Posted by
Shogrensus on Sunday, April 29, 2007 10:08:29 PM
Upon returning from the commercial break, Baldwin continues his discussion with Rosie and Barbara. Someone must have told him he never answered Rosie’s question because he finally gets to it:
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Baldwin: To finish answering your question, obviously calling your child a pig or anything else is improper and inappropriate and I apologized to my daughter for that.
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I’m glad he finally acknowledged that. He goes on:
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Baldwin: I can’t tell you how many people who are like amazing, you and I and all of us know the most famous and privileged people in the world and some of them would call me and say “God if they taped some of the things I said to my kid"-
Rosie: I said that on this show
Baldwin: And I have had a lot of other people say to me “if all of us were to lose our custody rights because you said something inappropriate, we would have a parentless society
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This is true. Parents often do yell at their kids in the heat of an argument, possibly even crossing the line and calling their child a name. Hopefully, in this situation parents apologize to their child and do their best to role model better behavior going forward. The vast majority of parents would never consent to having their conversations taped and would be mortified if one of their arguments ended up being played for their friends, business colleagues or acquaintances. That being said, few parents would take the time to leave a belittling message on their child’s voicemail.
Barbara then asked him about his career and his future on 30 Rock.
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Baldwin: Now in the world that we live in you know a person presses one button and the whole world knows what’s happened to you. Literally. Literally. Some man took this tape and construed that that was in the child’s interests to do that and pressed a button and it went over the entire world.
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As a result of this situation, Baldwin has asked to be released from his contract on 30 Rock. He wants to channel his energy into really working on Parental Alienation and divorce litigation. He doesn’t know if they will let him go- he hopes so.
He thanked his mom for all she has done for him and the support she has given him.
He goes on to describe the tens of thousands of men who contact him about parental alienation and says that the women who contact him, who are in those men's lives now, are equally if not more angry.
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Baldwin concluded: I have a great relationship with my daughter. My daughter used to come in to me and I’d say, I said to her once I go- we were lying in bed and I was waking her up, I had come into her room and I was rubbing her hair and she laughed at me and I go “what’s so funny?” she goes “the way you wake me up in the morning when you rub my hair and you ‘what do I want for breakfast’ “ and she goes “it’s so funny to me” and I go “why?” and she says “cause my mom opens the door and goes ‘Get the hell out of that bed right now. You’re late we got to have ’” and I am thinking to myself when women do a certain thing and it’s the mother it’s perceived one way and when men do it, it is perceived another way.
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I bet Basinger and her attorneys loved hearing that little story retold to the audience of the View.
Why would he say this, at this time, other to sway public opinion in his favor? Should public opinion matter to him when his daughter has been hurt? Does hurting his daughter again help matters? This discussion was not in the best interest of his daughter, and that should be his only concern.
His relaying a story, that his daughter told him in confidence, to strike a blow at his ex-wife shows the same character flaw shown in the voicemail: Baldwin allows his anger to control his behavior.
Again, women do not have a right to keep their children form their fathers or to do anything to undermine the relationship between a child and father. Likewise, men do not have the right to undermine the relationship between their child and the child's mother, either.
The best we can hope for these three people is that they get whatever help they need to put an end to this feud.
Ireland may not be able to see through all of the smoke in her life now, but there will come a day when she will look back on this and with hindsight will be able to sort out right from wrong. She will hold both of these people accountable and I hope for their sakes she is able to forgive them.