So why was it made public? And who would do such a thing? It might be an ex-wife, perhaps.

Alec Baldwin grew up in Massapequa and has made his permanent residence a farmhouse in Amagansett for the last twenty years. For fifteen of those years, he lived there married to Kim Basinger. They had a daughter, Ireland, now twelve.

In 2002, Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin filed for divorce. Those in this community could not help but notice that Kim left her husband in a most extraordinary fashion. She hired local moving men to come to the house and, while Alec was away, secretly remove every stick of furniture out and cart it off. It was Kim's intention, the workmen said later, that Alec was surprised when he returned. She left him with nothing but the toilet paper in the bathrooms.

Kim, it is believed, took everything to a house in Los Angeles that they owned together. And with Ireland, age five, in tow, went there herself. She intended, as it turned out, never to let her daughter see her father again.

In certain circumstances, I can understand how such behavior on the part of a mother might trump the importance of a child having both parents in their life. A man could be beating his wife, or his children.

But Kim Basinger in Los Angeles, where God knows the world favors every sort of pampering and indulgent behavior, was never able to make that case. She claimed it in court. Alec denied it. And the judge, in the absence of any credible evidence that he did such things -- even after five years of court proceedings, as it has turned out -- would not take away his rights to act as a parent to his daughter.

As for the tape, there is no doubt when you listen to it that Alec has lost it and has misdirected his anger at his daughter, anger that should have been directed at his ex. Or should it? Ireland is now twelve. Her mother has turned her away from him since she was five. He is, on this tape, in no uncertain terms telling his daughter that she MUST see him as proscribed by a judge and on a certain day at a certain hour she MUST take his phone calls and talk to him. "When the time comes for me to make the phone call," he says, "I stop whatever I am doing and I go and I make that phone call. At eleven o' clock in the morning in New York, and you don't pick up the phone. You don't even have the GODDAMNED phone turned on. I want you to know something, okay, I am tired of playing this game with you. I am leaving this message with you to tell you that you have insulted me for the last time."

You only get one father and mother in your life. In the absence of physical or criminal abuse, I have no respect for any parent who would spend time brainwashing a small child against the other. It is unconscionable.

If a parent does this to a child in a divorce fight without credible evidence of abuse, there ought to be a law that says a judge can give all the worldy goods in the marriage to the other. Perhaps that would level the playing field in a child's eyes. Perhaps such a law would deter such behavior.

On this tape, Alec Baldwin fights for his daughter's rights to him, ineffectively and badly, but nevertheless.