Perspective, Please!

A lot has been made over the last couple days about Alec Baldwin's rant on his daughter's voice mail. I certainly won't defend Baldwin, but who of us has not said something stupid to our children in the heat of the moment. I remember wrestling with my three-year-old and a Lima bean.

What gets me is that the media is so bent out of shape about this. But, back in 1998, when Bill Clinton was in the middle of impeachment, Alec Baldwin went on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and advocated the murder of US Congressman Henry Hyde who was leading the impeachment charge. Not one word was said about that. Here is the quote from Baldwin:

"They voted on one article of impeachment already. And I come back from Africa to stained dresses and cigars and this and impeachment. I am thinking to myself, in other countries they are laughing at us 24 hours a day and I’m thinking to myself, if we were in other countries, we would all right now, all of us together, [starts to shout] all of us together would go down to Washington and we would stone Henry Hyde to death! We would stone him to death! [crowd cheers] Wait! Shut up! Shut up! No shut up! I’m not finished. We would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families. [stands up, yelling] What is happening in this country? What is happening? UGHHH!" (source: http://www.celiberal.com/showCeliberal.php?id=1, accessed 4/21/07.)

He gets a free ride for saying "we would stone Henry Hyde to death...kill their wives and their children," but get blasted for calling his girl a "pig."

This isn't about whether Alec Baldwin is right or wrong. (I think he was wrong on both counts.) It is about the media's response.