Alec Baldwin Writes Blog On The Country's 'Tragic Obsession With The Private Lives Of Famous People'

MSNBC announced Friday that Alec Baldwin's new show would be suspended after the actor had an "anti-gay freakout" against a paparazzi, calling him a gay slur earlier this week.

Baldwin, speaking for the first time since being suspended by the network, has written a lengthy blog post for The Huffington Post titled "Two Requests in Light of Recent Events."

The piece starts off with Baldwin attempting to clarify that he is not, in fact, a "homophobic bigot," but has actually been "a supporter of gay rights for many years."

Baldwin goes on to address "the decision by MSNBC to suspend my show."

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.

He then goes on to slam CNN and Anderson Cooper directly:

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 ends with a thoughtful, impassioned plea for "tabloid press" to leave him and his family alone:

My wife is a young mother with a newborn child. Yet reporters harass and hector her and our baby outside our home in ways that approximate a hockey brawl. It is shameful. And it should be illegal.

I am concerned for my family. In Bloomberg's New York, forty or fifty paparazzi are allowed to block streets, inconvenience homeowners, workers and shoppers, and make life miserable for my neighbors. ... They provoke me, daily, by getting dangerously close to me with their cameras as weapons, hoping I will react. When I do, the weapon doubles as a device to record my reaction. And then, apparently, I lose every time ...

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 this website ever will.

To read Baldwin's full post on HuffingtonPost.com, click here >