Sunday, November 17, 2013

Alec Baldwin's Big Mouth

Alec Baldwin's in trouble for another anti-gay outburst. Scathingly delivered, of course. Which makes it worse.

Ann Althouse speculates:

"Eagerness to support gay rights may stem from a desire to compensate for strongly felt aversion to gay people. Baldwin's problem is that this compensation cannot stand up to his intense emotionality, and paparazzi who know this have made a game out of provoking him to the point of explosion. It's actually kind of sad. He's a great actor, and since he tends to play villains — wonderfully — he doesn't even need us to think that he's a good person."

This strikes me as plausible. You certainly see this pattern in this country with regard to support for African American causes. Some of the white people I know who express the most righteous indignation about racial bias are white people who live in lily white suburbs and who seem, in fact, uncomfortable around actual black people.

Some praise
the rights of gays
while still disdaining their ways.

2 comments:

Charlie said...

Cannot agree more. Compare my articulate, socially conscious university friends with my Texan gambling friends who freely sling the million-dollar taboo.

When it comes to sharing a dinner table with a black person, oh how the table turns.

John Enright said...

It's a fascinating phenomenon.