Alec Baldwin’s book “A Promise to Ourselves. A Journey through Fatherhood and Divorce” is out. In his book, Baldwin describes the hurdles his ex-wife Kim Bassinger and the family court system of California put him through. Baldwin struggled with California’s biased justice system that denied him the right to have a normal relation with his daughter Ireland and gave Bassinger carte blanche to alienate her; the common lot of fathers in this bleak judicial landscape in the US. The only thing that Baldwin has not shared with the average divorced father is to be driven to poverty with overburdening child support payments. He might well be ordered to pay unfair child support; in any case, he will be able to meet his obligations.
Given that the American public barely knows about violation of fathers’ rights, that the silence of the politicians on this issue is deafening, Baldwin’s book is truly good news. It has already raised awareness; it might also boost the fathers’ rights movement, which is in infancy. Yet some of us –Dean Tong– disagree: Baldwin can be no poster child for the fathers’ rights movement.
Why would we need a poster boy in the first place? Fathers’ rights is not some charitable cause that would best be promoted by a Laura Bush. We don’t need a Saint; we need to have the issues of shared custody of children, fair child support payments, criminalization of parental alienation, made part of the political agenda. Baldwin’s book can help for that matter.
Dean Tong’s fear that Baldwin might be the wrong messenger is based on the “infamous message” Baldwin left on the answering machine for his daughter. He had not heard about his daughter in a long time, he was pissed and called her “pig.” Bassinger did not fail to use this message to claim the Baldwin was an unfit father. To me, this makes Baldwin real. At the end of one of the supervised visitations, my girls verbally assailed me with the accusations that their mother had put in their mouth. I told them to “shut up” and sicko-ex wife pressed criminal charges against me after the visit. Children’s alienation is a crime, being pissed is not; Ireland will understand and forgive.
My article stated, too, that Baldwin did not contest and entered into anger management classes. That is consistent with a man, a celebrity no less who is lobbying parental alienation, who is culpable of domestic abuse or who openly expresses his anger in court.
As someone who has lobbied for changes in the law and public policy for father’s issues in this country over the past quarter century and who was falsely accused of child sexual assault and domestic violence, and did NOT enter into any type of sex offender therapy or anger control program, I find it disingenuous for dads to back Baldwin and his book. Moreover, he chose NOT to enlist someone with the credentials of a Dr. Sanford Braver or Dr. Stephen Baskerville to buttress his credibility and write the Foreword or Afterword to his memoir.
Dean Tong
abuse-excuse.com
Dear Dean,
I might regret as you do that Baldwin’s book does not include a foreword from Baskerville or Braver. Although I have not read Balwin’s book, I am inclined to think that his acceptance to enter anger management classes might have been purely opportunistic and did not convey a sincere acknowledgment that he needed it. With family courts, sometimes you have to play the absurd game they ask you to play. Personally when I divorced sicko ex-wife, she requested that I attend parenting classes and I refused.
Pierre
Dear Mr. Tong,
I read this blog every now and then as an individual curious –but not overly interested– in the subject. My children-rearing years are long gone and I’m not planning on giving parenthood another twirl.
I was once a divorced father of two small boys who didn’t get along at all with his ex wife but who never had to confront the ordeals described by you and Mr. Lacour.
While you and Mr. Lacour are experts in this painful subject, I suspect that Alec Baldwin’s book is geared to make an impression on the general public. Namely, me and people like me, and not you, Mr. Lacour and people like you and him.
I (like the vast majority of Americans) do not go through your long and suffocating via crucis. I also don’t know who you are, and I know even less about Dr. Braver and Dr. Baskerville. But I do know very well who Alec Baldwin is and, like those millions upon millions of Americans, will pay much more attention to what he has to say about the subject than to what you, Mr. Lacour and Drs. Braver and Baskerville may believe or assert on this issue.
I think that in judging and disqualifying Baldwin and his book and his specific actions from your high horse, you entirely miss the point I think Mr. Lacour is making — that Baldwin’s celebrity and his book will give new impulse to your so-far-obscure cause. I hope they do.
But if you insist in marching only with the pure and the virtuous, you’ll go from being a muted minority to becoming an ignored sect.
In any case, I wish you the best. I can’t even imagine the depths of your pain.