Question Celebrity

Alec's not available right now, but if you leave a message after the beep ... (Paul Hawthorne - Getty Images)

Happy Mother's Day! To celebrate, let's dog pile on bad dad Alec Baldwin some more, shall we?

Actually, I don't have it in me. Like everyone else in the known universe, I heard the leaked voice mail of the actor chewing out his tweenage daughter, Ireland, (for not picking up her cellphone when he called at the appointed hour), and yet I failed to see the monster that so many other shocked fans (and non-fans) and expert commentators saw. (I once interviewed Baldwin for a Post profile. Of course, he was exceptionally kind that day; that's how movie stars are around open notebooks and tape recorders. And much has changed since then -- his career perked up considerably; he got an Oscar nomination. One thing, however, is the same: He was in a nasty custody fight then, and he's still having the same nasty custody fight now. How long can something like that go on?) So I hear the monster roar on voice mail, and yet the person I feel the most sympathy for in this situation is (and you're gonna hate me for this) Alec Baldwin. Maybe I would be a terrible parent, after all.

But I do know that, at Ireland's age, most of us were often . . . oh, what would you call it . . . ah, yes, Baldwin nailed it: rude, thoughtless little pigs. Woe betide ye parents for picking us up late from basketball practice, or arriving too early, or embarrassing us in any way, or bringing McDonald's when we'd specifically requested Hardee's. To be adolescent is to live the delusional life of a child star. I don't know about your childhood, but in mine, you could get away with about two minutes of primadonnitis before getting screamed at, in the car, in private. (Catharsis at every stoplight!) Alas, the Baldwin episode has introduced a whole new set of social concerns that those of us without children were not aware of: You can't yell at them anymore? Even if it's the only way to get them to look up from what their petulant little thumbs are texting? With language that, although intemperate, is still cleaner than most of what they've heard on YouTube? Well, this explains a lot.

It's oddly comforting to know that even celebrities, who firmly occupy the center of their own universes, can be emotionally brought down by the most powerful narcissists of all: children. Baldwin's detractors look at this as his great comeuppance, another triumph of the wide-open age of lost privacy. I prefer to view it as a chilling reminder of just how real these people are. So real, in fact, that I expect Ireland to someday have her own reality show, about growing up mistreated in Hollywood, sometimes guest-starring her dad, sometimes guest-starring her mom.

E-mail: celebrity@washpost.com