6:16 pm, June 28th, 2013
(GettyImages.com)
Alec Baldwin has responded to outrage over his latest Twitter outburst — including allegations of homophobia — in a statement to GLAAD and an interview with Gothamist.
As Gossip Cop reported, the actor lashed out at Daily Mail reporter George Stark on Thursday after Stark erroneously wrote that Baldwin’s wife Hilaria had been tweeting during James Gandolfini’s funeral in New York.
Baldwin threatened to “f**k up” Stark, calling him a “toxic little queen” and “lying little b*tch.”
The “30 Rock” star’s tirade was deemed homophobic and hateful, and now Baldwin is responding to the charges.
Here’s his statement to GLAAD:
“My ill-advised attack on George Stark of the Daily Mail had absolutely nothing to do with issues of anyone’s sexual orientation. My anger was directed at Mr. Stark for blatantly lying and disseminating libelous information about my wife and her conduct at our friend’s funeral service. As someone who fights against homophobia, I apologize.”
“I have worked, periodically, with numerous marriage equality organizations, especially over the past couple of years, to achieve the very rights that gay couples are earning by recent court decisions. I would not advocate violence against someone for being gay and I hope that my friends at GLAAD and the gay community understand that my attack on Mr. Stark in no way was the result of homophobia.”
Baldwin spoke at greater length with Gothamist.
“Number one, I’m never going to apologize for defending my wife, ever,” Baldwin tells the outlet, explaining that Stark’s report was completely off-base in terms of the facts.
He then dismisses the idea that his attack on Stark was homophobic:
Number two, the idea of me calling this guy a “queen” and that being something that people thought is homophobic…a queen to me has a different meaning. It’s somebody who’s just above. It doesn’t have any necessarily sexual connotations. To me a queen… I know women that act queeny, I know men that are straight that act queeny, and I know gay men that act queeny. It doesn’t have to be a definite sexual connotation, or a homophobic connotation. To me those are people who think the rules don’t apply to them. This guy could blatantly lie, I mean blatantly lie about my wife on the internet and there are just no rules that apply to him, but that’s outrageous to me.
Later, he stresses, “If what I said offended everybody, that obviously wasn’t my intention. I’m not interested in offending anyone. If homosexuality was an issue for me, I would have moved out of New York years ago. I find that laughable.”
Baldwin says that thinking about Gandolfini has actually led him to leave social media:
He went and did his work, he put his energy into his work, and what I realized was that these social media things, which all my adult life in the last ten years people have been saying to me, ‘Hey man, you gotta have this.’ These are all tools. That is the world, these are all tools, you’re told. You’re better off having these in your back pocket. Twitter and Tumblr and Vine and Instagram and Facebook and Myspace, all these things are social media tools that we were all told we had to have, and what we’re realizing is that no you don’t! No you don’t. All this energy goes into these things, and for what?
And so, for the time being, Baldwin is exiting Twitter.
What do you think of Baldwin’s comments about his outburst?
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