Alec Baldwin Trashes AOL After We Defended Him

Man, I am furious with Alec Baldwin, even if he was awesome in Firefly.

The star of NBC's 30 Rock singles out AOL for a barrage of criticism for, among other things, this: (h/t Cube)

The sine qua non to understanding the garbage barge of the internet is the AOL home page. The AOL home page, which makes Us Weekly look like Paris Match, wants its readers to focus on the latest unflattering photos of stars or their DUIs. The AOL home page is where polls rated George W. Bush as one of the ten greatest presidents, even as late as last fall. The AOL home page is where they wrote that I had "picked a fight" with Maddow and Olberman.

The emphasis is mine. Now, I can't vouch for the Home Page, but what I find super-ironic, or the sine qua ironique, in this situation is that he accuses us of twisting his words about Maddow and Olbermann. Funny thing is, I wrote a story about that, and it was all about how Alec Baldwin's own outlet, Huffington Post, had done exactly that:

This happens from time to time. You write a story about one thing, and the headline writers in the promotions end of your site change it up someplace else to make it sizzle more.

Still, I was really amused to see a front-page headline at The Huffington Post declare "Alec Baldwin Slams Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow." Baldwin is a regular columnist at HuffPo, yet they were hyping this as though he had drunkenly spilled the beans to a paparazzo.

The piece that I wrote, here at AOL, went on to explain Baldwin's remarks in context. Now, I'm not going to call Alec Baldwin a

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PD toolbar! rude little pig, or anything. I will simply await his apology.

See, even as he ridicules AOL as an example of the evil yin to the New York Times' yan, his words hit the page of a site that is guilty of exactly what he reproves. In fact, they later hyped an exclusive that consisted of Baldwin, their own writer, clarifying remarks he made on their site. That was the story in which Baldwin trashed us.

PS I know Alec Baldwin wasn't in Firefly , that was Adam Baldwin. I was joking, and I now explain that joke because this is AOL, not the high-fallutin' New York Times. Over here, we don't even fallute, not at any elevation.

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