Alec Baldwin's Daughter Is a Disgrace

I don't care if Alec Baldwin's daughter is 11 years old or 12 years old or however old she is, she is a disgrace and her treatment of her father is beyond the pale. It's hard not to feel sympathy for Baldwin as he outlines his grievances against the little monster in a telephone message that was released to TMZ. "Once again I've made an ass out of myself trying to get to a phone at a specific time," Baldwin angrily told his daughter dearest when she missed a previously scheduled telephone call. "I'm tired of playing this game with you. You have insulted me for the last time." He concluded by vowing to "straighten her out" when he sees her again.

Apparently this "rude, thoughtless little pig," as Baldwin called her, who doesn't "have the brains or the decency as a human being," either doesn't know or doesn't care how her inconsiderate actions affect her father. While not answering the telephone when your father calls may seem trivial, even the smallest of cruelties can be very hurtful to a parent. Fathers are extremely vulnerable and children should be very careful about what they say and do to them. Above all fathers need to know that their children love them. What Alec Baldwin's daughter did to him is the kind of thing that could emotionally scar him for life.

Even though Baldwin is a liberal, this is not a liberal or conservative issue. Some conservatives are using this incident to bash Hollywood or take the aging movie and TV star to task for his politics, but I think all fathers, liberal and conservative alike, know what Baldwin is going through and we should set aside our political differences and back him up. The star of TV's 30 Rock and of such films as Glengarry Glen Ross, The Cooler and The Departed is not someone who easily loses his temper, so his daughter's treatment of him must have been truly egregious to send him over the edge like that.

What Baldwin's daughter did to him is bad enough but it could have far-reaching implications. What if other children get the idea that they can behave as she did? As the daughter of a celebrity she is role model to youth so she needs to be extra careful about her behavior. Her reprehensible conduct could set off a host of copycat incidents where children insult their parents and then sneer, "Well, Alec Baldwin's daughter did it so it must be OK." I hope our children understand that just because a celebrity's daughter does something, that does not make it right.

I also feel very sympathetic about the plight of the girl's mother, Oscar-winning actress Kim Basinger (LA Confidential). After all, under the custody agreement she has with the Oscarless Baldwin, she has to live with the little brat. I'm sure she was frustrated by having to rely on coddling liberal activist judges to straighten her daughter out and felt that the only way to nip this problem in the bud was to defy a court order and embarrass her daughter by releasing this tape to the media. Hillary Clinton may think it takes a village to raise a child, but a global village is a lot more effective when it comes to disciplining a child. Airing her family's dirty linen on the Internet and subjecting her daughter to public humiliation is the only way to make sure this never happens again. There is nothing like being the butt of cruel jokes from kids in school to keep a child on the straight and narrow.

I'm glad to see that Baldwin and Basinger have thrown out Dr. Spock's outdated book, Baby and Child Care, which created a generation of spoiled baby boomers, and are using new technology such as the Internet to help raise their daughter. I think their actions will inspire parents around the world to post their own humiliating audio clips and pictures of their children to their blogs. The next time your child throws a tantrum, just threaten to post a video of it to YouTube where all their friends can see. That should quiet them down. The Internet opens up a host of potential avenues for embarrassing your children into behaving. However, there are some tried and true methods that parents have used for centuries that Baldwin and Basinger might also want to try, such as threatening to sell your children to gypsies. If there is one idea I have strived to instill in my children it is that having parents is a privilege not a right.

Parents should be honest with their children and I think Baldwin did the right thing by not hypocritically hiding his contempt for his ex-wife when he told his daughter that her mother is a "pain in the ass." I think we shield our children too much from reality. They need to grow up and face facts. Children should also be held accountable when their actions are causing a rift between parents. Some liberal psychiatrists claim parents who divorce shouldn't let their kids believe that they are at fault. But I think if the kids are to blame for breaking up their parents they should be forced to take full responsibility. Some narcissistic kids will selfishly exploit any angle, even going so far as to pit one divorced parent against the other and use them as pawns to further their own selfish agendas instead of thinking about what is best for their parents. Perhaps Alec Baldwin's daughter should be reminded that there is a whole network of foster parents who could use the extra few hundred bucks a month they would get from taking her in.

Professor Stephen Bainbridge has another good suggestion: hand her over to Don Imus. At least, that's what I think he is proposing since it's a bit difficult to tell what the point of his post is.

So I hope Alec Baldwin's ungrateful little wretch realizes just how good she has it. She may have succeeded in hurting her parents this time, but in the end, if she's not careful, she'll find out her parents can hurt her a lot more.

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Jon Swift, Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, Oscars, Academy Awards, Hollywood, Dr. Spock,Child Care, Politics, Film, Movies, Movie