Let's talk about privilege, shall we? Alec Baldwin, a rich, white, male, liberal, elite actor, is a free man as of today despite the undisputed fact that one week ago, he shot and killed a woman in cold blood on the set of "Rust," the film he is starring in and producing in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Whether it is white privilege or wealth privilege or male privilege or elite privilege, or, yes, liberal privilege, Alec Baldwin has not been arrested for this homicide, and that is a perfect example of privilege that would not be afforded to you.
Here are the undeniable facts.
Alec Baldwin raised a gun, pointed it at a woman, and pulled the trigger. As a result of that act, the gun fired a bullet, striking the woman he was aiming at and she is now dead.
The police were called, and when they arrived on the scene to assess the situation, they quickly ascertained the facts I just laid out. The only additional data point is that Baldwin claimed that he was told the gun was not loaded with a live round.
Now, think this through. If you did exactly what Baldwin did, would you be arrested?
You raised a gun and aimed it at a person. You pulled the trigger, and the gun fired a bullet, killing that person. The police arrive, and you tell them that you thought the gun wasn't loaded. Are you still a free man?
Even asking the question defies logic.
You know the answer to the question. The police would arrest you. The evidence overwhelmingly supports your culpability in this incident.
Don't misunderstand. Being arrested isn't the same as being convicted. It isn't even the same as going to trial. It just means that the police have determined that you likely committed a crime (in this case, it would be, at the very least, manslaughter and/or negligent homicide) and should be tried for that crime.
It's possible that the District Attorney's office might review all the evidence and hear your alibi (I didn't know it was loaded) and also review other potentially culpable individuals (the armorer, the 1st Assistant Director, etc.) and decide that the case shouldn't go to trial.
If they decide to charge you and go forward with a trial, you would have your day in court. You would make your case before a jury of your peers. The jury may believe that you are not guilty of the crime you've been charged with.
But, make no mistake, you would've been arrested by now. And Alec Baldwin has not been arrested. Why not?
Especially considering Baldwin's track record.
I submit for your approval a 2018 USA Today article titled: "Alec Baldwin hasn't learned to control his temper: A history of his bad behavior." It chronicles over a decade of incidents involving rage, violence, and overall contemptible behavior that he habitually committed and routinely claimed to have "learned a lesson" from only to rage again and again.
Would the police look at this as potential evidence of a pattern of behavior that called into question Mr. Baldwin's alibi?
Let's use the language of the Left for a moment, shall we? I mean, it seems appropriate since Baldwin is an angry, hot-headed, offensive man of the Left who uses inflammatory language and tactics to try to destroy those who dare to disagree with him. Let's make an argument that someone like Baldwin would make.
If the police arrive at a crime scene in a predominantly black, inner-city neighborhood and they observe a woman lying dead on the ground with a fatal bullet wound, and they encounter a young black man holding the murder weapon, they will immediately engage this young black man as their primary suspect.
Upon interviewing this young black man, the police learn that he was handed the gun by his friend, and he was told by that friend that the gun was not loaded with bullets. He tells the police that he then raised the gun, pointed it at the victim, and pulled the trigger, which fired the fatal shot that killed the young woman.
By the way, the young black man in question has an arrest record that shows a criminal pattern of abuse and hot-headed explosions that clearly exhibit a pattern of behavior bordering on erratic, compulsive incidents of rage, threats, and violence.
How long do the police wait before this young, black man is in handcuffs and on the way back to the police station to be booked?
Do you think that this young, black man would be able to merely say, "I thought the gun wasn't loaded," and the police would allow him to go about his business?
Do we think there's a little white privilege at play here with Mr. Baldwin?
Do we think that if this were anyone else, the media might be a little less tolerant of his ability to deflect any suspicion and seemingly have his publicity machine leak little damaging tidbits to The New York Times to implicate the armorer, the 1st AD of the film he was producing?
If this were Tim Allen or Kelsey Grammar or Mel Gibson, do we think Joy Reid and Al Sharpton would connect the dots to his white privilege instead of me in this column?
The truth is, Baldwin doesn't enjoy white privilege. He enjoys liberal privilege. But how long will that privilege hold out against the evidence and the law in New Mexico?
