Posted on 02/21/2007 4:32:22 AM PST by Chi-townChief
Tom Brady, Mr. All-American, says he's ''excited.'' You bet.
Informed that actress and ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynahan is three months pregnant and he is the impregnator, the three-time Super Bowl champion quarterback and purest man in the world -- or rather, his agent, Tom Yee -- said, ''Tom and his family are excited about the pregnancy.''
Wow.
They're not excited about the mother or a possible marriage or any kind of meaningful union between copulators.
They're excited about the fact their son/brother/relative has active sperm.
Maybe the Brady family also is excited about the late-night talk-show jokes that are brewing as I type this.
Maybe they're excited about Brady's current squeeze, pouty-lipped Brazilian lingerie model Gisele Bundchen, who could become the nanny for the baby, if not the actual stepmother.
Not that Moynahan is giving this child up.
She made no secret of the fact she wanted a baby when she and Brady were hooking up, excuse me, dating.
''I've been on this career thing for so long, and you look at all your friends who are finally getting married and having kids,'' she told Boston Common magazine last fall. ''I believe in balance in life, so I think I can do it all.''
No dad doesn't cut it Never mind the oxymoronic essence of that last statement, the part Moynahan is missing is that pesky part about family. Having a baby is one thing. Having a baby without a legitimate father is another, entirely.
For years that province -- of children born out of wedlock or raised without a married birth father -- has been perceived as the province of the poor and the minority.
Read, at its most vexing, black.
To a degree, this is fact.
Without getting into the sociological and economic elements that create such a trend, know that about 16 percent of white kids grow up without fathers but a stunning 51 percent of black children do.
Brady, 29, named one of People magazine's ''50 Most Beautiful People'' in 2002, is not the marrying kind. At least not now.
Hope that doesn't shock you, Bridget and Gisele.
But the shocking part to the world is that here is Tom Brady of the New England Patriots with those twinkling blue eyes and Cleaver-family upbringing -- Charles Pierce's recent biography, Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything, all but anoints the young man -- and he's just out there sowing seed like every other irresponsible rascal.
We'll leave it to Madison Avenue to decide whether Brady's action will affect his endorsement deals -- with Nike, Visa, Sirius, among others -- that bring him an estimated $9 million a year beyond his large Patriots contract.
The troubling part is not the gossip and all the rest of the giggle-inducing tawdriness of this little scene.
It is that babies in our modern American world have become items and baubles, things to have or not have, depending on the whim, mood, naivete, intoxication level, desperation and silliness of the two people involved.
That Britney Spears is the mother of two children, with her shaved head and utter instability, is about all we need to know of the children-as-accessories mental state.
Moynahan said, via her publicist Christine Papadopoulous (this is how rich celebs communicate, you know), that she is ''healthy and excited.''
Of course, no mention was made as to whether the fetus was equally as thrilled.
It was back on Dec. 14 that Brady and Moynahan announced, through a (what else?) statement, that they had parted ways ''several weeks'' earlier.
It's easy to joke about Doing a little language and math work, I see that several means more than two but not many, so the pair must have broken up sometime around, say, mid to late November. This being late February means Tom Terrific gave three-months-pregnant Bridget a last-fling going-away present.
One could laugh at all this.
Just as one could laugh at fellow superstar -- and equally white and All-American -- quarterback Matt Leinart, who impregnated a fellow student in his last year at USC and never had much interest in her, beyond the obvious.
But the devaluation of children is the real issue, the carelessness with which they too often are brought into the world.
And the current thought espoused by many that little boys don't really need dads in their lives at all -- that loving women and maybe a thoughtful male coach at the rec center will suffice -- is pure nonsense.
As syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts wrote recently, there is this pernicious idea among certain headstrong females and careless males ''that the father is unnecessary, that so long as there's some uncle around to show the boy how to hit the mark in the toilet, everything is hunky-dory.''
It's not.
Witness our jails and our poverty lines. Witness our schools.
Tom Brady has shown that the real issue is not race or wealth at all, but personal responsibility.
If I were a member of black America, I wouldn't exactly be laughing at Brady's sexual mistake.
But I'd be hard-pressed not to smirk.
mailto:rtelander@suntimes.com
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Good Ones
Here is a couple on Tax by MARK TWAIN
What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
- Notebook, 1902
We've got so much taxation. I don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed except the answer to prayer.
- Morals speech, 1906
***
And by Jonathan Swift
"For God's sake, madam, don't say that in England for if you do, they will surely tax it."
Swift responding to Lady Carteret's admiration for the quality of the air in Ireland.
Hesketh Pearson,Lives of the Wits, 1962.
Never heard of a Man Bites Dog story I guess.
LOL.
What a life he has. He leaves a woman like that, and actually UPGRADES. ;-)
The Pats were EXTREMELY lucky to beat them. The Colts simply outcoached them....................
Odd how the Pats are so much luckier than all the rest over the past few years.
Have a hunch this streak will continue, though.
IMO Telander is exactly right. This set a horrible example for young people. In our celebrity driven culture a lot of young people think that if a celeb does something it is OK.
The odds for a child growing up without a father are much worse, greater probability of growing up in poverty, ending up in trouble with the law.
So while the rich and famous may feel it is OK for them (not so sure of that seeing how many of their kids end up screwed up but that's another thread) but it sends a terrible social message to those that look up to them.
I am a Pats fan this has diminished my opinion of Brady. Guess no more audiences with the pope for Tommy ANd Bridget.
I was not speaking of the season just that one game. I was also hoping to get a rematch of 1986 in Miami.
Now that Brady is revealed as just another horndog the luster is off his crown and imminent demise possible. Acutally I think Indy will keep the Pats away from the SB yet again if the refs do not allow NE's defensive backs to mug the Colt receivers as they did two years ago.
"Women will forgive anything" - you know NOT to touch my wine Bender-baby, otherwise I agree with that! :o)
I am shamelessly sounding off about the natural family.
Survey says: Kids with their own Mom & Dad is best for them.
Whodathunkit!
Hey, whatever works in spite of the circumstances. A little boy that gets to be around baseball and meet players has an interesting set of stories to tell, no?
Get real. Be glad that this didn't turn into an abortion. And, if you are going to pop off on a thread read the damned article first.
That is why I said in my post that the guy is not innocent either. He knows the risk he takes when he has unprotected sex with a woman.
Lucky to beat them? That game was a tough battle with lots of hard hitting and good D. The Pats were a few plays from going back to the Super Bowl. If they had something better to throw out there than 2nd and 3rd string guys or off the street signings they would have beaten the Colts. Manning is too damned good of a QB to stop with the stiffs that the Pats had left at the end of the playoffs.
The NFL/NBA players are known for having a lot of kids with different women. Tom and Bridgett were not a one night thing but a 3 year relationship that ended due to different goals and places in life. When a guy dates a woman 7 years older than him he's going to have to acknowledge that she might be looking to settle down at some point. He's not there yet and to do his job properly as a pro QB how available can he be for a marriage and kids.
We don't know what happened or why but one thing to consider that this is their business. Let's hope they keep it adult like and make good decisions for their child.
Pope is a Pats fan.....
no worries
It is because these things are excused by saying "its just their business" that they have become so destructive to society. Now this particular kid will be surrounded by wealth and will escape many, if not all, of the problems related to being an OOW child but the message it sends to society as a whole is horrendous.
What, like the way the Colts DB interfered with the Pats receiver late in the game that forced the Pats to have to kick instead of line up on the 1 yard line 1st and Goal?
Kind of ironic that the Colts complained so much about the Pats DBs beating up their receivers in the past then interfere on a thrown ball in the end zone and get away with one. And if you try and deny the contact while the ball was in the air prior to it reaching Caldwell then you are either blind or a homer.
Yes. Lucky to beat them. This is not to say the Pats aren't a fine team. But without a SD brain cramp they would not have even gotten close to the Super Bowl. And I was rooting for them.
If you model your life after celebs and sports figures then you are a loser and your parents did a bad job in raising you. If society is that easily influenced by these two's actions then society isn't worth saving.
A cousin of mine is a plumber in the D.C. area and gets many calls down in the Georgetown area. He was in a young and very attractive single black woman's townhouse doing some work and as he was walking through the living room he noticed a picture of a little boy in the arms of Ray Lewis (Ravens LB). He turned to the woman and made a comment about how it must have been exciting for her little boy to meet such a star.
She smiled and said that Ray was her son's father and that he's very proud of his daddy. My cousin turned and looked around at the million dollar "crib" he was standing in and muttered to himself, "I'm sure he is..."
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