An Impertinent Little Snip on Thoughtless Little Pigs

I wasn’t going to write about the Alec Baldwin voice mail thing, because I love Alec Baldwin unreasonably and am thus perhaps unreasonably inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. I also think Kim Basinger sounds like a bit of a genuine whackjob, so I can’t in good conscience turn this into a feminist issue and be done with it. Sometimes, women are assholes. And without convincing evidence that that’s not one of the key issues in the family dynamic here, I can’t assume that only the man deserves a smack in the head. (Metaphorically!)

Frankly, I think it was clear that both parents deserved a smack in the head 11 years ago, when they put the name “Ireland” on a birth certificate, but I’m over that part. Almost.

So, yeah, I was gonna keep my big mouth shut about it. But then I read Heather Havrilesky’s hilarious Salon article on the matter, and now I’m moved to say something.

What she said.

Also, here’s the thing. I have no way of knowing if Alec Baldwin is actually an abusive jerk or not—conveniently, it’s none of my goddamned business, so that works out well. And I would never, ever say that verbal abuse does not exist or is not profoundly damaging. BUT. I am also not convinced by any means that his temper tantrum falls under the rubric of “verbal abuse.” Because it seemed immediately familiar to me as an example of an essentially benign and ultimately hilarious category of outburst: “Irish-American-Catholic Dad Loses His Shit.”

My father—who did not begin his life Irish, American, or Catholic, but eventually came to pass for all three, owing to the powerful influence of my mom—has never, to my recollection, called me a thoughtless little pig. But he has called me a thoughtless little bugger, a selfish little ingrate, a precocious little turd, and—the family favorite—an impertinent little snip, on numerous occasions. My mother, despite being a writer, took less obvious joy in the language of the frustrated outburst. She favored “GODDAMMIT, YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

That one might have caused more lasting damage had she not cleverly reserved it for times during which I was totally being a little shit. It ain’t libel if it’s true.

My personal experience doesn’t provide a statistically significant sampling to bolster the argument that this is a cultural thing, but here’s something I can tell you: pretty much everyone I know who grew up in a big Catholic family or even a small Irish-American one looks back on Great Moments in Parental Shit Losing with nostalgic good humor. I once bonded with a new friend via this conversation:

Her: Here’s an impression of my mom circa 1982: “STOP IT OR I’LL KNOCK YOUR GODDAMNED TEETH DOWN YOUR THROAT!”

Me: OH MY GOD, MY MOM SAID THAT, TOO!

Cue five minutes of hysterical laughter.

Taken out of context, that sounds awful. I’m not blind to that. Nor would I, personally, ever threaten to knock my kid’s goddamned teeth down her throat. But here’s the context: our mothers were wonderfully loving and patient with our fundamental kidness–just never with inappropriate behavior—and they never laid a hand to us (let alone made any sincere attempt to knock our goddamned teeth down our throats), and they made us feel loved every day, and they treated us with respect and hugged us and called us beautiful and smart and good way more often than they called us rotten little shits.

So, when they screamed things like that, here’s what we registered: “Uh-oh, Mom’s flipped her lid. I must be doing something really uncool. I should stop.”

And in every case, all three of those things were absolutely true. Which means that when we look back on those moments, we crack up—because the core of the memory now is not “Mom said horrible words to me for no reason” but “Mom flipped her lid.” And once it’s over, Mom flipping her lid is fucking funny.

Of course, that’s only true because lid-flipping, by definition, is not a regular occurrence. A parent who’s constantly angry and engaged in a campaign to demoralize his or her child is an abusive fuckwad, no two ways about it. But a parent who’s loving, respectful, patient, and protective, but occasionally throws a foul-mouthed tantrum in response to the bad behavior of a child who should damn well know better is… human. And ultimately pretty funny.

Once, when I was about young Ireland’s age, I promised to do the dishes after dinner and then spent the rest of the evening doing anything but the dishes. This led to perhaps the most memorable instance of (Faux-) Irish-American-Catholic Dad Loses His Shit in my entire life. You might observe that the beginning of it sounds kinda familiar:

Dad: You selfish little bugger! The world does not revolve around you! If you promise to do something, then you take some goddamned responsibility and do it! You can’t just do whatever the hell you please and expect other people to do all the shit you don’t want to do! You are just [something precisely equal to a "rude, thoughtless little pig"]!

Me [in head]: Uh-oh. Dad’s mad. I fucked up. I should go do the dishes now.

Dad: Let me tell you something else young lady! If you think people are just going to wait on you hand and foot for the rest of your life, you’re WRONG! R-O-N-G, WRONG!

Me:

Mom, siblings, dog: BWAAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Way to make a point there, genius! BWAAAAH!

Dad: Oh… oh, shit. [dissolves into laughter]

At that point, I started laughing too. Then I apologized, and Dad hugged me and helped me do the dishes.

And for the last 20 years, every time my dad’s gotten loud and ranty about pretty much anything, someone has cut off the tirade with “R-O-N-G!”

That story reveals the crucial difference between verbal abuse and Dad Loses His Shit, I think. Abuse is about power and control; losing your shit is about frustration and, ultimately, vulnerability. When you’re at your wit’s end, you’ve already lost control, and you know it, and the person you’re yelling at knows it. If your last-ditch effort to regain control can be brought down completely by one stupid verbal misstep, you’re not wielding a lot of power.

And the thing is, the non-abuser recognizes that. The non-abuser laughs at himself. The non-abuser’s family doesn’t think twice about laughing at him both in the moment and for the next twenty years.

And the whole reason the non-abuser’s occasional tantrums are effective as a means of improving their objects’ behavior is that said objects really do respect the non-abuser. I wanted to please my dad and felt guilty about pissing him off not because I was afraid of him, ever, but because he was a good person who did a lot for me and respected me. He deserved the same and thus had a right to go wobbly when I was disrespectful.

Are there theoretically better ways of reacting to a child’s disrespect than screaming and name-calling? Sure, absolutely. But the point is, the screaming and name-calling did not cause any lasting damage in my case—in fact, they led to numerous hilarious family stories—and they worked. Everyone involved understood the transaction. Mom or Dad would yell like that in a last-ditch effort to assert their rightful authority over a selfish 11-year-old, and I, as a selfish 11-year-old with a sincere (if often neglected) interest in being somewhat less selfish, would reflect on my behavior.

But, had I chosen to ignore the yelling, it certainly wouldn’t have escalated. I have no idea what they would have done next, in fact, if I’d chosen to be even more of an obstreperous little turd. More importantly, I’m pretty sure they didn’t know either. I never made that choice, because I understood the transaction. I understood that one of my parents losing their shit meant… well, they’d lost their shit. They didn’t know what else to do—meaning that at that point, frankly, I had all the power. And with that power came the responsibility not to continue acting like a jackass toward my loving parents. It was that simple.

I have no idea if that was the dynamic between Baldwin and his daughter or if something more sinister was at play. Based on the very limited information I have, though, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps that’s just because I love him unreasonably and would rather not surrender the joy of having Talking Like This contests with Al. But it’s also because I know this for sure: anyone who assumes that yelling and nasty words are intrinsically abusive, regardless of context, is just flat-out R-O-N-G.