Why do liberals take Alec Baldwin seriously?

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/05/why_do_liberals_take_alec_baldwin_seriously/

MSNBC announced today that the actor and WNYC host Alec Baldwin will host a Friday-night talk show, “Up Late w/Alec Baldwin,” on the news network; the show will concern itself with culture and with current events.

It’s the latest act in a career marked by constant reinvention, from hunky action star to Stanley Kowalski to daddish comedy icon — running up against a propensity for self-destruction that would test the patience of the public, were it undertaken by a star any less cosmopolitan or cuddly.

Why is it that Baldwin, perpetually in the conversation around New York City municipal races (if inserted there by himself or family members), is able to entirely transcend a violent, misogynist, gay-baiting reputation, when other stars can’t manage it? And why is it that liberals — those folks who theoretically ought to be most concerned with combating hurtful language — are most enthralled by the star?

Baldwin checks all the right boxes for a particular sort of East Coast liberal; he supports the New York Philharmonic and has appeared in the erudite, sharp “30 Rock” and the last two films by Woody Allen. He does much more that counters that image, having been forced, this summer, to apologize for referring to a Daily Mail reporter as a “toxic little queen” and threatening him physical harm. He posed in a magazine photo shoot implying sex with female flight attendants some months after he disrupted and was ejected from an American Airlines flight. He blamed a flight attendant — “this woman, who had decided to make some example of me” — while the airline stated Baldwin called the flight crew “inappropriate names.”

No one but Baldwin and his ex-wife Kim Basinger know what has happened between them, but their media battle over the fate of their daughter has been epic — and Baldwin once famously called that daughter a particularly cruel name.