I have a few words for Alec Baldwin (and this goes for the rest of you who pull this garbage with your kids, too):
Divorce is a nasty business. I think most people are agreed on that. It's even worse when there are custody issues involved.
But it is no excuse for taking out your rage on your 11-year old daughter, Mr. Baldwin. If you want to call someone a pig and other names not fit to be aired on evening cable news, do it to someone your own size, ideally someone who shares the responsibility for the painful situation in which your daughter finds herself. Save the vitriol for your wife and her attorney. You obviously have plenty to discuss. Like why your wife is under court order not to discredit you to your offspring, but you can call your wife a pain in the a** on your daughter's voice mail.
Call your wife what you like. She's a big girl and can probably handle herself. Do not attack your child.
What you have done amounts to verbal abuse. The context is immaterial. There is nothing even the most selfish 11-year-old can do that justifies that kind of language from a parent. The fact that it was leaked discredits you in the eyes of the public, sir, and not your daughter. You have discredited yourself in her eyes with no help from the media. I believe you will be lucky if she ever answers your calls again.
Parents like you have done enough damage to their children as it is. Divorce is already difficult for children, even without parents who use them as a tools to get back at each other. How many young people my age and even younger have horrible emotional scars from being pulled back and forth by egotistical, selfish, parents? Parents who are more childish than the children they are fighting over? How many in my generation are terrified of marriage and parenthood because of the shoddy examples they have been given?
She will be lucky if she isn't damaged for life by your narcissistic ranting. I hope that in ten years she won't be dating men who speak to her the way you just did, and excusing it the way so many women do whose fathers abuse them in this manner.
If I were in your wife's place, sir, I would certainly be sending that message to my attorney, and doing everything I could to protect my daughter from you. When you fly over to see your daughter, I hope you will find her mother's attorney there to meet you instead. This is for your own safety, sir, because if your wife has a shred of maternal instinct, she is restraining the urge to harm you bodily for your treatment of this child. If your daughter is there, you had better crawl to her on your knees and beg her forgiveness.
In the process of satisfying the needs of your own ego, sir, you have very likely created a lifetime of pain for your child. I hope you are happy.
The social, cultural, spiritual, political, academic, and literary rantings of a slightly strange Catholic English teacher.
2 comments:
And what about the mother, who chose to release this to the public (violating a court order), in her own game of manipulation?
I believe I already pointed out that she shares the guilt here, which is why I suggested that he direct his little tantrum at her rather than his daughter, whose behavior (whatever that may be) is very likely a product of her age and her family situation.
Either way, he is responsible for his own behavior, and the damage to his daughter has been done. Regardless of whether the tapes had been released or not, the fact would remain that this is verbal abuse.
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