A day after his MSNBC show Up Late With Alec Baldwin was put on a two week suspension,Alec Baldwin revealed on his blog that the long-term fate of the show is up in the air. “Whether the show comes back at all is at issue right now,” he wrote Saturday morning. “My producers and I had a very enlightening and well-researched program prepared to air on November 22nd itself, dealing with John Kennedy’s assassination. That show is off the air now.” Baldwin released an apology Friday for the alleged anti-gay remarks to a photographer that led to the MSNBC suspension, but in his lengthier blog post denied uttering any slur during the taped incident. “I can assure you, with complete confidence, that a direct homophobic slur (or indirect one for that matter) is not spoken,” he wrote.
Up Late premiered last month to up-and-down ratings in the Friday 10 PM slot and was still finding its footing when the hammer dropped yesterday. Baldwin’s blog post suggests it may not return at all even after the current two-week suspension. “[If] the show dies, its fate ends up being no different than the vast majority of start-up TV programming, and so be it. We do take a small amount of pride in knowing that we beat CNN in the ratings each of our nights. (I forget who they had on at that time),” he wrote.
The award-winning actor also hinted that he may quit the entertainment industry altogether following this week’s episode, the latest row in a string of highly publicized paparazzi run-ins Baldwin blames on a celeb-obsessed America. “If quitting the television business, the movie business, the theatre, any component of entertainment, is necessary in order to bring safety and peace to my family, then that is an easy decision,” he wrote. “This country’s obsession with the private lives of famous people is tragic. It’s tragic in the sense that it is so clearly a projection of people’s frustration about their government, their economy, their own spiritual bankruptcy. You have no voice in Washington. In Washington, or in any statehouse, no one actually cares what you think. So you post online, you vote with a Roman-esque thumbs up or down on the celebrity debacle of the day. That is your right. It’s also fatal misdirection of your voice and need to judge. Occupy Wall Street, on their worst day, had more integrity than the comments page of a website ever will.”