When good actors do bad things

Alec Baldwin confesses his sins to Rosie and Barbara. Can't we forgive him, after all he's done for us?

By Stephanie Zacharek

We all claim to be sick of celebrity culture, and yet few of us can manage to unglue ourselves from tabloid gossip pages and Web sites. Alec Baldwin leaves a harsh and inappropriate message on his daughter’s voice mail, and almost instantaneously the whole world knows about it. Next thing you know, the embattled celebrity is wedged uncomfortably, like a shamed monkey, between Barbara Walters and Rosie O’Donnell on “The View.” Their relationship to him, in this relatively brief moment of television, is unclear: Are they grand inquisitors, soothing mommy types, or sympathetic fellow celebrities? Without ever mentioning ex-wife Kim Basinger’s name, Baldwin makes it clear that, in his view, she’s an unreasonable cow who’ll do everything in her power to prevent him from seeing his daughter. Walters, always the brilliant voice of reason, notes that there are two sides to every story. At home, we all nod in agreement: mmm, yes, two sides to every story. And we huddle in to hear Baldwin’s mea culpa, what he learned from this sorry event, what he plans to do next.

Somewhere in there, Baldwin drops a mini-bomb: He has asked NBC to release him from his “30 Rock” contract, since he wants to spend the next few years concentrating on a subject that, for obvious reasons, has become very important to him, that of parental alienation as a component, or a result, of divorce litigation. (He has a book on the subject, from St. Martin’s Press, coming out within the next few months.) “If I never acted again, I couldn’t care less,” Baldwin said on “The View.” He’s been in the game for a long time, and you need only scan his IMDb listing to recognize that the guy has been working, a lot, for about a quarter of a century. Who could blame this clearly intelligent and articulate guy for wanting to leave a profession he’s good at, when more people have an opinion about a voice mail message he left for his daughter than they do about his actual work?

Celebrity culture has always been with us, and it will never go away: In the old days, movie fans would snap up magazines like Photoplay to find out if Clark Gable and Rita Hayworth were nice people in real life, as beautiful inside as they were on the movie screen. We wanted their lives to be our illusion; if at all possible, real life was not allowed to intrude.

Now real life intrudes all the time. Can a guy who talks to his daughter the way Baldwin did be a good person in real life? We all have our own ideas about that, whether we voice them or not. And if Baldwin decides he doesn’t want to act anymore, who can blame him? He’s tired of it, he wants to do other things, he doesnb

But while I’m sorry that Baldwin said those hotheaded things to his daughter (and I’m sorry that his daughter will probably suffer more from the fallout than any other player here), I’m much sorrier to hear that he doesn’t want to act anymore. Sure, maybe I’d feel “better” about Baldwin if I could believe that he’s a perfect dad. But if I’m suffering through a crap movie — like “Running With Scissors,” or “Along Came Polly,” or “Ghosts of Mississippi,” to name three of many — and Alec Baldwin shows up, I don’t really care what kind of a dad he is. I’m just glad to see him. He’s doing his job, and I, as a moviegoer (or, in the case of “30 Rock,” TV viewer), am doing mine.

Recently, I was talking with a friend about what a terrific, and underappreciated, actor Bruce Willis is, about how he makes good movies even better and is able to elevate, at least temporarily, the truly horrible, stupid ones. She suggested that maybe his on-screen sensitivity and believability is his way of making up for being such an asshole in real life.

I’m sure I’d heard or read somewhere that Willis is kind of an asshole. (I know for sure that I disagree with his politics.) But so what? If an actor I liked were convicted of an ax murder, I’m sure I’d find it hard to look at his or her face. But a pissed-off message left on a preteen’s cellphone? I find it hard to care much, and as articulate and intelligent as Baldwin obviously is, I would rather not have to watch him on “The View,” apologizing, justifying and explaining.

When I go to the movies, I get exactly what I want from Alec Baldwin, as I do from Bruce Willis. I don’t need their apologies, justifications or explanations. I don’t have to be married to them. I don’t have to follow their rules about keeping my room clean or answering my cellphone or doing my homework. I’m selfish about my actors: I just want them to continue to do their jobs, because when they do their jobs well, it makes my job, as part of their audience, so much more pleasurable. I don’t know how much money Baldwin tends to make per picture, but as far as I’m concerned, he’s working cheap. If he wants to leave the profession, even temporarily, that’s his business. But it would make my business poorer.

: Stephanie Zacharek is a senior writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment. More Stephanie Zacharek

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What do Charlie Sheen and Rand Paul have in common?

The admiration of radio host, 9/11 Truther and all-American nut-job Alex Jones

By Alex Pareene

Alex Jones, Rand Paul, Charlie Sheen

Topics:Charlie Sheen, War Room, 2010 Elections, 9/11, Rand Paul, The View

I’m not sure how many witnesses to Charlie Sheen’s current dramatic extended flameout remember this fact, but in 2009, Sheen made headlines for a bizarre piece he wrote in which he imagined interrogating President Obama about 9/11 conspiracy theories. The fantasy dialogue was accompanied by this video:

All of this was published at PrisonPlanet.com, one of the many websites founded and run by talk show host Alex Jones, along with his various acolytes. It was on Jones’ show, last week, that Sheen began his recent media blitz and probably ended his profitable sitcom. Anyone familiar with the long, strange career of Jones probably enjoyed his train-wreck appearance on “The View” Monday:

The fact that the executive producer of “Loose Change: Final Cut” — a man who made his name in Texas radio in the 1990s by campaigning for the construction of a new Branch Davidian church as a memorial to the cult members “murdered” by Janet Reno — was a guest on ABC’s daytime talk hour for ladies is a sign that 2011 ought to be about as weird as any year in our nation’s truly weird history.

9/11 Trutherism barely scratches the surface of the Alex Jones mythology, which encompasses almost every modern major conspiracy theory of the American left and right. He describes himself as a paleoconservative or a libertarian, rails against fiat currency and the Federal Reserve, opposes the Patriot Act and globalization, posits that the Bilderberg Group is in the process of establishing a New World Order, claims Michelle Malkin is softening up the populace for FEMA camps, and argues that carbon taxes will be used to establish a World Government. Sheen and Jones go way back (which means, yes, Sheen’s been nuts for a long time).

Jones is, first and foremost, a character. Which is not to say that he’s insincere. I’m sure he believes that our secret rulers are hashing out the details of the sovereignty-undermining NAFTA Superhighway at the Bohemian Grove. It’s simply to say that there’s a reason why Richard Linklater had Jones shouting his mad prophecies through megaphones in both “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly.” The guy is a uniquely American type.

He’s also about as fringe a character as exists in our politics, excepting maybe overt white supremacists. Glenn Beck won’t endorse Trutherism. Michele Bachmann either backed out of appearing on his show or never agreed to do it in the first place.

But here’s then-candidate and current Sen. Rand Paul making one of his multiple appearances on “The Alex Jones Show” in 2009. “You’re a weapon we need to use against the New World Order,” Jones tells Paul:

Here’s another appearance from later that year:

The Ron Paul coalition was basically an uneasy alliance between serious libertarians and fringe Internet weirdos in thrall to conspiratorial explanations for all that ails the country. The weirdos tended to out-organize and outnumber the serious people, which is why it raised few eyebrows when the doctor’s son and campaign surrogate called into the Jones show. But with the GOP establishment halfheartedly embracing Paul’s message and wholeheartedly embracing his branding, and with Paul the Younger an actual United States senator, I can’t imagine anyone’s too happy to see national media attention lavished on Jones.

But the Tea Party connection to this entire Charlie Sheen circus is too entertaining to ignore.

: Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene

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The Sharron Angle ad that drove Joy Behar crazy

Both women are using entertainment values to manipulate their audiences, and we deserve better

By Adam Hanft

A still from the Sharron Angle campaign spot that prompted an angry response from Joy Behar

Topics:2010 Elections, Sharron Angle, War Room, Advertising, Harry Reid, The View

Adam Hanft dissects and deconstructs political advertising at Spin Season, where this originally appeared.

Here’s the commercial that, after appearing in a break on “The View,” inspired Joy Behar to look at the camera, call Sharron Angle a “bitch” and proclaim her Dantesque future by saying that she is “going to hell, this bitch.”

The spot opens with Sharron sitting peacefully with a mug of coffee — it’s a benign suburban tableau, or even a talk-show moment — and she tells us that she approved the message that brought such rancor to Joy. Then the Mama Grizzly attack begins: a series of images that portray an Arizona under siege. A predictably ominous announcer paints a picture of “Waves of illegal aliens streaming across our border, joining violent gangs … forcing families to live in fear.”

The images are grainy, black-and-white shots of streaming Mexicans; there’s even a clever quick cut to a video monitor that’s capturing images of the illegals. It feels like real time.

The announcer continues: “And what’s Harry Reid doing about it? Voting to give illegal aliens Social Security benefits, tax breaks and college tuition … even siding with Obama and the president of Mexico to block Arizona’s tough new immigration law.”

I believe that what Joy found most offensive about this ad — and what many others have also spoken out against, including Elisabeth Hasselbeck — is the iconography as opposed to the words. The ad is a visual anthology of every stereotype of Mexican youth — head-scarf-wearing, gang-joining, border-busting, mug-shot-glaring, tattoo-flaunting ruffians. Contrast this with the shots of innocent young white kids in school, as the announcer notes that Reid voted against making English our national language twice. Officer, officer, come quick; they’re stealing our language from us!!

The spot closes with a pronouncement that makes Harry Reid not just complicit in these waves of terror, but in favor of them: “Harry Reid. It’s clear whose side he’s on. And it’s not yours.”

The spot is so over-the-top that it crashes into parody. Angle has been bashing Reid on his immigration policies from the beginning, but I don’t think that’s driving her slim lead over Reid in the polls; the resentment against “Leader Reid,” as Obama calls him, is deeper than that, although Rasmussen calls the race a “toss-up.” I think the public has pretty much made up its mind on immigration, and a spot like this might actually win Reid some sympathy because it’s such a wicked assault, and does clearly cross the line into ethnic politics. If the spot dooms Angle to hell, it would be an ironic fate; better to be doomed to a life of eternal pain for something sinfully effective, or sexy and pleasurable.

In her rant, Behar called this a “Hitler Youth commercial” and that Angle is a “moron on top of being evil.” Of course, Behar is an entertainer, so she’s permitted — indeed encouraged — to use invective, to make invidious comparisons, to do whatever she has to do to get ratings and support her brand.

But the truth of the matter is that Sharron Angle is an entertainer as well — and the “Wave” commercial is her entertainment product. It’s designed for effect, like Behar’s assault. And like Behar, she uses shock to attract and connect with her audience, and trots out stereotypes to attack: grimy, thieving Mexicans vs. neat rows of obedient Hitler Youth. So both Behar and Angle are using entertainment values to manipulate their audiences, and we deserve better no matter who’s sitting in front of the coffee cup.

: Adam Hanft writes and comments frequently on politics and culture for The Daily Beast, Fast Company, Huffington Post, CNN, Fox News, Politics Daily, the Barnes & Noble Review, and elsewhere. He is founder of Hanft Projects, a strategic and brand consultancy. More Adam Hanft

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Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg fail with Bill O’Reilly

I wish they'd beaten the Fox bully with the truth, rather than walking off their own set

By Joan Walsh

Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar

Topics:The View, Bill O'Reilly, Park51

After watching the story explode on Twitter and Facebook, I was really looking forward to seeing Bill O’Reilly get owned by Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg on “The View” Thursday morning. I despise O’Reilly and his hour of bullying, “The O’Reilly Factor,” while “The View” is my favorite talkfest on television. Besides, having lived to talk about my own showdown with O’Reilly – where he ordered me to “Stop talking!” and told me I have blood on my hands – I know what it’s like to want to stalk off the set. I expected to think Behar and Goldberg humiliated O’Reilly by refusing to share their set with him, and I wanted to see that. I admit it, when it comes to O’Reilly, I can be a little bit petty and ungracious.

But sadly, I didn’t see that on “The View.” I saw O’Reilly flacking his latest vanity book project, “Pinheads and Patriots,” with his typical fact-lite, faux-macho “common sense,” about why building the Park51 Islamic Center near Ground Zero is “inappropriate” (what a schoolmarmish Bill-O word) – and why President Obama “separated himself from the voters” by affirming the site owners’ right to build there. It started off OK: Goldberg refuted O’Reilly’s argument by pointing to the 70 Muslim families who lost loved ones on 9/11 (The New York Times counted 60 Muslim 9/11 victims). When O’Reilly insisted that 70 percent of Americans don’t want to see the Islamic Center built on the site, Behar asked him where he got his numbers. (In fact, a CBS News poll found that 71 percent of those asked thought the choice of site was “inappropriate.”) Goldberg continued to ask O’Reilly, why, public opinion aside, Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to worship where they want, given their constitutional right to do so, and O’Reilly lost it, declaring, “Because Muslims killed us on 9/11!” Of course, that’s a lie: Islamic terrorists killed Americans, including Muslims, on 9/11, and I expected Behar and Goldberg to refute it. Goldberg started to, saying “What bullshit!” insisting “terrorists” were to blame for 9/11, and asking O’Reilly what religion was Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (he was raised Irish Catholic, like me and O’Reilly).

But then Behar got up and said, “I don’t want to sit here, I’m outraged,” walked away, and Goldberg followed her, leaving an irritated Barbara Walters and conservative Elizabeth Hasselback to try to refute O’Reilly’s point. (Hasselback managed to blame Obama, insisting that because he retired the term “War on Terror,” now Americans have to say Muslims, not terrorists, killed us on 9/11. Got it?) O’Reilly wound up offering the standard weasel’s apology: “If anyone felt I was demeaning all Muslims, I apologize.”

It was disappointing to see Behar and Goldberg leave the stage. It’s not that they weren’t provoked; O’Reilly condescended to Behar, in particular. When she objected to O’Reilly’s opposition to the center, declaring “This is America,” the Fox bully told her, “Hold it, hold it, listen to me, because you’ll learn.” (I might have understood Behar walking off at that moment more than I did later.) And I’m not defending O’Reilly here; God knows he’s treated many liberal guests with contempt, belittling them, even cutting their mics. Maybe there was a behind the scenes conflict over hosting O’Reilly on “The View” to begin with, and he came on the show over Behar and Goldberg’s objection. But once he was on the set, they should have taken him down verbally, not walked away.

There was so much Behar and Goldberg could have said. They might have reminded O’Reilly that his own ancestors faced the same kind of bigotry Muslims do today, when they first tried to build churches in New York. I made this point in August, recalling the way the Know-Nothing party rioted and rampaged against Catholicism, burning down Catholic churches, schools and convents, from Massachusetts to Kentucky. Only last week, the New York Times told the story of Father Kevin Madigan, pastor of St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Manhattan, who realized while researching his church’s history that it had tragic parallels with the plight of the Park51 center. In the case of St. Peter’s, Protestants who thought Catholics (especially the Irish) were idol-worshipping heathens loyal to a foreign despot, the Pope, protested the building of the first Catholic church in what was then the heart of Manhattan. The Catholics caved, and built their church outside city limits. But Protestants still objected. On Christmas Eve 1806, they surrounded the church to protest that holiday of “popish superstition” (yes, America, we brought you Christmas! And a Jew, Irving Berlin, wrote some of your favorite Christmas songs!) A riot erupted, dozens were injured and a policeman was killed. The admirable Father Madigan has been telling that story in letters to his parishioners and in sermons, but modern day Know Nothings like Bill O’Reilly apparently gotten the message.

Here’s the Times story, and here’s a wonderful essay about St. Peter’s and the Park 51 Center by Father Tom Joyce from the Web site U.S. Catholics. It sickens me to see guys like O’Reilly (and my MSNBC debate partner Pat Buchanan) claim they speak for Irish American little guys, when they’re wealthy pundits who have become mouthpieces for corporate America. I wish he’d been confronted with his own religious bigotry more effectively.

There were so many ways to own Bill O’Reilly in that debate. I wish Behar and Goldberg had hit him with passionate counter-argument, not mute outrage. I thought I’d be thrilled to see them rebuke O’Reilly by walking off. Instead I was sad to see them stop talking, since as I learned personally, that’s what O’Reilly wants all liberal women to do.

: Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More Joan Walsh

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Will “GMA” destroy Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s appeal?

The much-hated "View" co-host makes a sober morning show debut. Where's the fun in that?

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Elisabeth Hasselbeck on "Good Morning America."

Topics:The View, Television

On Monday morning, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the loosest cannon on that crew of loose cannons known as “The View,” made her debut as a correspondent for “Good Morning America.” At last, television news has found someone to give a voice to pretty, conservative blondes.

It’s somehow fitting that Hasselbeck got her first taste of television fame as a contestant on “Survivor.” The scrappy, “I’m not here to make friends” ethos has served her well as a co-host on “The View,” where she has scorched the earth with her opinions on “scum” like Kathy Griffin, declared that women get abortions for “superficial” reasons and emerged as the last lady standing in the notorious Crazy-Off over Iraq against Rosie O’Donnell.

For a show that relies on lively disagreement and random acts of tactlessness for its allure, Hasselbeck has been quite the golden goose of feisty, oh-no-she-didn’t just say “Barack Obama is going to take our hard earned money and spread it all around” moments. And when the going gets tough, Hasselbeck gets crying. Hasselbeck has uncorked the waterworks during a conversation with Whoopi Goldberg over racial epithets. Hasselbeck has wept over her own clumsy critique of ESPN’s Erin Andrews’ apparently stalker-attracting “Dancing With the Stars” ensembles. If there is one vibe that she seems to consistently give on a daily basis, it’s that she just might lose it right now.

But can a woman like that, a woman whose main function on television seems to be her ability to rant about how older women turn gay because they can’t find a man really cut it as a journalist, as a “parenting and family issues” correspondent? Can a woman whose tenacity and willingness to debate Proposition 8 far outshines her ability to understand it hope to fit in with the weather reports and entertaining tips and global disasters of an ensemble that doesn’t spend the morning yelling at each other? Hasselbeck, after all, has neither the cool, rational demeanor of a Diane Sawyer nor the neighborly warmth of a Katie Couric. Instead, she possesses the crazy eyes and non sequiturs of a Kathy Lee Gifford.

For her softball first segment, Hasselbeck blew the lid off teenage tattoos — and how the vaguely defined “more and more parents” are letting their kids get them. It was a perfectly fine non-story story to launch her new role — vaguely sexy and controversial but with no stem cells, N-words or weird notions about war involved. That was the problem: The only reason you would ever watch Hasselbeck — the possibility she might go ape at any moment — was drained from her “GMA” report, replaced instead with the stunning news that rub-on tattoos are a temporary alternative to needles and blood.

With her conservative, Palin-stumping, unborn baby-loving shtick considerably toned down for the George Stephanopoulos crowd, the question remains whether Hasselbeck will be as big a hit on “GMA” as she is on her regular perch of “The View.” Will audiences buy her as both the 8 a.m. concerned mom reporter and the 11 a.m. big bag of Whoopi-baiting bananas? Only time will tell. But Hasselbeck, like Miley Cyrus, can’t entirely be tamed. And as she flaunted her own temporary tattoos for Stephanopoulos, one couldn’t help hoping maybe he’d say something to set her off. Because a Hasselbeck who isn’t on the hair trigger isn’t much of a Hasselbeck at all.

: Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams

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This week in crazy: Michaele Salahi

The White House party crasher and "Real Housewife" claims Whoopi Goldberg hit her. And the lies just keep coming!

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Topics:This Week in Crazy, The Real Housewives, The Real Housewives of DC, The View

When Bravo’s “Real Housewives of D.C.” added Michaele Salahi, a woman whose sole claim to fame is crashing — sorry, allegedly crashing — a White House party, we knew it wouldn’t take long before she distinguished herself as television’s newest nutcase.

Sure enough, when Salahi appeared on “The View” this week with the other Housewives, things quickly devolved into a bickering fest — until Whoopi Goldberg emerged from backstage, nudged her and told her, “Excuse me, could you get back to the White House, please?”

That was motivation enough for Salahi, who promptly decided Whoopi had hit her.

Now, whipping up a catfight might play with the Housewives, but your mouth better not start writing checks to former Week in Crazy winner Goldberg unless your ears are ready to cash them. Backstage, Goldberg, by her own admission, had some “choice words” for Salahi.

The old “She hit me!” gambit, pioneered by little sisters in the back seat on long car trips, is a familiar Salahi ploy — Washington attorney Cindy Revesman told MSNBC this week that while representing her client in a civil suit against Salahi’s husband Tareq, an accidental touch in a confined room spurred Salahi to yell, “Don’t hit me!” and file a complaint. (The charge was quickly dropped, and the case was settled in favor of Revesman’s client.)

After the blowup, Salahi, who says Goldberg’s “berating” left her in tears, posted on Facebook she would “address on Thursday Morning LIVE on National TV the outrageous abuse and exchange that took place on the ABC Show the View and a [sic] audio & video file from Whoopi Goldberg verbal attack to Michaele. Standby for details …”

Yet instead of addressing the outrageous abuse, Thursday came and went, and Salahi instead opted to delete the post. She did, however, have her lawyer send a testy message that Elisabeth Hasselbeck conveyed on the air, stating she and her husband did not crash the party and have not been charged with any crime. She left out, however, the part about being under grand jury investigation, and how the couple pleaded the Fifth when questioned by Homeland Security.

Despite insisting she was totally supposed to be at that party, Salahi remains nevertheless quite content to capitalize on her reputation as a gatecrasher — going so far as to tout on her website the “world wide attention” her stunt garnered — and to include a clip of an “SNL” parody of the incident.

She’s also been aggressively hyping “investigative journalist Diane Dimond’s Cirque du Salahi” book, which promises to reveal “the shocking true inside story!” while conspicuously not mentioning that the shocking true story is being distributed via Amazon’s self-publishing arm, CreateSpace.

Meanwhile Salahi, who co-founded the frequently under investigation business entity America’s Polo Cup, has been making herself a standout on her new show, where the 44-year-old refers to herself as a “girl lobbyist.”

So who is Michaele Salahi, anyway? While her Bravo bio calls her a D.C. native, she recently told Marie Claire she grew up in Florida. As for her modeling career, she claims to have been “an Absolut Vodka model,” which appears to have involved wearing a shirt with an elaborate logo. Most of her life prior to definitely being invited to the White House remains shrouded in mysteries and contradictions. Her 2002 wedding announcement lists her as a graduate of Kings College, though a college spokesman has denied she did. The announcement further describes “a professional model who has appeared in VOGUE Magazine, InStyle, Modern Bride, Town & Country, Harpers Bazaar, Saks Fifth Avenue, BET TV, MTV, Escada, Chanel, Ralph Lauren/Polo and other print & television” — quite an impressive litany of credentials to somehow have disappeared from her current C.V. And last September, she popped up at a Washington Redskins halftime show honoring its cheerleading alumni — and wearing a shirt identifying herself as one — despite never having been on its cheer team. Indeed, she seems to have sprung, fully formed in long blond tresses and red sari, that night in November. As she says on “Real Housewives,” “I like to make an entrance.” Oh, Michaele, the only woman who could make Whoopi Goldberg look stone cold sane, at least you’re telling the truth about something.

: Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams