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
Letters to our sports columnists appear Sunday. Send e-mail to inbox@suntimes.com. Include your full name, hometown and a daytime phone number.
It doesn't matter, Roethlisberger never got the ball across the goal line... ;-)
I am pretty sure she was smiling her child support was most likely paying for that expensive home.
I was not speaking of the season just that one game.......................
You have just a game or two to reminisce about, I have many more.
And more to come.
By the way, it is a shock indeed to learn that even Tom "does it"!
I never heard of any Colts complaints just watched the game and saw what happened. Not once but on several critical plays. This year they were not allowed to do it repeatedly though each team got away with some contact.
That game two years ago was the worst example of non-calls I can recall.
They complained for years that their receivers were touched by DBs but in this game the Pats got called (correctly) on an end zone call but the Colts got away with receiver contact when the ball was in the air and the receiver had position. That was a call that had serious implications on the outcome of the game which is not supposed to happen.
The other instance in that particular game when you had incidental contact or feet got tangled up are not things the refs are supposed to call.
There was nothing conclusive about the ball breaking the end zone and it was a joke that the TD stood.
Of course the fact that Seattle dropped passes and played like crap didn't help....
While I never heard any complaints about two years ago and doubt that Dungy said much of anything about it I SAW what happened and complaints were justified.
And what does this author expect Tom and girlfriend to do now? Abortion? No. In fact I respect the fact that they are not going to kill and sladder the baby. I just see no reason to complain about pre-marital sex when it is way too late. I don't condone it, but it sorta like crying over spilt milk. They are doing what they can now. I am not sure giving up the child in this case is the best option. We never went through this in my family so I don't know how I would react, but would I kill them after the fact? I think the best thing to do is educate children the best way and ensure they go to church and pray....lost of prayers and HOPEFULLY (no guarantees) they will turn out right.
"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." Wilt Chamberlain was a true role model for us all.
"If society is that easily influenced by these two's actions then society isn't worth saving." Is that a Man Law Ruling or just gas?
Maybe so. But I think there was probably a moment, right after Brady found out, that something in his conscience stirred.
the night I showed you my secret!
I love you, babe!
Brady is irresponsible, as is his former girlfriend, and some little kid gets to pay for it.
Yeah, I'm sure the son or daughter of a movie star mother and an NFL quarterback father is going to be begging for change on a Mattapan streetcorner one day . . .
----
Does "the point" always go WHOOSH right over head, or is this a first?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.