Alec Baldwin, a real class act

A couple of weeks ago I was tempted to give Alec Baldwin his due when I read that he decided to cover the college expenses of a young woman who was going off to war in Iraq. I'm glad that I didn't, because he just keeps proving that he doesn't have much class:

The festering bad blood between movie-star exes Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger erupted Thursday when an angry phone message from Baldwin to his daughter was made public. On the recording, Baldwin can be heard berating his 11-year-old, Ireland, "You are a rude, thoughtless little pig."

"You don't have the brains or the decency as a human being," he says, apparently upset that she did not answer her phone for a planned call.

"I don't give a damn that you're 12 years old, or 11 years old, or that you're a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn't care about what you do as far as I'm concerned. You have humiliated me for the last time with this phone."

I don't care how difficult his divorce and custody battle has been, and I don't care about the sides of the story. Parents get angry at children, but calling them names like "pig" is inexcusable.

Now that's not to say that Kim Bassinger does have class. She doesn't either. I entertain no doubts about what her intentions were in releasing this voice mail. Her intentions were to humiliate Baldwin, nothing else.