Lucky for Alec Baldwin, he's got a sense of humor—even surrounding things that paint him in a very negative light.
Appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman Monday night, the erstwhile 30 Rock star wryly dismissed the allegations a New York Post photographer has brought accusing him of uttering racial slurs during a heated altercation.
"I would like to begin now an official campaign to get the New York Post nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for journalism," quipped Baldwin. "The Post waited and waited patiently for 25 years and finally they tripped me up and exposed me for the racist that I really am."
Of course, Alec was being ironic, noting his decades of activism on behalf of minority issues—from voter registration in Florida to working with the Kennedy Center for human rights in Africa.
When asked by Letterman whether he felt ambushed, Baldwin said that's the paparazzi's MO, but he denied the paper's allegations that he called the African-American photog a "crackhead," a "coon" and a "drug dealer," noting that "99 percent" of people know him well enough to know he'd never say that.
"I am capable of saying things that are purposefully provoking and insulting," the 54-year-old actor admitted.
But he was quick to add that there's no evidence of him hurling the slights, which besides being fabricated, he pointed out, were language used in the '60s and something he would never have said even if he went there.
Watch the full interview below.