If I had an 11-year old child who received such a message from an adult, I’d be facing battery charges.
That message is child abuse.
Acc. to “The Early Show” Basinger is no angel. She has 13 pending contempt of court violations for refusing to follow court ordered visits, etc. with her father. I can definitely see Baldwin’s frustration, though I think we all agree that he shouldn’t direct that frustration at his powerless child.
I’ve also read that Basinger has many issues, including a crippling agoraphobia.
Why did these two people decide to procreate? Please, folks, get your act together before you have kids.
Would you want your child spending time with a man who can lose it that badly over not having a phone call answered? It was sick that he was complaining that he had been ‘humiliated’ and ‘insulted’. That’s not normal and his behaviour was not normal - too much anger, and expressed in a way that might have been appropriate when aimed at an adult but not at a child.
Contributing genes should not be the only thing that confers ‘parental rights’.
You’re not going to get an argument from me on whether Baldwin’s comments were sickening. My point is that Basinger might be provoking him. I’ve seen it happen with my own family members. One miserable, bitter ex-spouse can make life hell for *everyone. *
That doesn’t excuse him at all. It just means that Ireland is doubly screwed.
Ditto. I’m surprised how many people think this is not completely inappropriate, because it reflects how they were parented or how they occasionally parent when they lose their tempers. I’m not judging anyone else for how they raise their kids, seeing as I don’t have any, but it does make me want to send my parents a thank-you card. They believed, as MissGypsy does, that you treat your children as you expect to be treated. Meanspirited name-calling was simply not tolerated – at least not between parent and child. Which is not to say it wasn’t tolerated between us kids, who called each other every name in the book, when we weren’t beating each other up, but my father would have cut out his tongue before calling me a “pig” or a “shit.” I honestly can’t imagine using such language to any child of mine.
I thought the message was emotionally abusive and borderline threatening, with all the talk of “I’m coming out there to straighten you out and after I do, you won’t do this again.”
And I think the issues of whether Bassinger should have released the tape to the media, or what a mess she might be as a person, or what a brat Ireland might be, to all be beside the point. Nothing justifies launching that sort of tirade on an 11 year old. At best, Baldwin needs to learn better parenting skills. For all I know so does Bassinger, but we don’t have a tape of her calling her own daughter an inconsiderate pig.
I don’t see how this is any of our business, but who hasn’t blown up at their kids? I don’t see th big deal. It’s not a great parenting moment but how many of us would like to be judged by our worst moment of parenting?
I think there are two instances where he crosses the line in that tirade – calling her a “pig” and insulting her mother, but I’m not going to assume that this is representative of all his interactions with her. Most parents have lost it and said things they wish they could take back.
If, I say if Alec is an abusive father and husband, it may well be that Ms Basinger made up her mind that neither she nor her daughter will ever suffer in silence again. I can maaaaybe see that someone with that kind of determination might say, “Be damned to the court order, I’m not going to sit silently by and let this happen for another ten years!”
I’m not saying it would be right to do so. The right thing would have been to use that recording as evidence in your case for getting a restraining order, a custody judgment, or for withholding visitation rights. But I can understand how a woman might well resolve not to passively put up with verbal abuse any longer.
Other than that, I got nothin’ to say. None of my business how they parent their child, nor is it safe to draw inferences based on tabloid headlines and a tape recording — what, a mere two minutes of the child’s eleven-year life caught on tape?
Of course, now that this two minutes is drawing out into weeks and months, it reinforces my belief that this was not the right way to use that tape recording.
The tape was released after Basinger already got a ruling from the Judge that Baldwin can’t see the daughter until after a hearing in June. Lawyers were making the point that she had nothing whatsoever to gain by releasing the tape and that they wouldn’t put it past Baldwin’s people to do to try to discredit her.
Yea, that really happened. The man is in a custody dispute and he tapes himself calling his daughter names?
I’ve heard him trash Basinger in interviews before. I don’t think he’s playing with a full deck, frankly.
Eh, I’ve heard and said worse.
If any of you shocked and disgusted Dopers would like to have a summer with my ADD/Asperger’s testosterone-challenged fourteen year old so you can correctly and consistently discipline him without ever losing your temper or insulting him, my email’s in my profile.
The word going around is that it was Ireland herself who sent the recording to the TMZ site. Based on, the owner of the site said on CNN, “I can’t disclose who sent it to me, but I assure you we acquired it legally, and I know Ireland is okay with it.”
That’s not entirely implausible. Basinger would be more likely to choose Entertainment Tonight or Extra. But a website like TMZ – trashy, but gets a lot of hits – would be more up an 11 y/o’s alley. Perhaps she’s trying to reclaim power. I can well imagine her thinking, “Everybody thinks my dad is this great guy who just gets bent out of shape sometimes. Well, I’ll show them!” So Basinger may be innocent in this, or at worst, did not discourage her daughter from pursuing this after Ireland told her what she’d decided to do.
And to those of you who are saying, “Big deal, I’ve gone off on my kids,” please remember what you went off on them for. I’m sure Queen Tonya’s son is a handful. I would also wager that his behavior is bad for him, not just hurting her fragile feelings. When I first heard the recording, I thought Ireland must have broken into the liquor cabinet and gotten herself and her teenybopper friends trashed on Dad’s $500 scotch whiskey. Something along those lines. This kind of talk would be appropriate in that instance. But what he’s basically saying is, “How dare you not love me enough? I’ll make you! Me me me! I’M humiliated, not YOU who’s caught in the middle of this!” Not going to help this situation, I don’t think.
(And this is trivial, I know, but I’m not sure the term “tape” is accurate. It was probably some kind of digital recording. Mr. Rilch: “Did you tape ‘Lost’ for me?” Me: “No, but I recorded it.”)
Regardless of the provocation, I think calling your child a pig and telling her she doesn’t have the brains of a human being is far, far beyond the pale. Things like this, coming from a parent can have lifelong harmful effects on a child. Although I’ve thoroughly disliked Baldwin’s politics I’ve admired him tremendously as an actor (and SNL host). I doubt that I’ll be able to regard him with admiration ever again after this episode. (And as an aside, if this is how he handles disappointment and anger perhaps Bassinger had perfectly good reason to divorce him, and then to try to keep her daughter away from him as much as possible.)
Whoosh…
I really can’t see TMZ dealing with a minor with all the lawsuits they’ve had. It’s plausable that whomever gave them the tape said that Ireland was aware of it.
I’m not saying that what Alec did was OK. People flip out on their kids, but not like that over a missed phone call. The guy has anger issues, and they have come up elswhere in his life from what I have read. Even if it was Ireland that released the tapes to the press, there is no doubt she is doing it with her mothers influence.
I’ve seen how these hostile divorces go. Kim has full control over what that girl thinks and there is nothing that Alec can do. Whoever released these tapes to the press, it was a political stunt. It was backhanded and dispicable. Alec needs help, but he’s fighting a losing battle. What Alec needs is a chance to win.
Hehe…
Reflects on how I was parented? I have one of the tightest relationships with my direct family that youn can imagine. We had our battles but they were short lived. My parents never raised a finger at me. We would make the Huxtable’s look disfunctional. I will soon be the fourth PhD of the hard sciences in my direct family. We will be very valuable members of our society wherever we are. So however my family brought me up, as far as I’m concerned it worked out for the best. The only people I feel sorry for is the overly sanitized world you intend to bring your childeren up in. The minute reality hits them on the head, they’re going to run crying, and nobody’s gonna care.
You can continue your political grandstanding about how this is battery, child abuse, and whatever all you want. Don’t you ever fucking insult my family.
Yeah, context does matter, you’re right. I still think the recording stops miles short of being abusive, we can agree he sounds like an ass and not think he’s The Worlds Worst Parent Evah.
You’re not the only person saying that they’ve gone off on their kids, or their parents went off on them. It’s not the act of ranting; it’s the context.
This is not a discipline problem. This came about because of a custody dispute. Father who’s anxious not to become estranged from his daughter reacts by behaving in a way that’s likely to make her estranged from him. I think this argument needs to be framed properly. Leave out the testimonies about parents going off on a kid who hasn’t cleaned his room in ten months. The anecdotes that apply here are the ones about custody disputes and visitation rights.
If there’s anyone here who has ever spoken directly to their non-custodial kid in this manner, who has reacted to a perceived slight by threatening the child, and the child was won over and stopped avoiding the parent’s calls, if that’s what they were doing, and the relationship was salvaged because non-custodial parent called the child a pig with no brains, that would be relevant. How your parents made you do your homework is not relevant.
Here’s his Conan O’Brien meltdown. It’s at the time of the impeachment of Clinton. Highlight is when he very animatedly says if this were another country
Even to the “we’d kill their families!” the mob cheers. He says he was just being funny.
[nervous laughter]Heh heh heh…heh.[/nervous laughter]
Baldwin’s a nut. Always has been.