Today in his Huffington Post column, Alec Baldwin delivered an important lecture about how to practice good, proper journalism. First lesson: Don't mess with Alec Baldwin.

AOL — remember that company? — did mess with the 30 Rock star, because it is staffed by worthless, non-journalistic guttersnipes, as far as Baldwin is concerned.

Baldwin, you see, wrote a perfectly innocent column last week about how he's a fan of liberal MSNBC commentators Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, but Olbermann "wastes too much time pissing on Bush" while Maddow's "writers are dreadful."

Then AOL.com had to go and say Baldwin "picked a fight" with the anchors.

Which is unfair, sure, but also par for the course on the AOL home page. Traffic-baiting the internet's lowest common denominator is what AOL has been doing since forever. It's the company's reason for being. That and collecting modem fees from people too unfortunate or technically inept to get broadband, already.

But Baldwin is very worked up. This AOL garbage is important! It illustrates Baldwin's number two journalism lesson: Journalism does not happen online, because there is too much filth.

The sine qua non to understanding the garbage barge of the internet is the AOL home page. The AOL home page, which makes Us Weekly look like Paris Match, wants its readers to focus on the latest unflattering photos of stars or their DUIs...

That's the Internet. Some great, serious, lofty thinking, one click away. The AOL home page, like a filthy dinner plate, just begging to be scraped and washed, another click away.

Alec Baldwin, of course, wrote this on the internet, on a site reporting the latest unflattering celebrity picture just a click away from his column, and carrying some high-profile amateur journalism just a click or two beyond that.

The perpetually, pleasingly piqued actor wasn't saying anything we didn't already know, but we still got something out of reading him nevertheless. Maybe there's a third journalism lesson in that.

Send an email to Ryan Tate, the author of this post, at ryan@gawker.com.