Posted on 04/30/2007 12:35:26 PM PDT by Caleb1411
Every day, I try to remember to thank God for life's many blessings. It's a checklist of sorts:
Health is good.
Check.
Kids are great.
Check.
Never married Alec Baldwin.
Check. Check. Check.
Whew. Some blessings just bring on a boatload of gratitude.
Baldwin is getting lots of attention, but I suspect it's not the kind he was hoping for after he left a vicious voice-mail message attacking his 11-year-old daughter for not answering their prearranged call. The actor packed a lot of vitriol into two minutes and 19 seconds, and it's a message that his daughter surely must be trying to forget. That seems unlikely now that millions of Americans have been able to hear her father's rant, too, on an endless loop of broadcasts on TV, radio and the Internet.
We got to hear Baldwin rant with breathtaking hostility toward his daughter, Ireland. His rage, peppered with profanity, was all her fault, he said. He told her he didn't care that she was a child, and after adding that she didn't have "the brains or the decency of a human being," he ended his poor-Daddy diatribe with this snarling indictment: "You're a rude, thoughtless little pig."
The first time I heard that phone message, my own eyes started to sting. It's the rare woman who can't conjure up memories of her own pre-adolescent insecurities - my own list could wrap around the Earth and end in a bow - and at that moment I wanted to hit the delete button before Baldwin's daughter could check her calls. An irrational response, of course, but you don't call any female a pig and expect logic to reign. How is it that we even know about Baldwin's nasty voice-mail message? Well, an unidentified somebody leaked it to the celebrity Web log TMZ.com. Baldwin's ex-wife, actress Kim Basinger, denies she is that somebody, but suspicions abound in light of the publicly contentious custody battle they have waged since 2002. After five years of their high-flying dirty laundry, the only obvious finding of fact is that an innocent child has become a pawn in yet another ugly divorce.
Now is as good a time as any to remind all you fathers of young daughters just what power you have. The studies are done, the findings conclusive: No matter how much a mother praises her daughter, if a father regularly tells her that she is beautiful, smart and precious, she is far more likely to believe it. In fact, she'll not only believe you, she'll look to marry a man just like you. That ought to scare Baldwin into anger management real fast.
Baldwin apologized for his tirade on his Web site. "I'm sorry, as everyone who knows me is aware, for losing my temper with my child," he wrote. "I have been driven to the edge by parental alienation for many years now."
Someone needs to point out that steering wheel in Baldwin's hands and remind him that he's the one who took the U-turn off the high road. No matter how cruel an ex-wife gets - and some ex-wives rival the spawn of Satan when it comes to cruelty - no one can drive a father to badger and belittle his little girl. He makes that trip on his own.
As for his public apology, it's wasted on us. We aren't the victims here, and the real victim needs a lot of mending. As my mother used to warn, some things you say you can't take back. Your tongue lets loose and from then on you're performing triage, hoping that some day the bleeding will stop.
Of course, the public does have a role here. We have a long memory when it comes to other people's stumbles, which means there's an 11-year-old girl named Ireland who will never be allowed to forget what her father said to her just as she was toeing the cliff of adolescence. That plunge is a lot harder when you're pushed by the guy who's supposed to catch you on the way down.
We don't know what, if anything, Baldwin has learned from his mistake. But maybe, just maybe, some other fathers will take the lesson to heart.
Imagine what he said to Kim!
Hasn’t that fat wife beating rage-a-holic moved to France yet?
There are very few of us who would care to have some of our most personal actions where we lost it broadcast to the world.
I believe he is embarrassed to the point of being a life-changing experiance- although it is up to his daughter to fogive him, not me.
So... now that the liberal slimers are not hearing the pound of flesh being seared of his body they are starting to go after Baldwin for speaking the truth about the hideous court and ‘child protective’ government agencies.
I have personal experiences with these government turds, and he does not know the half of it- but I suspect he is starting to get a clue,
In Baldwin’s self-serving apology on The View, he stated that he really meant to verbally abuse and threaten his ex-wife, and took it out on his daughter instead. Just great. Interesting how his fellow unhinged, nasty, leftist Rosie took it easy on him...guess being abusive to women is okay if it’s a liberal doing it.
oh- and I hope he sees who is cutting him a break (conservatives) and who is after his hide (liberals)
I guess that he coined the latest phrase for bad parenting. “Going Alec Baldwin”
Uh huh. And I'm gonna shoot that pig that just flew by the window :)
In other words: “I shouldn’t have yelled at my daughter like that, but it’s really my ex-wife’s fault”.
Good “apology” there, Alec.
A chip right off the old block, huh, Daddy.
kim is slim and pretty
rosie is as big as a whale and twice as ugly
hence the phrase ‘rosie o’donnell is a big fat ugly liberal whore’
maybe you’ve heard it
WOW! What wise words! Thanks.
That happens all too frequently in dysfunctional families - when the parents hate each other they take it out on the kids and make the kids suffer. I think it is a good thing this got publicized. Many selfish parents just don't realize what they are doing to their kids. It's all me me me and they don't think about the kids at all.
Well written.
IMHO, the two of them are both losers and deserve no sympathy from me or anyone else. The only one I kinda feel sorry for is the daughter. She’s stuck with the two of them constantly biting at each other and using her as a weapon against each other.
I would love to see a judge in these cases put both of the idiot parties in a room and proceed to knock their heads together until they each gain a smidgeon of maturity and good sense.
Alec Baldwin had a long history of being abusive to just about anyone around him long before Kim Bassinger divorced him. There are numerous documented examples of his abusive behavior towards fans and paparazzi.
Don’t conservatives believe in personal responsibility and not blaming others for your actions?
Whales aren’t ugly.
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