Conservatives Accidentally Siding With the Villain Again Facebook

Hamptons International Film Festival Chairman Alec Baldwin attends the premiere of National Geographic Documentary Films' "The First Wave" at the Hamptons International Picture show Festival on October. vii, 2021, in East Hampton, New York.

Mark Sagliocco, Getty Images for National Geographic via TNS

He'southward, admittedly, a fairly unsympathetic effigy.

Alec Baldwin, the actor, short-fourth dimension talk show host, Donald Trump impersonator and longtime villain of the correct, has said and done some pretty lamentable things over the past few decades. He's been sued for assault in several attacks on paparazzi. He was arrested for punching a man in the face up during a parking spot dispute. He'due south used homophobic slurs, for which he was reportedly fired by MSNBC. And even left a scathing voicemail for his then-eleven-year-old daughter, in which he chosen her a "rude, thoughtless picayune pig."

His anger issues are well-documented, every bit is his politics. He alone is to blame for his reputation and public prototype.

He is not to arraign, withal, for a tragic and horrific accidental shooting on the fix of a picture he was working on.

That's according to witnesses and court documents that describe the incident, in which cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed and director Joel Souza was injured. (Authorities say they haven't ruled out charges, only information technology seems highly unlikely that Baldwin has any true culpability hither.)

Production has been halted, Baldwin is cooperating fully, and news of ongoing prophylactic complaints and other on-set shooting accidents has opened a startling new conversation about gun safety on film sets. Information technology's an important chat — as Trevor Noah of "The Daily Testify" pointed out, "Hollywood movies love using imitation versions of real things for everything, except guns."

But for some on the right, Baldwin's tragic accident is an opportunity — a grotesque kind of comeuppance for being, well, a jerk, and more to the point, a jerk who openly supports more gun control. Somehow, to them, it'due south just as well delicious to resist driving home the point that someone who wants to restrict other people's access to firearms has accidentally killed someone with a prop gun. Evidently, they recall this is ironic.

Don Trump Jr. was quick to mock — and profit off of — the tragedy, posting pro-gun memes and even selling a T-shirt on his website that reads "guns don't kill people, Alec Baldwin kills people."

Other right-wing personalities, from Candace Owens to Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, piled on, using the opportunity to presumably rile up and delight their fans on Twitter — Owens said the incident was "poetic justice" — all while Hutchins' family prepared to bury her.

Baldwin's daughter Ireland took to Instagram to pointlessly, I'm sure, remind Owens, "A woman's life was lost. Your tweets, lack of information, and ignorance are hurting people."

To parse the so-chosen "politics" of the right fly's morbid schadenfreude over an innocent woman's accidental decease is an practise in futility and frustration.

Of course, Baldwin'due south gun control stance isn't weakened only affirmed past this incident, in which real guns and existent ammunition were inappropriately handled by the armorers and prop masters who should have been responsible for them.

Responsible gun owners don't delight in accidental shootings; we lament them.

No thing how much one dislikes Alec Baldwin for his pugnacity or his politics, it's hard not to experience for him and his family in this difficult fourth dimension. He's responsible for accidentally killing a colleague, a wife, a mother to a 9-year-one-time son. Who could live with that kind of guilt?

So over again, there's picayune compassion left in conservatism, at to the lowest degree the kind Ronald Reagan and George Westward. Bush liked to espouse. To many on the right, there's i and only one objective these days: to own the libs, to grind them into the dust, fifty-fifty if that means hollowing out your own moral lawmaking in the process. That was evidenced in the giddy jig the movement's electric current leader performed on Colin Powell's grave just final week. Former President Donald Trump blasted the state of war hero every bit a "RINO," and sociopathically ended his barbarous bluster by shrugging, "Just anyway, may he residue in peace!"

Earlier this year, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke of a past sexual assault and hiding during the Capitol insurrection, wondering if she'd live to be a female parent one 24-hour interval, right-wing basics called her a liar, and accused her of needing "coddling."

Sure, the left has its ain cruelty toward Republicans, simply not much that approaches quite this level of nastiness, reveling in other people'southward pain.

Apparently there are no bodily people in politics anymore, simply avatars. And unfortunately for Baldwin, he isn't a victim in this tragedy, only simply an avatar — one that deserves, apparently, to be kicked when he's down. Why? Because, once again, to steal Adam Serwer's perfect summary of the Trump approach to politics, the cruelty is the betoken.

Southward.Eastward. Cupp is the host of "S.Due east. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.

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Source: https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2021/10/27/22749339/conservatives-delighting-in-alec-baldwins-pain-show-how-far-weve-fallen-prop-gun-halyna-hutchins

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