Alec Baldwin hesitant to promote the book he's promoting

"I wish I weren't here. I wish I weren't doing this," Alec Baldwin began his 20-minute speech at the inaugural book signing for his memoir A Promise to Ourselves. The Manhattan event was attended by more than 100 people, 20 of them outside the bookstore, marching with picket signs.

The protesters were challenging Baldwin's defense of Parental Alienation Syndrome, a controversial psychological theory about the vilification of one parent by the other, usually in cases of child-custody dispute.

The autobiography is subtitled A Journey through Fatherhood and Divorce. It explores Baldwin's rocky marriage to Kim Basinger, their subsequent separation, divorce and battle over the custody of their pre-teen, Ireland, including the media-frenzied cell conversation leak of last year (when Baldwin apparently "snapped" and called his daughter a "rude, thoughtless little pig").

Baldwin took no questions at the end of his reading, but did respond to the opposition of the Voices of Women Organizing Project. He said that he did agree with most of their arguments, but that nothing in the feminist movement has been achieved without "the support of men, open-minded men."

Related links:
AlecBaldwin.com
St. Martin's Press: A Promise to Ourselves
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