Scumbaggery
Check out Eddie Murphy’s unenthusiatic acknowledgement of his child with Mel Brown (former Spice Girl).
Before the birth:
“I don’t know whose child that is until it comes out and has a blood test. You shouldn’t jump to conclusions, sir,” he said.
Ah, oozing class. Because, God knows, keeping his mouth shut and waiting for a paternity test is clearly out of the question, not when you get a chance to call the kid’s mother a slut to the whole world. Brown has pretty much gone for it, in terms of declaring Murphy to be the father (and I guess that she knew that he was) but, just in case it wasn’t clear, Murphy (in a statement that he released through his publicist — obviously, casting doubt on paternity is best done personally, acknowledging it obviously requires a cut-out — a little while ago), tells the world it was at best a casual mistake:
Mr Murphy and Ms Brown dated very briefly and never made any plans of ANY sort.
I just don’t understand it. Why not shut up, wait for the paternity test and then acknowledge the kid with no additional commentary? It’s going to affect the kid more than it affects him, after all and while he’s probably not alone in displaying petulance when an unplanned child is born following the failure of a relationship, Murphy is doing it in the world media with a permanent and pretty unambiguous message. This stuff is best explained rather more carefully than it’s going to be the first time the kid googles their own name. Is this what he meant when he said he’d “honour his responsibilities as a father”? Jesus wept.