemn Baldwin’s nasty tantrum, it was Cooper’s reaction that stood out, and not just because the de facto “face” of CNN is as kneejerk a leftist as the ever-angry actor.

It’s because, as everyone knows (and knew full well before he “bravely” “came out” of the closet in 2012—hell, I’m sure it was obvious when he came out of the womb in ‘67), Anderson Cooper is gay.

Now, Anderson Cooper is no Walter Cronkite. (Then again, some might quip, neither was Walter Cronkite….)

In “Cold Civil War” America, no single broadcaster plays the same national voice of authority role Cronkite supposedly did, if only by default. (Kids: In those days, we only had three big networks on something called “the dial.” Long story.)

And obviously, Walter Cronkite wasn’t the photogenic, soft-spoken gay son of a Vanderbilt.

It’s that “gay” part that matters for our purposes. Cooper’s open-secret yet non-flamboyant homosexuality helped him “win” Middle America, or at the very least, it failed to tweak its blood pressure too much.

Anderson Cooper’s Tweet about Baldwin read:

Why does #AlecBaldwin get a pass when he uses gay slurs? If a conservative talked of beating up a “queen” they would be vilified.

This is pretty rich coming from Cooper, who’s never expressed remorse for popularizing the tasteless “tea-bagger” nickname for Tea Party sympathizers in 2009. (“It’s hard to talk when you’re tea-bagging,” Cooper had “joked,” knowingly, in a rare display of bitchy vulgarity.)

“So that’s that, then, Jim Treacher writes today.” Alec Baldwin is done with Twitter, you guys, for serious this time. The world lost a great actor when James Gandolfini died, but it also gained a sadder-but-wiser Alec Baldwin.”

And if past performance is any indication, no man is more likely to learn from his mistakes — to become a better person, a more capable, more caring member of humanity —  than Alec Baldwin.