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Good F'ing Riddance: Why Celebrity "Retirement" is the Best Thing for All of Us

By Courtney Enlow | Celebrity | February 24, 2014 |

By Courtney Enlow | Celebrity | February 24, 2014 |


So, as we all know by now, chronic victim of injustice Alec Baldwin has “retired” from his life in the spotlight, following myriad outbursts of rage and hate speech (but he totally didn’t do it guys, and tapes don’t prove anything).

This of course comes on the heels of the “retirement” of Shia LaBeouf following his own string of personal injustices. The general consensus betwixt these two rivals of the thee-ay-ter seems to be this: “I only did something kind of wrong, but mostly people are mean and I’m taking my ball and going home in the most elaborate way possible.” Elaborate ways here meaning uncomfortable performance art and impossibly long Vulture pieces. But aside from these particularly ridiculous ones, celebrity “retirement” (always to be placed in the gently there-there hug of quotation marks) are nothing new, seemingly spouted as a vague threat whenever an award hangs in the balance or a project fails (see: Justin Bieber, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie).

And here’s why this is all OK: because they need us more than we need them.

No one cries or laments the lost of a retired movie star or celebrity, especially when these “retirements” are all faux attempts at getting our attention, the “you’ll be sorry when I’m gone” of the famous and infamous. And they all fizzle without fruition, like the 12 year old who runs away from home for a couple hours, then quietly walks up to his bedroom hoping to go unnoticed because he missed his mommy and his video games.

These pathetic attempts to make us care are more desperate than anything a Kardashian could conceive, and still not as tragic as a Teen Mom faking a miscarriage over Twitter or feigning rape allegations so people will buy her sex tape. The movie star is a dead concept and people are replaceable. Nothing has taught us that quite like reality television, and it is bleeding into “real” Hollywood.

So quit, Alec. Because it’s never your fault and never will be. And, for that, we’ll never miss you anyway.