ho among us can judge Alec Baldwin?  This is the title of a blog entry by Stacey Parker AAB, at the Huffington Post, that I ran across.  She intones that we should refrain from making a negative assessment of Baldwin given that all we have to go on is a two-minute diatribe by Baldwin against his 11-year old daughter.  The general line of argument of the entry reminds me of a kind of Jerry Springer scenario where someone sleeping with, say, her daughter’s 16-year old son exclaims “Don’t judge me unless you have walked in my shoes”.  As it turns out, some of AAB’s commentators agree with her, which surprises me to no end.  Their agreement is what prompted this entry.  As I point at the end, there is a respect in which I have an ounce of sympathy for Mr. Baldwin.

Now, the spirit of AAB’s point, and the point of several commentaries, is very interesting on two accounts.  One pertains to the issue of context; the other pertains to the issue of not judging without having enough of the facts. 

It is true enough that background and context makes all the difference in the world.  What might be a belittling expression between Mary and John may very well be a term of endearment between Susan and Opidopo.  It is, surely, part of the very richness of humanity that two human beings can take a term that has one set of connotations in the general public and give it a completely different set of connotations between them.  “You are my sweet damn whore” uttered by John to Mary can work if in fact what Mary understands John to mean is that she is the love his life.  This would be surprising, no doubt.  But if that is what Mary understands John to be saying, then there really isn’t anything else to for the rest of us say.  

Yet, things are not quite as open-ended as Stacey Parker AAB and company would have us to believe.  For surely “You are my damn sweet whore” cannot be uttered with any tone of voice whatsoever and with any cadence whatsoever and still convey “You are the love of my life”. 

AAB is right in noting that context makes all the difference in the world, which is precisely why there is all the difference in the world between a single denigrating remark and a two-minute diatribe.

“You are my damn sweet whore” can perhaps work when said in the right way and surrounded on either side by lots of other affectionate remarks.  Not so, however, if John’s utterance to Mary is part of a sustained outburst of utterly vicious remarks:

You are nothing to me.  You have no value; no importance.  You are my damn sweet whore.  And you are a fool to take yourself to have any more significance than that in my life.  You are not worth anything, you stupid fool.  

No one hearing that utterance could seriously wonder whether John is really warming Mary up for a nice evening of intimate sex.  

Now, what counts as judging a person in the pejorative sense in which it is typically used these days?  The answer is simple: Not having enough of the facts?  And not having enough of the facts is not to be confused with not having all the facts.  Oftentimes, one does not need all of the facts in order to make an accurate assessment of things. 

Suppose that Sue and Opidopo have had a most tumultuous marriage, in that each has falsely accused one another in quite vicious ways.  Nonetheless, as I look out my window, I see that Opidopo has Sue on the ground hitting her and forcing her to have sex with him as she violently screams and resists him at every turn.  Well, if anything is true, it is true that I hardly need to know the history of their tumultuous relationship in order to know that what Opidopo is doing right now constitutes an egregious moral wrong. 

Everything we know about the divorce between Alec Baldwin and Kim basinger—and I must confess to not knowing much—suggests that it was a very bitter one.  I concede for the sake of argument that Basinger has falsely accused him of one thing and then another; and that Baldwin has returned the compliment.  And let me also assume that Basinger has in various ways used their daughter, Ireland, as a weapon against Baldwin.  Thus, I want to assume, if only for the sake of argument, that Baldwin has reason to be angry and outraged.  But at whom?  Ireland or Basinger?   

The trick, of course, is getting from the foregoing truths to excusing or justifying the 2-minute vitriolic attack by Baldwin in a phone message to their daughter, Ireland, whose is only 11-years old.  This is particularly so since what Baldwin is lambasting her for is not being there to answer the phone when he calls at the agreed upon time—not some fulsome bit of immoral behavior: skinning a baby alive or putting rat poison in the milk or cutting off the legs of dogs or spilling goat blood upon little old ladies or some such horrendously ignoble deed.  Had Ireland done something of this sort I could at least make sense of utter outrage on his part.  I would still think the outburst neither excusable nor justified.  All the same, I could at least understand how it could come about.  

But what we have is a war between two titans (Baldwin and Basinger) with an innocent child being used as the main weapon in the arsenal.  And what we also have is a 2-minute uninterrupted diatribe.  Given the circumstances, going on two minutes at that level of hostility towards an 11-year old is despicable.  I fail to see how AAB and various of the commentators could possibly have thought otherwise.  

We know all that we need to know in order to make the judgment that Baldwin’s remarks were woefully inappropriate.  We most certainly do not need to know the details of the hostilities between Baldwin and Basinger.  Precisely the same would be true had it been Basinger rather than Baldwin leaving such a hostile message.

Joe Galuski of radio station 570 WSYR (Syracuse NY) suggests that the whole thing was some sort of set up.  Perhaps.  But this truth, if it is a truth, does not excuse or justify anything about Baldwin’s diatribe.  

For what it is worth, there is one respect in which I actually have an ounce of sympathy of Alec Baldwin.  Several people commenting on AAB’s essay suggested that Baldwin’s diatribe would not scar Ireland for life.  And some noted that they had experienced worse.  Unfortunately, this speaks to one of the drawbacks of technology.  Time was when a horrific utterance could easily enough fade into the past precisely because there was no easy technological way for the typical person to hold on to the message containing the words, let alone to arrange for all the world to have access to it.  Alas, technology now permits anger and hurts to be nursed because we can read/play and re-read/re-play and re-read/re-play and forward here and there the message (email or voice recording) containing the words that pained us so. 

Without a doubt, Mr. Alec Baldwin is unfortunate in this regard.  But there is a silver lining:  Perhaps this bad luck for him could be Ireland’s good luck if it should happen that owing to this extraordinary embarrassment Alec Baldwin should vow to become a better father and to not let the hostility between him and Basinger ever again spill over upon their child.