Posted on 02/21/2007 4:32:22 AM PST by Chi-townChief
Tom Brady, Mr. All-American, says he's ''excited.'' You bet.
Informed that actress and ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynahan is three months pregnant and he is the impregnator, the three-time Super Bowl champion quarterback and purest man in the world -- or rather, his agent, Tom Yee -- said, ''Tom and his family are excited about the pregnancy.''
Wow.
They're not excited about the mother or a possible marriage or any kind of meaningful union between copulators.
They're excited about the fact their son/brother/relative has active sperm.
Maybe the Brady family also is excited about the late-night talk-show jokes that are brewing as I type this.
Maybe they're excited about Brady's current squeeze, pouty-lipped Brazilian lingerie model Gisele Bundchen, who could become the nanny for the baby, if not the actual stepmother.
Not that Moynahan is giving this child up.
She made no secret of the fact she wanted a baby when she and Brady were hooking up, excuse me, dating.
''I've been on this career thing for so long, and you look at all your friends who are finally getting married and having kids,'' she told Boston Common magazine last fall. ''I believe in balance in life, so I think I can do it all.''
No dad doesn't cut it Never mind the oxymoronic essence of that last statement, the part Moynahan is missing is that pesky part about family. Having a baby is one thing. Having a baby without a legitimate father is another, entirely.
For years that province -- of children born out of wedlock or raised without a married birth father -- has been perceived as the province of the poor and the minority.
Read, at its most vexing, black.
To a degree, this is fact.
Without getting into the sociological and economic elements that create such a trend, know that about 16 percent of white kids grow up without fathers but a stunning 51 percent of black children do.
Brady, 29, named one of People magazine's ''50 Most Beautiful People'' in 2002, is not the marrying kind. At least not now.
Hope that doesn't shock you, Bridget and Gisele.
But the shocking part to the world is that here is Tom Brady of the New England Patriots with those twinkling blue eyes and Cleaver-family upbringing -- Charles Pierce's recent biography, Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything, all but anoints the young man -- and he's just out there sowing seed like every other irresponsible rascal.
We'll leave it to Madison Avenue to decide whether Brady's action will affect his endorsement deals -- with Nike, Visa, Sirius, among others -- that bring him an estimated $9 million a year beyond his large Patriots contract.
The troubling part is not the gossip and all the rest of the giggle-inducing tawdriness of this little scene.
It is that babies in our modern American world have become items and baubles, things to have or not have, depending on the whim, mood, naivete, intoxication level, desperation and silliness of the two people involved.
That Britney Spears is the mother of two children, with her shaved head and utter instability, is about all we need to know of the children-as-accessories mental state.
Moynahan said, via her publicist Christine Papadopoulous (this is how rich celebs communicate, you know), that she is ''healthy and excited.''
Of course, no mention was made as to whether the fetus was equally as thrilled.
It was back on Dec. 14 that Brady and Moynahan announced, through a (what else?) statement, that they had parted ways ''several weeks'' earlier.
It's easy to joke about Doing a little language and math work, I see that several means more than two but not many, so the pair must have broken up sometime around, say, mid to late November. This being late February means Tom Terrific gave three-months-pregnant Bridget a last-fling going-away present.
One could laugh at all this.
Just as one could laugh at fellow superstar -- and equally white and All-American -- quarterback Matt Leinart, who impregnated a fellow student in his last year at USC and never had much interest in her, beyond the obvious.
But the devaluation of children is the real issue, the carelessness with which they too often are brought into the world.
And the current thought espoused by many that little boys don't really need dads in their lives at all -- that loving women and maybe a thoughtful male coach at the rec center will suffice -- is pure nonsense.
As syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts wrote recently, there is this pernicious idea among certain headstrong females and careless males ''that the father is unnecessary, that so long as there's some uncle around to show the boy how to hit the mark in the toilet, everything is hunky-dory.''
It's not.
Witness our jails and our poverty lines. Witness our schools.
Tom Brady has shown that the real issue is not race or wealth at all, but personal responsibility.
If I were a member of black America, I wouldn't exactly be laughing at Brady's sexual mistake.
But I'd be hard-pressed not to smirk.
mailto:rtelander@suntimes.com
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What kind of visitation rights do you have?
A prime example of the moral havoc in our society wrought by the "contraceptive mentality". Pope Paul VI was a prophet.
Telander is one of many sports "journalists" who wants to make the Olbermann Leap into regular news work, and thinks the way to achieve it is to write opinion columns disguised as sports commentary.
Who says athletes are roll models or that they are supposed to be? They play a game and get paid for doing so. That they are exhaulted is the choice of others.
Now, the guys who played back in the 40s and 50s were a bit different and several went off to war to serve their country. Ted Williams gave up prime years to fight in WW2 and Korea. The years he gave up would have made him overall home run champ instead of Ruth.
It is the children who will suffer. Tom Brady and his family deserve the hypocrite of the day award for saying they are "happy and excited about the pregnancy."
The funny part is that I was reading that this girl is now dating a USC basketball player. She definitely knows how to pick these athletes.
If I were Tom, I would get a paternity test ASAP. Sounds like the ex wants an instant family, just add money.
You are right about all men can be dogs. Although I think Tom Brady is a good looking man, you just can't force a man to marry you. Especially a man like Tom Brady.
No he wouldn't write about it if Brady was black.
The media has been pushing athletes as role models and a few are excellent such as Pat Tillman. The sad part is that children during their formative years (when they are highly impressionable) are influenced by not only the pass given to the bad behavior of athletes and other celebrities by the media but deviant behavior is even made to sound "cool."
This is one angry guy. I think he is a frustrated athlete. He takes out his not making it to the "show" on anyone who did make it.
... two words...... shot-gun.... happens all the time here in the South
Do you remember Cassius Marcellus Clay and Elvis Presley. Elvis served in the Army.
They're human beings. None of us is without a major failing. Role models are rare--because what they do is difficult. And the idea that sexual activity outside of marriage is a recent invention, even in Western culture, is debatable. A long time ago I read a book called the French Lieutenant's Woman. The only thing I remember about it is the foreword, where the author described the research he did on historical promiscuity. It has always been with us.
I'm not trying to say "it's o.k.; everybody is doing it." Just that life is a battle. We all know right from wrong, and we all choose wrong sometimes. If we learn from it, we develop character. If we don't, we seek ways to assuage conscience.
What a tempest in a teapot. This dyspeptic author is in dire need of a Lewinsky.
I agree with you that Telander is right on the mnoey, although I could do without the last two sentences. They seem to cloud the issue. Many are focusing on them and not the gist of the article, which is pro family,pro marriage and anti-illegitimate.
I thought his point about children-as-accessories was particularly perceptive.
Yeah, I'm sure the son or daughter of a movie star mother and an NFL quarterback father is going to be begging for change on a Mattapan streetcorner one day . . .
One can see this children-as-accessories in Madonna and Jolie cases.
I guess some people are having a Dan Quayle-ish "Murphy Brown" moment over the whole thing.
The Patriots did their own Paternity Test and listed Brady as "Possible".
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