Dad ain’t right!

From: Katrina Onstad
To: Andre Mayer
Subject: Bad dads, Hollywood style

Hey Andre,

What’s wrong with you people? Not German-Canadians, but dads. You’re also one of those, and your ilk has been generating some serious pop culture controversy lately: Alec Baldwin unleashing on his 11-year-old daughter in a leaked phone message; Will Ferrell being browbeaten by a toddler in a controversial short film; Chris Rock facing a paternity suit. Let’s not forget  scientifically affirmed father Larry Birkhead learning he’s the daddy of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby with a fist pump and this dignified comment: “I told you so!” Such reverence for the sanctity of the paternal role; such love of hair gel.

We’ve been “bump watching” and fixating on celebrity moms for a while now.  Finally, dads are taking up some tabloid magazine space, but they seem to be getting a harsher treatment than moms (with a few exceptions, like the recent People cover where Patrick Dempsey was bestowed the Brad Pitt Daddy Halo for having twins. Guess they airbrushed out the non-famous mama). Are these celebrity dads just plain lousy, or are we quicker to condemn men (and celebrate women) when it comes to parenting?

Let’s start with the Alec Baldwin tape, a phone message he left his 11-year-old daughter, Ireland, in which he verbally attacks her for not picking up when they were scheduled to talk to each other. It’s pretty ugly: he calls her a “little pig,” and says her mother, Kim Basinger, is “a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn’t care about what you do.” Another dad I know — my partner, and father of my two kids — was so appalled to find me listening to the recording online, he made me turn it off (he’s the conscience of the family). He was right: this personal, shameful moment between Baldwin and his daughter should never have become public. I’d like to think I listened only because my job required it, but of course, it’s unjustifiable voyeurism.

Talk shows, “news” shows (well, is The Today Show news? It gave the story seven minutes) and bloggers are going berserk; the right-wing press is cheerfully identifying Baldwin as “a liberal.” All the tape does is serve as an excruciating reminder that people in divorces can be unbelievably cruel to each other, and the fallout lands on the children. When Baldwin was going nuts on his daughter, he was really talking to his ex-wife. It’s an ugly moment of parenting, but is the strong reaction justified, or does it say something about what we think of celebrity dads these days?

To: Katrina
From: Andre
Subject: Bad dads, Hollywood style

Hey Katrina,

Regarding the Baldwin blow-up — the strong reaction is, if not justified, then at least understandable. Any time an actor strays from the script or a well-worn quip, it gets people’s attention — particularly if it’s nasty, as this certainly is. I can’t say I was impressed by Baldwin’s word choice, but given how palpably angry he was, I’m surprised it wasn’t more expletive-laden. It’s all moot, anyway — as you say, this should never have gone out to the press; it’s a private conversation (or tirade). For that reason, I’m loath to draw any greater conclusions from it.

Actor Brad Pitt holds daughter Zahara Jolie-Pitt. (Junko Kimura/Getty Images)

That said, I agree with you that the tabloid press has developed a fascination with dads. The schmoopy pics of Brad Pitt and his brood or Patrick Dempsey and his twin boys seem unusual — and not just because of the unlikelihood of two twins sleeping soundly at the same time. We aren’t used to seeing male celebrities embracing fatherhood. Note the word “seeing” — naturally, male celebs over the years have had children and swooned over them. But now, more and more seem willing to be pictured in that state of rapture. Yay for them, although I still reserve the right to wince with nausea. (Excuse me a moment.)

Of course, the tabloids are much more interested in bad dads — they sell more papers. Hence, the lavish coverage of the custody battle for Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter. Not only is seven-month-old Dannielynn saddled with a frightful name, but, up until recently, there was a veritable conga-line of men claiming to be her dad. I don’t remember seeing anything like it before — a parade of men risking their dignity to take charge of a small, defenceless babe and, more importantly, her vast inheritance.

To: Andre
From: Katrina
Subject: Bad dads, Hollywood style

I think that long queue was about something besides money, too: Anyone who proved to be the real baby-daddy stood to gain some legitimacy of his own. Face it, that was one sorry lineup of contenders: Smith’s reportedly controlling lawyer, Howard K. Stern; her shadowy ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead; and Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband (!). Each one, like a politician on the campaign trail, could benefit from a little baby-kissing PR makeover. By basking in the glow of Dannielynn’s lovability, these dodgy characters get lovable, too. 

Once he won daddy status, Birkhead stripped off his shirt, and posed skin to skin with Dannielynn in Ok! magazine, giving some of us uncomfortable flashbacks to those once-popular ‘80s dorm room posters of Shirtless Guy and Baby. (Come to think of it, that poster is one of the few really positive iconic depictions of fatherhood of our time, though it ain’t exactly Raphael’s Madonna and Child.)

Singer and actor Bing Crosby with his twins, Bennie and Phillip, and other son, Garry. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

I guess there have always been carefully orchestrated photo-ops of Hollywood parents with their children. Off the top of my head, I can come up with two: Joan Crawford and Bing Crosby, neither of whom was exactly writing parenting handbooks. But Bing’s an exception. It’s usually mothers who pose with baby and wax poetic in the press about the virtues of motherhood, especially lately: reporters loved to exploit Jennifer Garner’s new mom identity during the promotion of Catch and Release. Parenthood is the ultimate way for an un-relatable superstar to connect with the masses: “Hey, generic middle-income, married with children, fan-base: Do you hate baby food? Me, too! See my movie!”  Witness Tom Cruise’s sudden emergence from hibernation last year with shaggy Suri just when public opinion was surging from love-him to tolerate-him to hate-that-freak.

Of course, this kind of public attention turns kids into props and marketing tools. What’s weird is that it doesn’t usually bother people when it’s artfully done in Vanity Fair, but a recent, blatant kid-manipulation has proved more peeving to some. Will Ferrell released a short film called The Landlord last week online to promote his new production company, Gary Sanchez Productions. Spoiler alert: It features a confrontation between Ferrell and a belligerent toddler who spews foul language. I thought it was truly hilarious, but reception seems to be divided amongst the 1.5 million people who have hit it so far. Many of the angrier posters are appalled that Ferrell and his writing partner Adam McKay — who happens to be the little girl’s father — would coach a kid to say things like: “I need to get my drink on.” Were you bugged, Andre?

To: Katrina
From: Andre
Subject: Bad dads, Hollywood style

Bugged, yes. Not enough to get worked up into a froth, mind you, but troubled all the same. The incongruity of it makes it funny, but prompting a kid to utter filthy language is a questionable exercise. I read somewhere that McKay was downplaying the whole thing by saying that Pearl (his daughter) is at a parrot-like stage of development, where she’ll repeat anything you say to her, without retaining the words. Sounds like he’s backpedalling. Kids are sponges; they take it all in. Whether or not Pearl remembers the first time she heard the word “bitch,” it’s now in her vocabulary. Most of us are trying to keep words like that out of our kids’ mouths for as long as possible.

OK, that was a trifle sanctimonious. Sorry. For the record, I enjoyed The Landlord — though for me, the funniest aspect is Ferrell’s totally straight response (“You need to relax”). Not to play the gender card, but I really couldn’t imagine a mother using her child for such vulgar ends. I have no evidence or even a theory to support this. Using Pearl as comic bait is symptomatic of this obnoxious “alternadad” trend, where men try to offset the hardships of parenthood by imposing their pop-cultural values — their favourite music, their favourite films, their favourite punchlines — on their unsuspecting, undiscerning offspring.

Naturally, your kids are going to pick up on your likes and dislikes. But stop trying to turn them into trick ponies. As you no doubt know, Katrina, trying to get your children to “perform” — even something as innocuous as saying “Thank you” — is a futile exercise. Or maybe my kids are just exhibiting early-onset rebellion.

To: Andre
From: Katrina
Subject: Bad dads, Hollywood style

Maybe you shouldn’t have given your two-year-old a tiny motorcycle and a pack of cigarettes for Christmas if you didn’t want a rebel on your hands.

Will Ferrell is chastised by a toddler in this screen shot from the controversial short film The Landlord. (YouTube)

I know what you mean about hipster parents keeping a vise grip on youth by pretending their kids are just really funny little people they happen to hang out with (alternamoms do it, too). Yes, there are hints of ironic parenting in The Landlord, but I just don’t think that girl is going to be damaged by the half-hour it took her to mimic those lines. The sweet way she beckons to her mother at the end — “Come, mommy” — suggests she’s well taken care of. I’d be more worried if her entire identity, and therefore, childhood, was about performing. The world should shudder instead for eight-year-old dancing monkey Bindi Irwin and her future as a human husk Olsen twin.

But back to the dad thing: There’s a new non-fiction book out called The Feminine Mistake by American magazine writer Leslie Bennetts that advocates mothers returning to the work world for fulfilment. To strike that elusive work-life balance, Bennetts implores women to get their men to pitch in at home, something that comes across as a hate-on for husbands and daddies, according to an enraged recent review in the New York Sun. “Husbands will get away with whatever you let them get away with when it comes to sharing housework,” writes Bennetts.

This image of the lumpish, idiot, childlike dad is ubiquitous. Have you noticed how every cereal ad contains some moronic father hiding the Splenda Pops from his toddler? Maybe some of the new-found fascination with Hollywood dads, and the choice to spotlight the worst of the bunch, is linked to this unresolved battle of the sexes on the domestic and professional fronts. We still assume dads just don’t get it, and here comes Alec Baldwin to prove us right.

To: Katrina
From: Andre
Subject: Bad dads, Hollywood style

For me, the defining image of the “lumpish, idiot, childlike dad” has to be Kevin Federline — now there’s a louche for the ages. For a brief period there, while he was living with Britney and, one would hope, helping change his sons’ diapers, Federline had at least some of that legitimacy that you spoke of earlier. But since Brit dumped him, the OBD (Original Baby Daddy) is left satirizing his own sorry ass in a commercial for an insurance company.

Bennetts’s thoughts on fathers are regressive and insulting, no doubt. You do get an occasional whiff of a similarly condescending attitude in commercials, in family magazines and in asinine family comedies starring Steve Martin. The cliché is that men are clueless around kids, and I suppose the Baldwin imbroglio reinforces this.

Here’s what needs to happen: on behalf of his fellow celeb daddies, Brad Pitt needs to agree to a 12-page photo spread in Vanity Fair. In it, he and his growing brood (sans Angelina) are pictured in various scenes of domestic bliss: eating ice cream, having (gentle) pillow fights, curling up in Maddox’s bed to all read Curious George. C’mon! The epic lovey-doviness of it would be enough to wipe the misdeeds of Baldwin, K-Fed and Dannielynn’s baby daddies from our collective memory!