I feel like Kanye West and Alec Baldwin are celebrity best friends. They seem to have a similar attitude when it comes to attention: “Take my picture and I’ll freak but please for the love of God take my picture.”
While Kanye complains about fame and has a baby with a famewhore, Alec has become the most bait-able paparazzi target since Sean Penn. Just last week he had a freakout while out with wife Hilaria (no baby in sight), throwing a hissy fit and someone up on the hood of a car, but over what? With Alec there is always perceived insult or threat or act of aggression. He claims over and over that he’s simply reacting to being harassed.
And while he’s raging at the indignity of being photographed on a busy New York sidewalk, he’s also, you know, posing for baby photos for PEOPLE Magazine. And making a video of the photoshoot for Extra. Baldwin’s wife, Hilaria, is an Extra lifestyle correspondent, so it makes sense they would get the first official on-camera look (much like they confirmed the pregnancy, including a detailed account of her taking a pregnancy test).
Why no tears (from her) and fisticuffs (from him) for the indignity of having a photographer in your home? Because they called him, that’s why.
It’s a common narrative with celebs: The photographer on the street is scum, but the photographer who is in my home taking pictures of babies or gold vanities is a professional. It's not being photographed they object to per se, it's being photographed when they don't want to be. It's cherry-picking for positive coverage, plain and simple.
And Alec is old school, so he’d never go the lowbrow US Weekly route. No, he’s going to allow the most celebrity (and PR) friendly publication shoot him and his very new daughter, along with Hilaria, who looks like she’s trying to channel Jackie O.
These photos were released on September 4 and the baby was born August 23 – that’s less than 2 weeks to print. Why so fast? I’m sure he’ll say it’s to devalue the candid shots. I don’t necessarily believe in the “devalue” argument unless it’s a truly big get (and it can be done other ways, like social media), but even if this theory is correct and Carmen’s photos are devalued, it doesn’t stop the attraction to the family because it’s him they are after. There’s still a lot of value in Alec Baldwintantrum photos and the only way that will change is if he calms the f-ck down in front of photographers. I think this is irony.
