As a celebrity, it’s important to keep your name in the headlines.  But would you keep reminding everyone that you exist by publicly reliving the day you called your daughter a “rude little pig?”  Apparently, if your name is Alec Baldwin, the answer is “Yes.”

In the July/August issue of Playboy, Baldwin admits in an interview that he seriously contemplated suicide when the voicemail of him berating his daughter went public.   ”I spoke to a lot of professionals, who helped me … If I committed suicide, [Kim Basinger's side] would have considered that a victory. Destroying me was their avowed goal.”

After receiving some counseling, Alec implemented his plan of media response by appearing on The View.  “Whoopi Goldberg is a friend. I called her and said, ‘Do you think I can get a fair shake?’ Because when you talk about family law and parental alienation, there is this unfortunate gender-based dynamic. Could I walk into a show with a strong female audience? Would they understand my point of view? I trusted Whoopi and Barbara Walters. Whoopi is an impeccably decent person, and I am grateful she gave me a forum.”

He also didn’t have kind words for Harvey Levin, the owner of TMZ who originally released the tapes, calling him “a human tumor, a graceless character who lives in that weird netherworld.”
or for the Today Show which airs on his own 30 Rock network.

“I’m on an NBC show, and Today was considered vital.  But when that voicemail tape thing happened, Matt Lauer interviewed [Harvey] Levin before he even called me. Lauer put Levin on Today, and they never phoned me. When it’s in their interest to reach me, they know how. I saw that and said, ‘My relationship with the Today show is over.’ I’ll never do Today again, ever. Life’s too short.”

Alec Baldwin’s mouth gets him in a lot of trouble.  No, he didn’t verbally abuse his rude, thoughtless little pig of a daughter this time.  However, he did offend a Philippine Senator.

It all started when Alec appeared on The Late Show With David Letterman.  When asked if he’d like to have more children he gave an offhand reply in which he indicated that he’d like to find a Filipino mail-order bride.

That comment incensed Senator Ramon Revilla who said Baldwin’s joke was “insensitive and uncalled for.”  Though I can understand the dude being offended, and feeling that his culture was offended, he got a little crazy with the rage.  Using a regional idiom that indicated that the senator would personally beat Baldwin, Revilla said “Let him try to come here in the Philippines and he’ll see mayhem.”

Today on Huffington Post, Alec posted a mea culpa which will hopefully protect him from cane-wielding senators.

I’d like to offer an apology and a clarification to remarks I made recently.

While on the David Letterman program, I joked that I might need a “mail-order bride” to achieve the goal of having more children in my life. I believe that most people understood that this was a joke and took it as such. (A dated reference, no doubt, and another sign of my advancing age.) However, I do apologize to anyone who took offense. The comments of some Philippine government officials come as no surprise to me, either. Even the one by a former action film star-turned-Senator who beckoned me to come to the Philippines so he could “beat” me over my comment.

Such anger and frustration about the issue of sex trafficking is understandable. The Philippines has suffered significant problems with the issue of sex trafficking and I would like to turn your attention to the work of an organization called Love146 that my brother Stephen educated me about. Visit their website at www.love146.org and learn of the important work that is being done, in various regions of the world, by Rob Morris and his co-founders and staff.

I had met with Rob in New York, some months before the Letterman appearance, in the hopes of helping him raise money for this group. Again, I apologize for the perceived insensitivity of that remark and ask you to visit the Love146 site.

You can read his whole blog here as this excerpt is part of a larger apology.  Turns out Baldwin ticked off the entire U.S. automaker industry as well.  But that’s another story.

Nothing makes up for a childhood full of irate alcoholism like a trip to the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

At least, that was probably what Alec Baldwin was thinking when he took his daughter, Ireland, to the awards on Sunday night. Alec famously railed against his pre-teen daughter (with Kim Basinger) in a voicemail rant that leaked onto the Internet last year.

Alec took home the SAG award for outstanding male actor in a comedy series, which means his fellow actors have forgiven him, but when Ireland grows up and looks at these pictures, I don’t think she’ll be able to forgive her stylist for not making her wear Spanx with that outfit. A 12-year-old should not look like she has a baby bump, unless her last name is Spears. BAD DRESS, people.

In other SAG news, Heath Ledger took home best supporting, Meryl Streep beat out Angelina, Anne and Kate for best actress (but Kate took home best supporting), Hugh Laurie won for House, Sean Penn for Milk, Tina Fey for 30 Rock, and Slumdog Millionaire won everything else. No, seriously, the full results are here.

Saturday Night Live is a comedy show. It’s not Meet the Press. It doesn’t “ask the tough questions” or “set the agenda.” It attempts, with varying degrees of success, to make people laugh. That’s it. Whether they skewer and savage people in order to do so, they don’t care. When you come on a show like that, you are prepared in advance to get worked over. Palin knew that. Palin came on to be a good sport. And she was. She was polite, gracious. (More so than some of the famous actors who come through there, believe me.)

However, I assume that, like Meet the Press, SNL feels an obligation to offer their special forum to any and all public figures and officials who are current. Headline making. And in SNL’s case, would make for a hit show. Several people decried SNL for giving her a spot on the show. You’re kidding, right? The woman is the Vice Presidential nominee of one of the two major parties in this country. Don’t put her on SNL? With all of her exposure and the Tina Fey performance? What reality are you in?

If you think an appearance on Saturday Night Live would sway voters and actually affect the outcome of the election, you may have more contempt for the electorate of this country than the Republican National Committee does. And that’s a lot of contempt.

Alec Baldwin, writing for the Huffington Post, about Palin’s appearance on SNL this past weekend.

Honestly, people, why are you taking this Palin-on-SNL-thing so seriously? Alec Baldwin didn’t even take it seriously enough to memorize both his lines.

So Alec Baldwin’s got this new tell-all coming out, titled A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce and a source who’s read an advance copy says that Alec talks in detail about contemplating suicide after his cruel voicemail to his 11-year-old daughter leaked to the press.

“He writes about how he was serious about suicide. He definitely put a lot of thought into the different ways he could accomplish it,” says the source. Eventually, Alec writes that he decided to seek treatment, because he was no good to his daughter or anyone else in his depressed, suicidal state.

Ugh, I don’t know how I feel about like 8000 celebrities doing interviews or writing books about how at one point in their lives they contemplated suicide. Like, is it a positive thing because it gives hope to people who are currently very depressed that things do improve? Or is it shameless exploitation of a very real issue that does claim lives? I mean, for every celebrity who rants to People magazine about how they were once suicidal, like, tens of thousands of people actually do kill themselves, leaving loved ones in devastation. Do these sort of admissions from celebrities help things? Hurt things? Have no impact whatsoever?

What do you guys think?

Father of the Year Alec Baldwin poses with his girlfriend, Nicole Seidel, at a charity bowling event in NYC.

Hopefully he’s infertile!

Honestly this is a huge cheapshot… but what the hell, I haven’t written for the Beet in weeks and I know everyone misses my particular brand of spite. How do I know? Letters… telegrams.. and that one airplane skywriting message that truly went above and beyond.

ENGLEWOOD, Fla. (AP) — Alec Baldwin wants Floridians to be more aware of the plight of manatees. The actor and producer has recorded two 30-second public service announcements for the Save the Manatee Club. The animals are on the federal endangered species list and at risk of being seriously injured or killed by boat strikes.

I really don’t have a joke other than to say that Manatees have done their level best, via evolution, to go extinct. They swim around two miles per hour, on the surface of the water, and they weigh a jillion pounds each. So motor boats pick them off like deer on a highway. Also, they are also called “sea cows” - I think, so this is totally not a jab at the Manatee by this guy. If it were up to me I’d ban motor boats and the beer guzzling yahoos that pilot them.

It’s actually all kind of sad, and I imagine if the manatee were cuter it would get starlets excited about saving it. As it stands it only gets a gravelly voice guy who occasionally loses his temper on the phone.