How fortunate would we be if Alec Baldwin really did just act and not appear in public otherwise, as he promised in an article in New York magazine? He’s so gifted at acting and such a dipshit at everything else in life that it would be the best situation all around. We wouldn’t have to listen to his barking ego anymore, and he could spend more time with his wife. But Governor Baldwin will be back. He needs us because he needs someone to hate besides himself.

Two amusing things from the article:

• In one passage, Baldwin reveals that during the run-up to Orphans’ opening night, he told the play’s director, Dan Sullivan, that he would have to choose between him and Shia LaBeouf. No third, more-appetizing option, like drinking a mixture of Clorox and blood, was offered.

• I do, however, salute Baldwin for his cruel one-liner about Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of Morning Joe, the unceasingly insipid MSNBC wake-up program which features a chucklehead for a host and a parade of plagiarizers, mediocrities and well-compensated hacks for guests. Mika, an opponent of twerking, seems to have been chosen to sit beside Scarborough so that her befuddlement would make him appear adequate, the way a hemophiliac makes someone with a broken foot seem fortunate. From Baldwin:

“Morning Joe was boring. Scarborough is neither eloquent nor funny. And merely cranky doesn’t always work well in the morning. Mika B. is the Margaret Dumont of cable news.”