Pointing out that Baldwin is likely not the ONLY parent behaving badly in this fiasco is not the equivalent of justifying Baldwin's horrifically immature response.
From much personal experience, I expect what happened is the same thing I have seen happen in the lives of many children directly related to me: mom leaves dad, takes the kids, and allows the kids to blow dad off anytime they like, where if those kids even thought about blowing mom off the same way, there'd be hell to pay.
Baldwin was a complete bad apple, 100 percent. But that does NOT mean that Basinger did not play a significant part in cultivating this ugly incident between Baldwin and his daughter. I suspect (I may be wrong, but personal experience leads me to think otherwise) that Basinger never attempted to instill in her daughter the idea that she should respect her dad's attempts to maintain contact with her, that if her dad said "I'm going to call you tonight at such-and-such time" and kid blows him off, then she shoudln't be surprised that her dad would be upset, and it seems fairly clear that this kid had been blowing him off repeatedly. It's mom's responsibility to discourage such behavior.
Basinger, like many primary-custodian single moms I've known personally, may have done the opposite. Not that anyone could blame her for wanting to keep her daughter away from a man who beats women, but this was NOT a smart way to do it and it was certainly not in the best interests of the child.
It was, however, in the best interests of Basinger.
If this was the case, then I think Baldwin was ABSOLUTELY NORMAL in getting upset. What was reprehensible, disgusting, and ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE was Baldwin's way of dealing with it. He behaved like a spoiled, bad, sissy boy-child himself. He is beneath contempt not because he was upset, but because of the way he dealt with being upset.
My guess is that Basinger probably bad-mouths Baldwin in front of the kid as much as Baldwin obviously bad-mouths Basinger to the kid. So the kid thinks it's right and good to treat him with disrepect. If I'm correct in how I think it went down, then this could have been avoided if Basinger had encouraged her daughter to embrace her dad's efforts to maintain a relationship, rather than to blow them off. But that takes a big person, a mature person, and if Basinger is anything like the man she married, it was hopeless from the start.
No matter how one approaches it, Baldwin has been an industrial-strength asshole, but that should come as no surprise to anyone. That being true does not preclude Basinger from being a Jerkmeister as well.
If Baldwin manhandled Basinger, no matter what she may have done to anger him, she got the high moral ground in my book.
Baldwin should just pay and go away. The child will never respect him, and calling her a pig didn't help his cause. Basinger has won, and if Baldwin has any sense, he will just write the check and move on.