In Defense of Alec Baldwin
April 20th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
"Kim Basinger's mother has blasted her own daughter for wrecking relations between her ex-husband Alec Baldwin and the couple's daughter. Baldwin recently took Basinger to court in a bid to extend his custody terms after the actress allegedly violated a court imposed settlement, and now little Ireland's grandmother is speaking out about the court battle...she calls [Baldwin] 'wonderful,' adding, 'My heart is sad for Ireland. She's the one that's suffering the most. All this is killing her. I think Kim has tried to alienate Ireland from her father. Alec loves his daughter with all his heart. He really is a family man...I hate what [Kim] is doing.'"--The Irish Examiner, 12/30/05
Alec Baldwin blew his stack in this recently released voice mail message that Baldwin left his 12 year-old daughter Ireland. Baldwin definitely said things he should not have said, and should not have spoken to his child that way. However, the real issue here is not Baldwin's angry outburst but the vicious Parental Alienation campaign Baldwin has been subjected to for the past six years. A few points:
1) Basinger's Alienation campaign against Baldwin has been so bad and so hurtful both to Baldwin and Ireland that even Kim Basinger's mother has publicly condemned her daughter (see above).
2) Baldwin's frustration is understandable--he's trying hard to retain a relationship with his daughter in the face of Basinger's relentless attempts to drive him out of his child's life. Baldwin said:
"Once again, I have made an ass of myself trying to get to a phone...I'm tired of playing this game with you...you have insulted me for the last time. I don't give a damn that you're 12-years-old or 11-years-old, or a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn't care about what you do...you have humiliated me for the last time...This crap you pull on me with this goddamn phone situation that you would never dream of doing to your mother, and you do it to me constantly over and over again."
He said some things he definitely shouldn't have said, here and in the rest of the tape, but any parent in this situation would be angry.
3) There are times in any parent's life when the parent blows up at his or her child. There is not one parent reading this--not one--who can honestly say that they've never lost their temper with their children and said things that they should not have said. Those in the media moralizing at Baldwin are either hypocrites, have a faulty memory, or are such marginal parents that they never interacted with their kids enough to reach a real level of frustration. I was a teacher for many years, and Baldwin's tirade, while bad, is nowhere near as bad as some that I've heard. And sometimes the kids deserved it.
4) These tapes were leaked to the media by Basinger in violation of a court order. Basinger's purpose in leaking them was revenge against Baldwin and leverage in her court battle to drive Baldwin out of his daughter's life. Does anybody really think that Ireland's best interests are served by Basinger leaking this publicly?
Baldwin's lawyer, Viki Roberts, said, "Whatever happened yesterday was sealed and confidential...The mother and her lawyer leaked this sealed material in violation of a court order. Although Alec acknowledges that he should have used different language in parenting his child, everyone who knows him privately knows what he has been put through for the past six years....In the best interest of the child, Alec will do what the mother is pathologically incapable of doing - keeping his mouth shut and obeying the court order."
5) While Baldwin was over the top, sometimes kids need to be called to account for their behavior. Ireland had repeatedly defied her father and repeatedly broken commitments to him--any mother or father would and should be angry in that situation.
6) Baldwin tells Ireland he's going to "straighten her out," so the Basinger camp and its allies are calling this "threatening." I doubt this was any real threat--he was cracking down on his daughter's misbehavior, as any parent should. Physical abuse of daughters by their fathers is extremely rare, and there's no history of it between Baldwin and Ireland.
7) One tactic frequently employed by alienating mothers--including Basinger--is to drive the father crazy by employing alienation tactics, violating visitation orders, forbidding the father to speak to the child on the phone, poisoning the child's mind against the father, etc. This is done in an effort to provoke the father into blowing his top. And when he does, mom pretends to be a scared, quivering little lamb fearful of "his awful temper."
Basinger played it very well here, and Baldwin was foolish to allow himself to fall into her trap. I'm sure Basinger will now be telling us how traumatized Ireland is, and how she is fearful and needs therapy and time away from her father to recover from what he did to her. What Ireland really needs is time away from Basinger and her malignant alienation. I doubt any conflict between Ireland and Baldwin would last 10 minutes if not for Basinger's influence.
While we're moralizing at Baldwin for losing his temper, I would urge the reader to do the following: Below are several examples of Parental Alienation, drawn from John Stossel, transcripts of a recent California Supreme Court case, and various newspaper columns I've written over the past several years. Read the examples of Alienation while putting yourself in the place of the targeted parent. Then decide honestly whether in these situations you would never lose your temper.
Example #1
John Stossel, in his new book Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel–Why Everything You Know is Wrong, says he filmed an example of Parental Alienation for his TV show. He describes it as follows:
“We videotaped one such heartbreaking scene. A divorced father went to see his five kids for what he thought would be a full-day visit. He was entitled to that, under court order, and the court also ordered the mother not to discourage the children from spending time with their father. But she clearly had poisoned his children’s minds against him. The father just stood outside his ex-wife’s house and begged his children, ‘would you like to go out with me today?’ ‘No,’ said one kid after another. Then the mother ordered the kids back into her house.
“What comes through on the tape is the unbridled satisfaction of the mother and the helplessness of the father.”
Example #2
In the LaMusga case decided by the California Supreme Court in 2004, Gary LaMusga’s son’s kindergarten teacher testified about the tactics LaMusga’s ex-wife, Susan Navarro, used to try to turn his children against him. The kindergarten teacher explained that Navarro asked her to keep track of the time Gary spent volunteering in his little son’s kindergarten classroom so it could be deducted from his visitation time with his son.
According to the teacher, the LaMusga boy told her "my dad lies in court...if you tell the judge...he could talk to you" and said that his mom had told him this. The teacher testified:
"I finally sat down with him and told him that it was OK for him to love his daddy. I basically gave him permission to love his father. And he seemed brightened by that…”
The teacher continued:
"The next day that Gary had seen the kids he came to me the following morning and said,' what did you say to him?...He was so happy. He just greeted me with open arms...we had one of the best evenings that we have had in a long time.’ And I just shared with Gary at that point that I had given his son permission to love his father....I’m not sure that he was aware that he could do that."
Example #3
A four year-old boy is jumping up and down with joy.
"Daddy! Daddy!"
Dad gets out of the car.
"Daddy's here! Daddy's here!"
The boy is behind a locked screen door. He tries to open it.
"Daddy's here! Mommy, look, daddy's here!"
Dad knows he shouldn't open the door. He waits for his ex-wife to open the door. She doesn’t do it.
"This is my visitation time," Dad says, waving a court document.
Mom still won’t open the door.
The boy jumps up and down, saying "daddy, daddy.” He yanks on the screen door handle but still can’t get it open.
Dad looks at his little boy. He pauses, takes a deep breath, and walks back to his car.
The little boy doesn’t understand. Why won’t daddy come? Why is daddy walking away from him?
The little boy disappears inside the house.
Dad calls the police. When the officers arrive he shows them his court documents. The officers go inside to investigate. They come out a few minutes later.
"Your son says he doesn't want to see you,” the officer says. “There's nothing I can do. You'll have to deal with it in the court. I can't make him go with you if he doesn't want to."
Dad finally gets to see his kids three months later. The children spit on both him and their grandmother. Almost in unison they repeat “I don't want to be here. I want to go home with mommy, I don't want to be here. I want to go home with mommy, I don't want to be here. I want to go home with mommy.”
Example #4
After Jim L.’s wife divorced him and moved his daughters out of state, she sent the two girls fake or altered e-mails purporting to be Jim. Afterwards, Jim’s daughters refused to see him, explaining only “you know what you’ve done, you know what you said, you know what you wrote.”
Once when Jim flew to see his girls for his scheduled weekend visit, his ex-wife decided at the last minute to block the visit. Jim flew home on Sunday without having seen his girls. When he arrived at the airport back home he checked his messages and found a message from his ex-wife. On the recording his girls could be heard crying in the background. His ex-wife said:
“Jim, the girls are here at the restaurant waiting for you to come pick them up. You said you’d meet them here for breakfast and spend the day with them, and you didn’t show up. The girls are very upset. Jim, where are you?!?”
Example #5
Bill, a divorced dad, is a retired fireman. When his kids were young he occasionally had to work unscheduled weekend shifts with little warning. If an unexpected schedule change meant he had to work the weekend of his visitation with his children, his ex-wife would have his kids pack for a weekend with dad anyway and sit on the curb outside their house to wait for him. Hours would pass waiting for dad to come, but when the kids would knock on the door and ask mom if dad was going to show up, all she’d say is “he’ll be here.”
To learn more about Parental Alienation, click here.
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