Alec Baldwin roasted on social media for his Barbra Streisand comment

An offhand admiring comment by Alec Baldwin regarding music and screen icon Barbra Streisand has triggered snarky backlash from internet trolls.

“My God. This is the hottest woman. Ever,” the Emmy Award-winning Baldwin, 65, posted five weeks ago at an Italian Instagram fan site that had displayed a snippet of Streisand performing “Lover Come Back to Me” on the 1965 CBS TV special “My Name Is Barbra.” Largely unnoticed at the time, his remark gained traction after being spotlighted Monday at the Instagram account Comments by Celebs, which curates celebrity social-media comments.

“Very weird comment when he has a wife,” wrote one person at Comments by Celebs, representing some of the milder responses. Many commenters targeted Baldwin’s wife, Hilaria Baldwin, the subject of online controversy in 2020 following tweets accusing her of claiming Spanish heritage despite being born and raised in Boston. Hilaria Baldwin, 39, has never stated she was born in Spain but has expressed affinity for the Spanish culture in which she was partly raised. She speaks Spanish and English, the latter with a Spanish accent on rare occasions, and uses the Spanish version of her given name, Hilary.

Some commenters mocked her in broken pidgin Spanish. Others suggested Hilaria Baldwin would next claim to be from Streisand’s native Brooklyn, or would convert to Judaism, Streisand’s religion, or start speaking Yiddish, the transnational language of Old World European Jews and immigrants to America. At least one person responded directly to these snipes, writing, “You people sound like buffoons.”

Other commenters took Baldwin’s remark in the context of hyperbolic admiration. “I don’t like @alecbaldwininsta but I have to agree with him on this,” wrote one.

Alec and Hilaria Baldwin, married 11 years, have seven children. The Amityville-born and Massapequa-raised Alec Baldwin also has a 28-year-old daughter, model Ireland Baldwin, with his ex-wife, Oscar-winner Kim Basinger.

A representative for Alec Baldwin had no comment. Streisand has not commented publicly. On Monday, she devoted her social media to a humanitarian plea for the seriously ill adult son of her longtime manager, Marty Erlichman, saying the son has end-stage renal disease and needs a living kidney donor. Her posts gave an email address for those seeking more information.