Shia LaBeouf's Apology Email to Alec Baldwin Was Plagiarized From Esquire

Oh, Shia. Remember how cute and promising you were back when you were playing little Louis Stevens? What does Disney do to you people? (By the way, I saw the girl who played Ren in a coffee shop one time and it seems like she’s doing fine. Do you talk? Maybe you should talk.)

It was quite recently announced that LaBeouf would be leaving the Broadway play Orphans over disagreements with fellow actor Alec Baldwin. Shia then released his apology email to Baldwin via Twitter because, I don’t know, why would you keep something like that private?

The email read:

My dad was a drug dealer. He was a sh-t human. But he was a man. He taught me how to be a man. What I know of men, Alec is-

A man is good at his job. Not his work, not his avocation, not his hobby. Not his career. His job.

A man can look you up and down and figure some things out. Before you say a word, he makes you. From your suitcase, from your watch, from your posture. A man infers.

A man owns up. That’s why Mark McGwire is not a man. A man grasps his mistakes. He lays claim to who he is, and what he was, whether he likes them or not.

Some mistakes, though, he lets pass if no one notices. Like dropping the steak in the dirt.

He does not rely on rationalizations or explanations. He doesn’t winnow, winnow, winnow until truths can be humbly categorized, or intellectualized, until behavior can be written off with an explanation.

A man knows his tools and how to use them – just the ones he needs. Knows which saw is for what, how to find the stud.

A man does not know everything. He doesn’t try. He likes what other men know.

A man can tell you he was wrong. That he did wrong. That he planned to.

He can tell you when he is lost. He can apologize, even if sometimes it’s just to put an end to the bickering.

Alec, I’m sorry for my part of a dis-agreeable situation. – Shia.

Okay, maybe a little heavy handed, but that sounds heartfelt.

Except wait — no — because, shit human/drug dealer dads aside, it’s entirely plagiarized from some dumb Esquire essay called How to Be a Man, published in 2009.

For comparison, the original work:

A man is good at his job. Not his work, not his avocation, not his hobby. Not his career. His job. It doesn’t matter what his job is, because if a man doesn’t like his job, he gets a new one.

A man can look you up and down and figure some things out. Before you say a word, he makes you. From your suitcase, from your watch, from your posture. A man infers.

A man owns up. That’s why Mark McGwire is not a man. A man grasps his mistakes. He lays claim to who he is, and what he was, whether he likes them or not.

Some mistakes, though, he lets pass if no one notices. Like dropping the steak in the dirt…

He does not rely on rationalizations or explanations. He doesn’t winnow, winnow, winnow until truths can be humbly categorized, or intellectualized, until behavior can be written off with an explanation…

A man knows his tools and how to use them – just the ones he needs. Knows which saw is for what, how to find the stud, when to use galvanized nails…

A man can tell you he was wrong. That he did wrong. That he planned to. He can tell you when he is lost. He can apologize, even if sometimes it’s just to put an end to the bickering.

A man is big enough to google “what is a man” (the Esquire article is the second result when you do just that). He knows how to copy and paste whatever he finds into an email. A man will send that email to a respected colleague and then share it with the world. He will be pretty proud of himself.