Events Calendar
In This Section
Most Read Stories
Police accuse bank robbery suspect of gobbling up note (with dashcam video)
Man found dead in North Akron home is identified
Dad accused of forcing son into field, killing him
Coventry man killed in crash at I-77 ramp
NFL star Chris Spielman's wife loses cancer battle
College student mistaken for deer, shot to death
Browns' roster nearly devoid of consistent players
Review: You've never seen 'Sound of Music' like this
Blogs:
Pets:
Cat-loving chihuahua suckles seven abandoned kittens
The Heldenfiles:
Friday Night Notebook
Patrick McManamon:
For your Saturday entertainment …
Akron Zips:
Hitchens leads Zips in second-half comeback
Tribe Matters:
Seven players added to Tribe’s 40-man roster
Cleveland Browns:
Holmgren expresses interest in Browns position
Kent State Sports:
Kent State blown out in second half, loses to Temple 47-13
Cleveland Cavaliers:
Gameblog: Cavs vs. Philadelphia 76ers
Buckeye Blogging:
OSU – Michigan college football rivals meet in Baghdad
Varsity Letters:
Four area football teams play tonight
All Da King's Men:
Headed For Disaster
Blog of Mass Destruction:
Will Health Care Reform Pass?
Akron Law Café:
Health Care Financing Reform: (68) Democrats Secure 60 Votes for Cloture
See Jane Style:
Vintage Chic
Car Chase:
TIME TO GET YOUR COLLECTOR CARS WINTERIZED
Let's Talk Real Estate:
Silverdome Potentially SOLD!
Ohio Travels with Betty:
George is looking for a Thanksgiving buffet in Akron.
Sound Check:
Steely Dan Plays "The Royal Scam" at E.J. Thomas Hall
HRLite House:
Colloquium at University of Akron
Akron Gamer:
Nintendo's Mario endures even as games come and go
Alec Baldwin's book explores the difficulties of fatherhood after divorce from Kim Basinger
By Jennifer A. Kingson
New York Times
Published on Sunday, Oct 19, 2008
Survivors of a gory divorce think their stories are the worst of all, and the actor Alec Baldwin is no exception. He may have a bit of a leg to stand on — though Christie Brinkley deserves at least honorable mention — for the ugly public spectacle of his custody battle with the actress Kim Basinger.
Most divorced people have horror stories, but seldom do they involve a nasty phone message leaked to the gossip Web site TMZ.com (Baldwin called his daughter a ''rude, thoughtless little pig'') and an appearance on The View as an attempt at redemption.
Baldwin warns readers that his new book, A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce, is not a celebrity tell-all, and he remains pretty faithful to that vow. But he still manages to dish up some fairly good stuff: how they bonded as a couple (over the $9 million judgment against her for backing out of the film Boxing Helena); how she broke the news to him that she was pregnant (in the bathroom of her Los Angeles home, with her personal assistant on hand); and how he was served with divorce papers (on a street in Manhattan, while preparing to shoot a movie he directed). Fans of 30 Rock, the NBC show for which Baldwin just won an Emmy, should know that the book gives it scant attention.
First, there is a bit of straightforward narrative about the arc of his relationship with Basinger. Things seem to have gone south after their daughter, Ireland, was born, and Basinger won an Oscar for L.A. Confidential. Once his wife had a baby and her choice of scripts, ''I clearly sensed that by then I had outlived my usefulness to her,'' Baldwin writes.
Soon they start bickering over whether to raise the child on Long Island (his pick) or in Los Angeles (hers); Basinger leaves for California with their child and the legal fireworks begin. By the end of the book, the case has dragged on more than six years, swallowed more than $3 million in legal fees and seems far from over.
In between, Baldwin, who wrote the book with Mark Tabb, cuts away to make points about Divorce Inc. At his best he gives a good description of the detachment and battle-weariness of the professionals he meets along the way: the custody evaluator who stares mutely as he pours out his anguish, the lawyers who seem more interested in currying favor with the judge than in helping him.
Particularly vivid are Baldwin's tales of shuttling back and forth to court-ordered obligations while making movies. During the filming of The Cat in the Hat, for instance, he had to juggle anger-management therapy, parenting classes and custody-evaluation sessions (not that he gives this as an excuse for the film). Later he must submit to videotaped depositions during which Basinger's lawyers ''alternately tittered and snorted, out of the camera's view, after most of my answers.''
Though Baldwin's experiences make for good reading, the book gets clunky when it veers onto other paths, as it often does. At one point he includes a long, highly skippable interview with Jeannie Suk, a professor at Harvard Law School who shares her thoughts on how feminism has poisoned the family-law system.
Equally intrusive are the case studies of anonymous men who have gone through the divorce wringer. Their stories are meant to punch up Baldwin's points about the unfairness of the system, particularly toward fathers, but they mainly serve to distract.
Much of the narrative is meant to set up a discussion of something called parental alienation syndrome, or PAS. The term was coined by the Columbia University clinical professor of psychiatry Richard A. Gardner, who was an advocate for fathers in custody battles. It refers to a psychological campaign by a parent with primary custody to ravage a child's relationship with the noncustodial parent. The ''promise to ourselves'' in the book's title refers to the commitment Baldwin says fathers must make to pursuing relationships with their children after PAS has set in.
''Since Gardner started the discussion on PAS, debate has swirled over whether it is a real syndrome or junk science,'' Baldwin writes. ''At issue is not whether or not some parents try to turn a child against the other parent. Rather, the controversy swirls around whether PAS rises to the level of a psychological syndrome that must be treated by mental health professionals, as well as what that treatment should be.''
Baldwin suggests that a prolonged bout with PAS led to the notorious voice message he left for his daughter. Although ''seeing Ireland was truly the tonic for anything,'' he writes, more often than not he was kept away from her by rigid visitation rules. Frequently, he says, he would call his daughter during court-ordered access hours, only to find her phone was turned off.
On the night in question, he had ducked out of a Manhattan restaurant to call Ireland. ''I had dialed that phone for more than a week and only gotten a voice mail. This had happened for years now, and for no good reason,'' he writes. Finally, he says, ''When the beep came, I snapped.''
Although he is no literary craftsman, Baldwin gives poignant expression to the shortcomings of the law in deciding matters of the heart. For the bitter-with-baggage fathers whom he intends as his readers, he dispenses some advice (get a pre-nup), but the primary value of the book comes from his deeply felt observations about living through a divorce.
''When someone is sick, our society usually offers some means of care,'' Baldwin observes. ''When illness afflicts a marriage, however, the professionals who arrive on the scene often are there to prolong the bleeding, not to stop it.''
Survivors of a gory divorce think their stories are the worst of all, and the actor Alec Baldwin is no exception. He may have a bit of a leg to stand on — though Christie Brinkley deserves at least honorable mention — for the ugly public spectacle of his custody battle with the actress Kim Basinger.
Get the full article here.
Comments
Click here to post your comments
Posted 11:48 AM, 10/20/2008
Thank the stars for the Alec Baldwins among us especially for the celebrity power to go against the material powers, rejecting the credibility of PAS, and who destroy children and parents by intruding in family court with their entourage of law firms in tote, like Fulbright and Jaworski, Llp or a Haynes and Boone, Llp. One such group is Justice for Children, Houston, Texas who gave my daughters motehr not one but two free lawyers from Fulbright. Now 23 years of age, my daughter has been destroyed after they took her from me and gave her to her abusing mother. Curiously her mother was also out committing three felonies while she got their 'help'.
Just as the women's movement has deeply misandrist elements with its membership and constitution, the thinking and belief of Justice for Children is flawed in its DENIAL, believing that if a mother "'discloses' child sexual abuse on the part of the father", that she is correct and that this father "will retaliate by claiming Parental Alienation" in order to get custody. Thus with the myopia produced by being mired in sexism, this group has been blinded from truth. PAS is a thing that is not unlike the truth from which these groups must run.
May I suggest Anne Wilson Schaef's, When Society Becomes An Addict, Harper And Row, 1986. Or certainly Dr. Amy J. L. Baker's Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Healing The Ties that Bind.
