Anderson Cooper, Andrew Sullivan slam Alec Baldwin for anti-gay remark

CNN's Anderson Cooper and political blogger Andrew Sullivan, both openly gay, are blasting actor and MSNBC host Alec Baldwin for calling a paparazzo a "c***sucking fag."

Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images

"Wow, Alec Baldwin shows his true colors yet again," Cooper tweeted Friday. "How is he going to lie and excuse his anti-gay slurs this time?"

Sullivan wrote on his blog what mounted to be more of an attack on MSNBC for employing Baldwin than on Baldwin himself:

What a bunch of hypocrites and phonies on that propaganda network...there will be no consequences. With liberal homophobes, there never are. If you're a conservative and are caught yelling these slurs at random people, you'd be fired pronto or buried in an avalanche of gay protest. If you're a self-entitled liberal, you're fine. What, I wonder, will MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Thomas Roberts and Jonathan Capehart [who are openly gay] say about this? Nothing, I'll bet you.

The only public comment Roberts has made on the matter was sent out in a tweet Thursday: "Smart, Alec!!" Maddow has not said anything. Capehart declined our request for comment and we have not yet heard back from an MSNBC spokesperson.

TMZ was the first to report on Baldwin Thursday. The site published a video of Baldwin confronting a photographer, telling him to stay away from his wife and child, who are presumed to be inside a cab nearby. That's when Baldwin hurled the gay slur.

Baldwin has since apologized, tweeting, "Anti-gay slurs are wrong. They not only offend, but threaten hard fought tolerance of LGBT rights ... c'sucker is an anti-gay epithet. In which case I apologize and will retire it from my vocabulary."

He had initially tweeted that an "acoustic analysis" demonstrated that he actually said "fathead," not "fag."

@eScarry