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Empathy, Sympathy, and a Moment for Grace…Even For Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin is not a good man.
We can go through his long personal, political, and professional history and document all the ways in which Baldwin has acted in disgusting, horrible fashions. It would take about 50 seconds on Google to come up with enough information to write a 2,000-word piece on the subject.
But this moment is not about Alec Baldwin.
In a horrible incident in New Mexico, on the set of the movie “Rust”, Baldwin apparently fired a prop gun, and some kind of projectile of unknown type was ejected, with horrible consequences: Director of photography Halyna Hutchins, 42, was transported to the hospital via helicopter and pronounced dead by medical personnel at University of New Mexico Hospital, according to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.
Director Joel Souza, 48, was transported to Christus St. Vincent’s Regional Medical Center by ambulance for care. Details on his condition were not released.
The scope of the tragedy is hard to comprehend for the Hollywood community. Hutchins was a well-known cinematographer, and the grieving throughout the industry was seen all over social media. Souza is expected to make a full recovery, and is lucky not to have been more seriously injured.
Baldwin expressed his shock and sadness regarding the tragic events on social media. “There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother, and deeply admired colleague of ours.”
As those closest involved with the incident deal with the repercussions of this tragedy, the public spectacle is one we are all familiar with. Those that despise Baldwin have often been almost gleeful at what has befallen him. Others are simply using the moment to point out the many times Baldwin has failed to show sympathy or empathy to those he dislikes, most famously former Vice President Dick Cheney. Baldwin famously ridiculed Cheney after the Vice President accidentally shot and wounded a friend on a hunting trip (the man survived with minor injuries).
None of this speaks well of civil society in America today. These are the moments that define what type of nation we want to have, and want to aspire to. Our nation remains engulfed in a divisive culture war, with all sides treating Americans they view as the enemy as a ‘foreign’ force that must be politically destroyed and excluded from public life.
Baldwin is clearly not a sympathetic character in this regard. Few have done more to worsen our civil discourse. He has had long-running feuds with numerous conservatives, and his despise for former Presidents Donald Trump and George W. Bush is public and well known.
This is however when the concept of empathy, sympathy, and grace become most important. When things are well, and people are content, it is far easier to express sympathy to those we not only dislike, but fail to understand. But in times like these, when we are polarized and divided, it becomes extremely difficult to rise above the rancor and anger.
I’ve written about the concepts of empathy and sympathy many times, and especially in regards to our failure to promote these concepts for the greater good of civility in American society. Here is an excerpt from 2018:
When someone tries to display sympathy for another person’s hardships and anguish, it is simply an acknowledgment that we understand what that person is going through, and we simply hope for their quick recovery. In traditional society, the quickest and most common way to demonstrate that heartfelt belief was to send prayers to those that were suffering. Sharing sympathetic thoughts is one significant way in which we experience a greater sense of shared similarities together, and allows for a more profound personal engagement than one would generally have with people under normal situations.
Empathy, on the other hand, is the ability to put one’s self into the shoes of another, and to truly understand their point of view. It allows us to come to terms with how others came to make the decision they chose to make, without allowing our own biases to cloud that judgment. So the uniqueness of empathy is that, unlike sympathy, it allows for people to join together and at least attempt to have a shared experience. First and foremost, it involves seeing someone else’s situation from their perspective, and second, sharing their emotions, including their distress.
Most of us cannot truly understand the grief that Halyna Hutchins’ family is going through, nor can we comprehend that devastation and despair that Alec Baldwin is feeling. But we can attempt to be empathetic in trying to understand the devastation caused by this tragic incident.
Baldwin may not be a generous or open-hearted person to those he politically disagrees with, but he is a human with human emotions. And this is a moment in which our common humanity should rise above the anger, rhetoric, and divisiveness that Baldwin, and many of us, have contributed to over the years.
And this is why the concept of grace is so critical to a civil society. Grace, ultimately, is the generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved understanding of one to another. It is a concept unencumbered by the concept of just deserts, which demands we take ‘an eye for an eye’ as a just punishment for prior injustices.
Grace requires that our sympathetic, empathetic and graceful nature rise above the bad behavior of others. Baldwin probably is undeserving of our empathy. He failed to be graceful when his enemies were in a similar position. But grace requires us to elevate our spirit above and beyond what we would expect of others. Grace requires us to do what we believe is right, even if those we bestow that gift on would not do the same for us.
This is a sacrifice for many of us. It is easy to be mean-spirited and spiteful to those that have behaved that way toward us. Ultimately, however, such a society only damages us all. The true spirit of a truly peaceful and accepting society is one where we forgive, and try to rise above the anger and rancor. And only by acting in this manner can we hope to become a more civil society.
Published in Culture
Almost no clue, but it occurs to me that the pencil test will work here.
With a cleared revolver, cock the hammer, point the weapon upward and drop a pencil in the barrel. It should rest against the breech face. Drop the hammer, and the firing pin will make the pencil jump. Don’t know what to tell you about rimfire.
You could just observe that the pencil went far enough in, but the firing pin jump is nice confirmation.
By the way, I don’t mean to sound like a know-it-all. I only know a couple of things. They hold me in good stead, knock on wood.
Cool, because Actor Robert Davi disagrees with you too.
Makes perfect sense. If I were an actor handling a gun, I wouldn’t do it any other way.
In the season of The Walking Dead where Carol’s daughter walks out the barn, they made a big deal about shooting that scene. They made it very clear that they make it a practice on a set with guns to never point a gun directly at a child on a set.
I’ll disagree with one of the points made in that article:
This is why we have the four rules. As indicated in the previous section (see the link), the standard for handling firearms is very high. It’s not a prop phone, it’s a deadly weapon. One reason why gun people harass each others and everybody else about the four rules is maintenance of that high standard — none of us want to get shot. Breaking the rules inadvertently, momentarily (say sweeping the barrel across your friend’s foot as you turn to answer a question), earns a rebuke, and falls squarely within negligence if your friend thereby loses a toe. Or a foot.
Intentionally pointing the weapon at somebody and pulling the trigger, especially after not having cleared the weapon upon receipt — this is clearly reckless behavior even if found within a culture of similar recklessness. We do not let drunk drivers off the hook for killing oncoming motorists just because everybody at that Hollywood bar made similar decisions at closing time.
The rules are The Rules, and all the special pleading for “Hollywood is different” doesn’t make Holly wood different. Doesn’t make guns different. Doesn’t make death different.
Hollywood doesn’t get a license to operate a nuclear reactor in an unsafe matter just because that’s the topic of the movie.
Manslaughter for Baldwin or we riot.
But we won’t.
Who thinks Baldwin going to prison is worth doing what BLM/Antifa did last year?
Went over your head but thanks for playing.
Ironically, by the end of the article, he makes my exact point. The irony was that I thought I disagreed with him.
Now, I don’t mean to pile on @henryracette but it looks like we can put Kristie Alley in the same corner with Robert Davi and Dana Loesch.
This guy too
I am really impressed by the Hollywood culture of firearm safety and etiquette. They might be raging, anti-gun liberals, but they take the danger of guns seriously and have clearly brought in gun guys to inform best policies of firearm safety.
Kind of gets us back to the 4 rules quite easily.
Looks like they aren’t quite as malleable as some would like us to believe.
Wow, I never knew that Kirstie (note the correct spelling) Alley ever used a gun in her acting roles. That might be something to see, especially if it was during the Saavik era of svelteness.
She was in shoot to kill from that era
Reading through the Wikipedia entry on that movie, I find no reference to Kirstie Alley ever using a gun. But maybe they missed something, or maybe she used guns in other roles.
Notice that its always the right that is being scolded for a lack of civility and grace? And it’s always blown out of proportion respective to the percentage of people who are acting badly. David French is a master at this. He used the Loudon County incident and the DOJ letter to smear all the conservative parents who wanted a say in their children’s education and he hasn’t said a word of apology. Remember Sarah Palin’s targets? Conservative Inc. loves nothing better than tar us all with the same brush so that they can lecture us for our sins. This audience for this piece isn’t people who act badly – they won’t read it. The audience – who I note are already using it – are NeverTrumpers and the left.
Hey, no, that isn’t piling on — and piling on is fine anyway: I’m actually comfortable disagreeing with a lot of people at once. ;)
I’ll continue to think that it’s unrealistic to expect or demand that guns be handled the same way on set as they are in real life, or that it’s inappropriate to delegate some of the responsibility for safety to others. I’ll say the same about cars, motorcycles, electricity, fire, and helicopters. That isn’t a defense for failing to follow the safety procedures that are in place, whatever those are. It isn’t a defense for clowning around with guns and live ammunition.
It also isn’t a legal defense. It looks, increasingly, like Mr. Baldwin is in serious legal jeopardy, particularly because of his executive role in the production. And whoever decided it was okay to go plinking before or after production — if that’s what happened — needs to find a new career, at the very least, in my opinion.
Breaking rocks, perhaps.
I am curious whether the camera was rolling or not. It’s a fine point, but perhaps a useful line between working and screwing around.
It’s been reported at least one place that Baldwin, having to repeat a scene again and again, pointed the gun at the cinematographer and said to her and the DA, something like, “How about if I just shoot the two of you?” and pulled the trigger.
If true, this is worse than just being careless with a gun.
I humbly regret the error.
You can delegate authority, not responsibility.
But, and this is important, each of the outside sources cited show the actors in question exercising responsibility by have the weapon cleared in front of them or doing it themselves.
Just because you have an armorer on set to ensure the security and maintenance of the weapons, it in no way absolves the actor whose booger hook is on the bang switch.
It’s like pack your own chute, except in this case the life you save won’t be your own.
This example makes me a bit more sympathetic to Henry’s argument. Mrs Tex flew fast movers in the Air Force and never packed her own chute. So giving over some of the responsibility for one’s safety isn’t unprecedented or just a Hollywood thing. The difference would be that the parachute is strictly a life saving device, and while a firearm can save one’s life that’s far from its only purpose.
I’m currently in development of a screenplay called Booger Hook and the Bang Switch. It’s still in the idea stage.
Unless you were Jon-Erik Hexum, whose sad fate ought to be mentioned at the first safety meeting for every production where blanks are to be used.
I can’t figure out what the aim of the OP was. For me to not mock Alec Baldwin for his stupidity? Or that our justice system should go easy on him?
I’m fine not talking about AB at all AS LONG AS he doesn’t end up being one more elitist skating free from laws that would hang Kyle Rittenhouse in a heartbeat if you swapped them out.
So this better be not “we should let him walk because Alec Baldwin is famous and I think his movies make him a ‘good guy’.”
I do not at all think the point is that we should cut Baldwin a break because he is famous. I think the point is that we should not jump on Baldwin just because we dislike him. You know, like how Democrats did when Dick Cheney accidentally shot his friend while hunting?
Funny thing about that. In the last 6 years there has been a couple of instances where it wasn’t done correctly. In at least one case the crew of a B-1 attempted ejection and the system failed (didn’t work at all). Subsequent investigation found a significant portion of the fleet where the ejection seats were assembled incorrectly. Big deal.