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.
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So why throw the race card?
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20004312,00.html
"(They) amicably ended their three-year relationship several weeks ago. ..." -December 14, 2006.
Paternity test is warranted.
It is like hitting the jackpot for some women to get pregnant by a professional athlete or a very good up and coming athlete that way as his pay goes up so does the child support. In some cases it is not about the money, but just about keeping the guy. I have seen it happen so much. I am not saying that the guys are not at fault, but some woman just set out to do things like that.
No bucket of stones.
Irresponsibility is just that. Neither Brady nor the lady deny their promiscuous liaison, nor the real likelihood that it is Brady's child.
And while it is certainly good that there is no abortion of the child, it is better if the poor kid gets to live with his very own loving Mom & Dad. The statistics are clear on that.
While there is virtue handling mistakes with mercy and compassion, there is no virtue in pretending they don't exist and never existed.
Yup. Yesterday Rush mentioned some study that showed sports doesn't build character. He added it attracted a lot of them.
This columnist is clearly a product of our stellar journalism schools.
Unfortunate code of silence
In a new book "Enough," I write about the 25 percent of black America locked in poverty and the shocking picture of dysfunction evident in a 70 percent out-of-wedlock birthrate among black Americans; a 50 percent high school dropout rate and a disheartening 40 percent of America’s prisoners being black.
I don't understand it either.
Brady is white and his former girlfriend got pregnant. Race is relevant how?
If Brady were black he wouldn't dare write what he did.
So, what's going on here? Does ESPN The Magazine need to do a Where's (White) Daddy cover story? [In 1998, Sports Illustrated had a cover story about athletes having babies out of wedlock and that feature focused predominantly on black athletes.] Do white NFL quarterbacks now represent the new at-risk baby-daddy population?
You are right. Statistics show that illegitimate children score lower on every measure, such as physical health, etc. It seems to affect boys more than girls.
This story reminds me of the Boris Becker scandal where he accused the KGB of stealing his sperm. Unlike that geek Howard Stern, he had to give his DNA in that international case and ended up paying child support to the Russian model.
Well I basically agree with the article - and I'm a big Pats fan.
I think I am offended. Men can be dogs no matter what their race is. If I were Tom Brady's ex, I would have gotten him to marry me for the baby's sake. (Plus it can't be all that bad waking up to him in the morning)
See #30 and #32
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.
Again, Matt wanted no part in having a baby. This chick knew what she had in her grasp, so to speak, and she made the most of it. She's pretty and tall (5'10") and she saw the opportunity to procreate with a tall handsome NFL QB to-be. Going to a sperm bank for Leinart's or Brady's sperm would cost a fortune, but these women know they can get it for free.
I find this very disappointing. Brady always seemed like a straight arrow. It seems that he has swallowed whole, however, the modern sensibility when it comes to sexual activity and marriage. Why can't celebrities be models of sexual continence outside of marriage, and have normal marriages and families? They should feel a responsibility to be good role models for their fans. I'm fed up with American celebrity culture. They're more anti-models than role models.
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