Alex Baldwin rants to New York Magazine about his awful year. His essay is a “wow.” Baldwin clearly has an enormous ego and a mean streak, but he makes some interesting points about modern media and its superficiality. His behind-the-scenes discussion of the bored and jaded news producers and theater directors is probably accurate.

Baldwin has benefited from the superficiality of the modern media. Why else did he briefly get a talk show on MSNBC? There are many, many people who know a great deal more about politics than he does, but they weren’t offered a time slot. He has benefitted handsomely from a celebrity culture that gave him a soap box to talk about politics and TV shows and great wealth. It takes an enormous ego to not recognize that he’s the beneficiary of everything that he hates.