Or at least, that’s how I’ve chosen to paraphrase Alec Baldwin’s denial that he committed what his liberal / progressive pals would call a Hate Crime. Faux News:
Alec Baldwin’s latest squabble with the media may have him in some serious hot water.
An NYPD rep told FOX 411 the 54-year-old actor is being investigated following an altercation he allegedly got into with a New York Post photographer.
“Our hate crimes task force is reviewing the case,” the rep said.
The Post reported the incident on Monday, in an article that detailed their staff’s side of the story.
The story claims reporter Tara Palmeri and photographer G.N. Miller approached Baldwin outside of his East Village residence in an attempt to get a comment from the actor about reports his pregnant wife, Hilaria Thomas, is being sued.
The duo said they encountered an angry Baldwin who told Palmeri “I want you to choke to death” and fired a racial slur at Miller, who is African American.
Miller, who is a retired NYPD detective, told police the actor called him a “coon,” a “drug dealer” and a “crackhead,” according to The Post.
According to The New York Post, Palmeri gave police an audio recording of the heated moment with Baldwin.
Baldwin and his spokesman denied the allegations to a reporter with NBC’s Today Show.
“This is completely false,” Baldwin’s spokesman Matthew Hiltzik said of the alleged racial slur.
“The claim of racist remarks is one of the most outrageous things I’ve heard in my life,” Baldwin said.
[…]
The division of the NYPD investigating Baldwin focuses on bias-related crimes. An act is considered a hate crime when the victim is targeted because of his or her race, religion, age, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation, the New York’s hate crime law notes.
The “30 Rock” actor initially posted a series of tweets about the incident but has since deleted them. He has, however, left up links he posted to various articles by the website Gothamist, in which he denies uttering the racial slur.
“If you want to put words in my mouth…I’ve certainly had my moments,” the actor told the website. “But this is not one of them. I don’t think I’ve ever uttered a racial epithet to someone in my lifetime.”
Well, far be it for me to state the obvious, not having all the facts at my disposal, but it seems to me that at the very least the facts of the case could be readily settled with a public release of that audio tape.
Were I Baldwin, I’d be screaming for full disclosure of this supposed evidence. In fact, that’s what I did when I was accused of committing a crime of harassment that supposedly came appended to it a letter directing me to cease and desist contacting that person I was supposedly harassing (who it turned out was a progressive shill with a history of inventing affronts).
Perhaps that’s the case here: that Baldwin is being targeted by a Vast Rightwing Conspiracy hoping to besmirch his Good Name.
In which case, let’s hear that tape and get his name cleared immediately. Because false allegations of racism, as conservatives and classical liberals will attest, is not a pleasant thing to have lobbed at you publicly.
(h/t Terry H)
oh good NBC’s Today Show reporters are on the case
hey does anybody remember what network 30 Rock was on?
Mark Levin’s Epic Takedown of Alec Baldwin
Yes, this Tara Palmeri needs to get with the program. She should damn well know by now that you DO NOT ask liberals difficult questions. I mean it was borderline racist for a reporter to recently ask POTUS if he “beat Tiger Woods?” but this slight can be overlooked for obvious but delicate reasons.
I am a white southern (Central Texas) man born in 1971, and have never used the word ‘coon’ to describe an african american/ black person. Ever. That’s not something I hear from others either. It’s nto because I consider it super offensive like the word cunt. It’s just that it has a bit of an authenticity problem. I never hear it in the wild even from the people I know who sometimes make racist comments. I only ever hear it on TY from people pretending to be southern. I use it as an informal indicator of whether a local story about racism is true. If I hear the word “coon” turn up then I toss it into the doubt pile. I consider it a kind of “arggh talk like a pirate” word. It may be archaic but my elders did not see fit to pass it on. I also don’t hear darkie or colored much either. I had to be told in my first year of college in Fresh-Eng 2 what a quadroon was. Usually it’s back, african american, or the n word, and the n word is heavily frowned on just as african american is sighed at and may provoke an eye roll or two.
I have heard the term “coon-ass” used in reference to an east texan (usually white) because it refers to them being almost like someone from Louisiana and I gather it comes from old high school football rivalry talk but I”m not sure. Maybe it was racial once but now it’s about east Texas, Lousiana, and bays/swamps, and estuaries and is used often with white people.
But Alec Baldwin, enlightened cosmopolitan hollywood liberal transplant to New York who threatened to move to France if Bush won reelection, uses the word coon at all, much less in public? WTF? Is he trying to be edgy or is that word that finds natural use in Hollywood or New York?
Honestly I take in faith that coon is an actual racial slur that people use, and not something that was sort of made up and got passed around as true. I just don’t hear it in the wild much, even from some of the mildly racist people I know.
Seems everything I learned as a child is no longer true.
Remember “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me”?
Also, I think the world would be a better place if more reporters got their microphone stuffed up their bum.
Oh, and Baldwin is a dick. Surprised?
I think the world would be a better place if the threat to leave the country if Bush got re-elected were treated as a binding oral contract.
Coolidge page 38
Wait a minute – when did Alec Baldwin become a Tea Partier? Surely that would have made the NYT?
Greetings:
I seem to be missing the point here. Palmeri and Miller approach Baldwin and insert themselves into his day and business and when told something along the lines of the traditional New Yawk City, “Pound sand.” they cry, “Race crime.” ???
Did I come in in the middle of this movie ???
See? Coolidge was a Yankee. Puts the lie to the superiority thereof.
You’re not allowed to yell at women or black men, 11B40. Not since the dawning of the Age of Obamius. Not even if you’re Alec Effin Baldwin.
Based purely on my reading, ‘coon’ seems to be a word that used to be used more by folks up here in the North, especially the Northeast.
When I was growing-up [born 1961], ‘colored’ and ‘Negro’ were the terms I heard most, but it was interesting that they were quickly supplemented at the end of the 1960’s by ‘black’.
I won a battle in the war on women today. I exposed a member of the enemy forces to harmful nitrate and saturated fat levels along with other carcinogens and I believe there was carbohydrate exposure as well!
That is, I bought a lady a hotdog from the food truck across the street. I am become death destroyer of ladies. With food. Because the world is ultra-stupid now and words are like werewolves..
i think you’re overreacting
Every thing I do and say is an act of war! WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAAAAR!
Coon is still used in the south, always ironically by hipsters trying to sound edgy.
I plead guilty.
A few years back I saw a sign on a state highway in Alabama that said this mile of road had been adopted by a “coon hunters association.”
It never occurred to me that a KKK chapter would get so creative just to be allowed to pick up litter.
Did the MFM cover this ?