According to reports from Mediaite, MSNBC is giving actor Alec Baldwin his own primetime show. Baldwin, an outspoken liberal, has a chummy history with the network, most notably as one of the stars of the sitcom 30 Rock and as a frequent host on Saturday Night Live. The show will reportedly air on Friday nights at 10 p.m.
Along with making his political views widely known, Baldwin is no stranger to the occasional profanity-laced personal attack, threat, or slur. Here are some of his most memorable moments.
1. “Rude, thoughtless little pig” — In 1998, Baldwin berated his eleven-year-old daughter, Ireland, for not answering his phone call. “You are a rude, thoughtless little pig,” he said in a voicemail, “You don’t have the brains or the decency as a human being.” Baldwin went on to lambaste his ex-wife and Ireland’s mother actress Kim Basinger as “a thoughtless pain in the ass.”
2. “Stone Henry Hyde to death” — That same year, in the midst of Clinton’s impeachment proceeding, Baldwin told Conan O’Brien’s audience that in other countries, “we would stone [Republican congressman] Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families.” Baldwin became very animated in his rant, motioning to the crowd to get excited. Hyde served as chief prosecutor during the Clinton trial and argued that Congress had a “civic duty” to impeach the president for perjury.
3. Words with Friends — Baldwin was tossed off an American Airlines flight in 2011 for refusing to turn off his cell phone prior to the plane’s takeoff; he was reportedly playing the Scrabble-like game Words with Friends on his phone. Baldwin became angry with flight attendants, forcing the plane to go back to the gate. One passenger tweeted “terrible that everyone had to wait” to takeoff because of Baldwin. His spokesman’s explanation? “He loves ‘Words with Friends’ so much that he was willing to leave a plane for it.”
4. “Coon, a drug dealer” — In February of this year, Baldwin had a confrontation with a female reporter and a black photographer. When reporter Tara Palmeri approached Baldwin with a question, he grabbed her by the arm and threatened, “I want you to choke to death.” Baldwin then turned to the photographer, G. N. Miller, and called him a “coon, a drug dealer.” When later informed that Miller was a former NYPD detective, Baldwin tweeted in disbelief that Miller “claims he’s ex NYPD!! That can’t be!!! Ex NYPD don’t become crackhead, ex jailhouse paparazzi!”
5. “Toxic little queen” — In June, Baldwin took to Twitter to express his outrage at a reporter who accused his wife of tweeting during the funeral of James Gandolfini. Baldwin called the Daily Mail’s George Stevens a “toxic little queen” and said that he was going to “straighten out this f***ing little b****.” Baldwin quickly deleted the tweets and his account.
And now they want to give him his own show.