To their growing discomfort, some viewers and critics are finding Mr. Baldwin\u2019s behavior to be offensive. They feel it is undercutting his satirical commentary on Mr. Trump and reveals a tone-deafness on the part of Mr. Baldwin and, by extension, \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to be morally above the person you\u2019re spoofing for it to be effective,\u201d said Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, deputy editor of the feminist website Jezebel<\/a>. \u201cIt seems like he is aligning himself with the more powerful people in these situations \u2014 not the accusers, but the accused.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s worse, these critics say, is that in this #MeToo moment, Mr. Baldwin epitomizes a classic insincere male ally: With his star turns on \u201cS.N.L.,\u201d his scalding portrayal of Mr. Trump and his own pledges to be more conscientious about how he treats women, he has enjoyed the benefits of associating with this progressive, female-positive movement while falling short of its values.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHe is in a position of power and he has a prominent platform, and he has to figure out if he\u2019s contributing to the conversation in a productive manner,\u201d Jessica Coen, editor in chief of the digital culture site Mashable<\/a>, said.<\/p>\n She added, \u201cAlec Baldwin is socially aware, but only to a limit. He doesn\u2019t know what he doesn\u2019t know, and that\u2019s a big problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Baldwin declined requests to be interviewed for this article, and also declined an invitation to have people speak on his behalf. Several of his friends and colleagues also declined to comment this week.<\/p>\n Last fall dozens of women came forward<\/a> to say that Mr. Toback, the filmmaker, had harassed or abused them<\/a>. At that time Mr. Baldwin \u2014 who worked with Mr. Toback on films like \u201cSeduced and Abandoned\u201d \u2014 offered a circumspect defense of his friend, telling The Los Angeles Times<\/a> that he \u201calways heard Jimmy was peculiar\u201d and adding, \u201cI don\u2019t know that Jimmy has done anything criminal.\u201d Explaining why he had not yet condemned Mr. Toback, Mr. Baldwin said, \u201cWell, I\u2019m going to get around to that in my own way and in my own time.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n He added, \u201cI just hope people proceed with this very carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n A few days later, Mr. Baldwin seemed to cast blame on Ms. McGowan, who said she was raped by the film mogul Harvey Weinstein. In a PBS interview<\/a>, Mr. Baldwin said, \u201cRose McGowan took a payment of $100,000 and settled her case with him. And it was for Rose McGowan to prosecute that case.\u201d<\/p>\n On Twitter, Mr. Baldwin has defended Dustin Hoffman<\/a> from accusations of sexual misconduct, and gone after late-night TV hosts like Stephen Colbert and John Oliver, who he believes have persecuted men like Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Weinstein. Their shows \u201care beginning to resemble grand juries,\u201d Mr. Baldwin wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last Sunday Mr. Baldwin took aim at Ms. Farrow, who has said<\/a> that Mr. Allen, her adoptive father, molested her in 1992 when she was a child. (Mr. Allen has denied these claims and was not charged with any crime.) Mr. Baldwin said in a tweet<\/a> that one of \u201cthe most of effective things Dylan Farrow has in her arsenal is the \u2018persistence of emotion.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Comparing her to Mayella Ewell in \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird\u201d \u2014 a white woman who falsely accuses a black man of raping her \u2014 Mr. Baldwin said of Ms. Farrow in the tweet, \u201cher tears\/exhortations r meant 2 shame u in2 belief in her story.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued, \u201cBut I need more than that before I destroy some1, regardless of their fame. I need a lot more.\u201d<\/p>\n Online and in interviews, many people said they were appalled by what they saw as Mr. Baldwin\u2019s belligerence toward Ms. Farrow and his wading into circumstances about which he has no firsthand knowledge.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy somebody would confidently go on the offensive against someone brave enough to speak out about having been sexually abused is completely beyond me,\u201d Julie Klausner, the creator and star of the Hulu comedy series \u201cDifficult People,\u201d said in an interview.<\/p>\n Ms. Klausner added, \u201cThere is loyalty to friends, and then there is unsolicited outspoken denial of an abuse survivor\u2019s truth. It seems very strange to me that somebody who wasn\u2019t there is so compelled to pipe up.\u201d<\/p>\n At \u201cSaturday Night Live,\u201d Mr. Baldwin\u2019s recent comments have gone publicly unaddressed. Press representatives for NBC declined to make anyone from \u201cS.N.L.\u201d available to comment for this article and would not say if Mr. Baldwin was to appear as Mr. Trump in this weekend\u2019s new episode.<\/p>\n Having played Mr. Trump on \u201cS.N.L.\u201d since the fall of 2016, Mr. Baldwin, 59, has brought acclaim and renewed energy to this 43-year-old late-night series. Last September, he won an Emmy Award<\/a> for playing the president on the show, adding to the two he had won playing Jack Donaghy, an oblivious, domineering TV executive<\/a> on the NBC comedy \u201c30 Rock.\u201d<\/p>\n But as his critics consider his statements of the past several months, they are uncomfortably reminded of Mr. Baldwin\u2019s long history of aggressive behavior.<\/p>\n In 2007, he apologized<\/a> after the release of a phone message to his daughter Ireland, then 11, in which he called her a \u201crude, thoughtless little pig.\u201d In 2011, he was removed from a plane<\/a> for refusing to turn off his cellphone after the plane\u2019s doors were closed for departure, and its crew members said he treated them with \u201cinappropriate names\u201d and \u201coffensive language.\u201d<\/p>\n Last November, at a tribute honoring him at the Paley Center for Media, Mr. Baldwin said<\/a> he was aware he had mistreated women in the past.<\/p>\n \u201cI certainly have treated women in a very sexist way,\u201d he said at the tribute. \u201cI\u2019ve bullied women. I\u2019ve overlooked women. I\u2019ve underestimated women.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Baldwin added, \u201cI really would like that to change.\u201d<\/p>\n But his more recent behavior has some people wondering if he is genuinely committed to or capable of self improvement.<\/p>\n \u201cIt requires a lot of us to look back on our life and our experiences and acknowledge that either we experienced something terrible, or we were part of enabling a terrible situation, knowingly or unknowingly,\u201d Beth Newell, the creator and editor of Reductress<\/a>, a feminist comedy website, said.<\/p>\n Ms. Newell said that men like Mr. Baldwin are \u201cthrowing their weight around as a way of feeling powerful.\u201d She added, \u201cHe doesn\u2019t want to do the emotional labor of figuring out what that means.\u201d<\/p>\n Nell Scovell, a writer for TV shows like \u201cLate Night With David Letterman,\u201d \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d and \u201cMurphy Brown,\u201d said that Mr. Baldwin\u2019s support of people like Mr. Toback and Mr. Allen \u201csmacks of overlooking and underestimating women while overvaluing the men.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Scovell, who writes about the sexism she encountered in the TV industry in a coming memoir called \u201cJust the Funny Parts,\u201d said she was not calling for Mr. Baldwin to be punished or removed from his role at \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d If anything, she said, the parallels between the men made Mr. Baldwin a more qualified stand-in for Mr. Trump. Both men came from the outskirts of New York City (Mr. Baldwin from Long Island, Mr. Trump from Jamaica, Queens); both had previous marriages and are now married to younger wives; both are wealthy and prone to issues of impulse control.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a hypocrite and Trump\u2019s a hypocrite,\u201d Ms. Scovell said. \u201cTechnically, he might be the best person to capture the hypocrisy.\u201d<\/p>\n