Alec Baldwin Takes Serious Dig At Anderson Cooper In New Blog Post, Praises Rachel Maddow

Even when Alec Baldwin is trying to apologize, he still manages to include a dig.

Baldwin wrote a lengthy, explanatory, and for the most part thoughtful piece on The Huffington Post this weekend titled "Two Requests in Light of Recent Events."

In it, the actor addresses MSNBC's recent decision to suspend his new show after reportedly calling a paparazzi a gay slur:

Whether the show comes back at all is at issue right now. 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 ...

It's heartbreaking to me that the show, meant to coincide with the actual anniversary, will not be aired that night. The show is no doubt a work in progress and one that I believe featured some interesting guests and disseminated a good deal of interesting information. But if the show dies, its fate ends up being no different than the vast majority of start-up TV programming, and so be it.

But here's the part where Baldwin can't help himself:

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.)

Baldwin is, of course, referring to Anderson Cooper, whose 10pm show competed with Baldwin's time slot.

Cooper, who is openly gay, tweeted about Baldwin's homophobic remarks after the incident, saying: "Wow, Alec Baldwin shows his true colors yet again. How is he going to lie and excuse his anti-gay slurs this time?" and "Must read Alec Baldwin's latest excuses. They are actually so ridiculous they are funny."

In Baldwin's new post, he continued to diss other networks (Fox News) and praise other anchors (Rachel Maddow).

I have been a fan of MSNBC for some time. Its left-leaning tone never bothered me. I still believe that they are more enamored of and devoted to the truth in any single hour than Fox is all year long. I think Rachel Maddow is perhaps the single most important television journalist on the air today. And if my show does disappear, I will be grateful in so far as her good work, along with that of O'Donnell and Hayes and Sharpton and Matthews and Jansing, will not be sullied by my problem.