No, Alec Baldwin’s pregnant wife Hilaria was not tweeting during James Gandolfini’s funeral, as the Daily Mail incorrectly reported yesterday. (What the tabloid calls a “time stamp bug” was actually an inability to differentiate between time zones.) But yes, Baldwin really did have an online meltdown, referring to the sloppy reporter George Stark as a “toxic little queen” and threatening violence against him. The actor managed to calm down long enough to clarify his remarks to Gothamist this afternoon, claiming “a queen to me has a different meaning.”
According to Baldwin, “It’s somebody who’s just above. It doesn’t have any necessarily sexual connotations. To me a queen … I know women that act queeny, I know men that are straight that act queeny, and I know gay men that act queeny. It doesn’t have to be a definite sexual connotation, or a homophobic connotation.” He did not account for the tweet that said, “If [sic] put my foot up your fucking ass, George Start, but I’m sure you’d dig it too much.”
Straight out of the celebrity apology handbook, Baldwin added, “if what I said offended everybody, that obviously wasn’t my intention. I’m not interested in offending anyone. If homosexuality was an issue for me, I would have moved out of New York years ago.”
This time, he claimed, he’s quitting Twitter for good. But we’ve heard that one before.
