20 April 2007

Alec Baldwin: Crazy Dad or one getting the shaft?

I don’t usually comment on things like this -mostly because it sounds so E! like - but the leaking of a voice mail message of a very pissed off Alec Baldwin seems to be designed to really splatter his name in the mud. His divorce from the no talent wife, Kim Basinger, has been bitter, and the two are using their daughter as bait in the ever increasing war of words between the two, but I think Basinger and her lawyer stepped over the line in releasing his diatribe.

I think any parent has a right to go ballistic once in a while over the things their kids do, whether they deserve it or not. This mamby pamby attitude that you can’t do these things is destroying the culture of what parents can say and do in raising their child. Language that he used, while maybe shocking to some more (really) liberal people, I find something he has a RIGHT to do.

Parents are afraid to say no to their kids, letting them walk all over them. I have no issue with a parent wacking a kid upside the head when they do something wrong. And no one outside that inner family group has a right to say anything about it.

Kids need discipline, they need to know that they have no rights until the age of 18. That their house -under both parents or one - is a dictatorship. Rules need to followed and the child MUST be held accountable for them when they break them.

But today’s kids -who’ve been brought up on MTV, where the see these rich kids get everything they want and talk to their parents like they’re a stranger on the street - don’t think they should have to wait for things. That they’re RIGHTS are being violated when Mom and Dad say no you can’t go out or no, if you want to buy that $120 T-shirt you find away to pay for it yourself.

Alec Baldwin -like many couple going through a bitter divorce (and being public figures, it makes everything they say and do some how become “news”) are sometimes painted into a corner. And since the divorce laws seem to always favor the parents, most of these men get screwed.

In the end, Baldwin will regret what he said on the VM, but like so many others, its something that happens in these type of splits.

I feel sorry for him, but mostly I feel sorry for the daughter, Ireland. Kids, no matter what, always end up in the middle.

1 comment:

kenny said...

I think that it is normal for parents to go off like that on there child once in a blue moon. As a kid you just tune it out and wait for them to apologize and tell you that they love you. Also you can tell from the message that he was probably frustrated and that he missed her. Are generation gets away with a lot. I've never have really been grounded and I've never have gotten a spanking. We talk back to are parents sooo much too. It will be interesting how are generation turns out.