Soooooo……you’re supposed to not defend yourself and your child when someone tries to rip him from your arms.  

Someone said “Kennedy” … run for cover … wing nut heads are exploding!!!

It doesn’t really show who hit the woman that fell to the ground.

“While they are misdemeanor charges and the doctor in charge takes his side…”

To be accurate, the story reports that the doctor was a family friend and an ER doctor at the hospital.  He was not “the doctor in charge.”

Sounds to me like the family friend and instigator, Dr. Haydock, should have minded his own business and followed the rules of the hospital.

But he works for FoxNews. That is what is really going to cause their heads to explode.

 I was thinking the same thing.  They’re not going to know what to do.

The dude works for Fox News?  A photo of his mug would be useful.  I don’t watch that crap channel.

 Soooooo……the hospital staff is just supposed to allow a father to walk out of the hospital with a 2 day old new born?

 I agree, but she should have called security.

While I can appreciate that this was a heated situation, I can’t believe that his only option was kicking a lady (unless she had posed a risk to his life or the baby which doesn’t seem to be the case).

It’s just not right. The staff may or may not have been correct either, but kicking a woman is bullshit.

 They did, and when they blocked him from taking the elevator, he made a b-line to the stair way.  What if he did something insane and tossed the baby down the stairs while the nurses just waited for security to handle it.

The Kennedy tradition lives on.. Doesn’t he know the government owns the children ?

Yeah, but wrestling for the baby has its risks too,  If it was a stranger maybe I would be more empathetic. My guess is the hospital will disagree with the manner in which she handled the situation.

I like how conservatives are spinning this to bash the Kennedy’s while the liberals are using this to bash Fox. Gotta say, I never expected this to happen.

It would seem to me that most insurance policies see to it that a newborn is back at home by the second day…  It does seem to me that there is a lot of information lacking in this story….  It seems impossible to drawn a sound conclusion from this small clip and the incomplete reporting of this story. 

If you follow the link to the NBC New York coverage, it looks pretty cut and dry.  It is not the hospital’s policy to let a person take a stroll with a newborn at their whim.

There is absolutely too little information available on this story to place blame on either side.  Although, if Kennedy felt it was in his right to carry his own baby on a walk, maybe he should have told the nurses before hand, if he hadn’t done so.  Also if Kennedy was trying to protect both him and the baby, the only way he could have done so would be with his leg since he was carrying the baby in both arms.  With no information available to place the blame on either side, anyone who tries to do so doesn’t care about hearing the facts about the story and are only expressing their bias in this situation.

That helps to understand your position, to bad that background information such as that was not included in the article, it seems to me that a small and lacking piece of information is thrown out so that we can begin to feast on each other’s political bias surrounding the name Kennedy and his affiliation with Fox News when these facts have little to do with the crux of the story.

Chris Matthews has a new book coming out about this kennedy trash, something about profiles in courage.

Nacho-Dude:

          Where did you learn that Kennedy is a Tea Bagger?

          Facts:
                1)  Given he is the FATHER,   improbable that Kennedy is
                      homosexual. …. But, you must have more information on
                      this issue.
                 2)  Kennedys tend to be left wing extremists —
                

  

What is it with Kennedy spawn physically attacking women? Teddy’s loser son got physical with an airport employee-a woman and now this. The Kennedy’s are so disgustingly entitiled, especially where women are concerned. One gets in your way? Knock her out. 

Based on your other comments your guess is irrelevent so STFU!

 This is well-known troll with multiple accounts. Please ban him moderator.

 I never implied that Kennedy is a teabagger.

I don’t see why your first fact is relevant to this topic but your second fact, therein lies the delema that the wingnuts will have to struggle with.

Do they attack Kennedy because he is a “Kennedy”, or do they mindlessly stand up for him because he works for and represents The Almighty FoxNews.

My thinking is that since most internet teabaggin wingnut trolls are relatively new to the game, they will invest more in their beloved FoxNews than beat the tired ol Kennedy meme.

This is no surprise as the Kennedys have a history of assaulting women.  At least one of them even killed a woman.  In other words they are typical liberals.

Looking at the raw footage, he was holding the baby with his right arm most of the time.

 Rick Z:

Shouldn’t you be trolling for date at the airport?

Both nurses placed their hands on the man holding his child . Once the hand is placed he should have drilled both women into the ground .

 He’s got that Kennedy temper, no doubt. 

Amazing to see the sorts of readers here posting in support of Kennedy’s behavior. Signs in this story about who Douglas Kennedy really is & why this support for him is coming out: a former reporter for the Post & the Boston Herald. Uh … not exactly Kennedyesque career choices there. Bobby would be aghast – but like all parents, especially Kennedy parents, show protectiveness. Doug Kennedy is a supreme asshole & has been for a long, long time.

What a truly awful post – tho typical winger confusion.  

No family is uniform. Doug Kennedy is a supreme winger asshole & has been for a very long time. This is an hardly unusual, for a child to rebel against his parent. The playwright Eugene Ionesco wrote a vary famous play about the phenomenon, called Carousel, where the aging parents are hippies & their children are uptight retrograd conservatives.

“I never implied that Kennedy is a teabagger” – not that you would have been far off-base if you had. You did catch the source of the winger confusion here – can’t very well raise the Kennedy target when the particular Kennedy in question is one of their own. 

Not true: I’m not bashing either the Kennedys or FNC. This is a Douglas Kennedy story, & folks who know about Douglas Kennedy, particularly those conversant with his rep in Boston, are entirely familiar with this behavioral pattern. 

Well that cheap shot is certainly not helpful. 

Look, the Kennedys are a very big clan & every family has its range of characters. Much of the Kennedy clan is liberal – liberal political causes are to a large degree the family business – but in fact more of the Kennedys aren’t political at all & a minority portion of its membership is actually politically conservative. The rich tend to be subject to stubborn feelings of entitlement, & the Kennedy clan is no exception to that tendency – but it’s not at all uniform, & there are actually some in the family who don’t act elitist at all. 

It’s dangerous enough making sweeping statements about the characters of individuals, but to make them about entire families is just stupid. I’m not saying YOU are stupid, just that your comment is stupid.

There are many times in the Mediaite reader comments sections when the joint is indistinguishable from the freepers at Free Republic – like this one.

Eh, I see as a 2 for 1 bashing.

This is totally uncalled for. As with other hospitals there is no newborn that is allowed to leave the floor. There are security issues and also infection issues to think of. There are rules to be followed and he picked not to and decided to use violence to get his way. What kind of household is this little baby going home to. Is this the way the Kennedy’s handle things? Kicking an innocent nurse…..well shame on you.

You mean you don’t have the entire Kennedy family tree on your wall? 

Bad liberal, bad bad bad

From what we know, it sounds like this was handled poorly from the get go. 

Did the nurse recognize Kennedy as the father? If so, she should have said, can you please come with me to the room, just so I can verify with your wife that you are allowed to take the baby? If she didn’t recognize him, she could have said the same thing. Informing the man that hospital policy just to make sure no one is stealing the baby. Had she said it in a manner that he understood she was worried he was stealing the baby, he probably would have agreed. 

Had the nurse just snapped at him, and told him he can’t “take his baby” he probably reacted territorial. 

It sounds like the nurses were the aggressors by grabbing for the baby, and the father reacted as any father should – he was protecting his baby. They may have thought he was really trying to steal the baby, but had they handled it better from the get go, it may not have escalated to this point.

I can understand them protecting babies from being stolen, and Kennedy probably would have to, had they framed it in that manner. But I can certainly understand a father feeling like he has a right to  his own child. And the right to protect it from people trying to grab it from his arms. You can’t fault him for that, if he was attacked first, IMHO.

Do hospitals give wrist bands to the fathers, to match the child? They should. Then all he would need to do would be to show the matching numbers. I think he should have been able to take his 3 day old out for a little walk. It’s his baby, not the hospitals…

But, they did want to protect the baby… Unless it was some nurse running amok with the roolz. 

Typical Democrat fascist. Had anyone else assaulted a nurse, you would have demanded arrests. Of course, you’re kissing Kennedy ass.

I’m a lib, but I’m also a southern gent, so I’m bashing him for striking a lady.

it is hospital policy…probably for the maternity/post pardum unit at all US hospitals…that you can’t just take the baby off the floor!  That baby is a patient as well and is the responsibility of the staff to follow rules on it’s behalf.  What idiot would take it out and about for fresh air in JANUARY anyways!  Even if he walked around in the hospital, it’s a germ filled place!  At the hospital where I deliver, you can’t even walk the halls of that floor holding the baby, must be in the rolling bassinet when in the hall.  Upon leaving the hospital, baby must be properly secured in the infant car seat, double checked by the nurse that is helping you leave.  You can’t even leave the hospital with the baby if you don’t have the proper car seat and it must FIT properly too. My husband had to purchase this padded seat thing to help baby fit better, something for preemies that helps fill in as if it were a normal size newborn.  Also, they have the mother ride in a wheel chair holding that car seat on her lap with baby in it and they take you out to the front and wait for your car to be pulled up…They do everything they can to keep baby safe~it is their patient.  And let’s admit, people would do some pretty stupid things if they didn’t, just like this guy did!  There are LOTS of nurses, and they keep an eye out, as they should and perhaps the ones who approached him didn’t know who he was; could have been some crazy person stealing a baby!  He certainly shouldn’t have been an aggressive idiot…while holding baby especially! 

This guy obviously didnt get taught any manners or he forgot them somewhere down the line.

The video wouldn’t play for me but from reading the story there is not enough information to place blame.  I’m sure Kennedy didn’t know hospital policy and was going by the advice of what was described in the article as “the doctor in charge”.  If the doctor in charge advised it I can understand being defensive against a woman trying to snatch your baby from your arms.

Wow, this had to be a difficult story for Mediaite to cover given it involves the Kennedys who always get the benefit of the doubt and FOX news which never gets it. Although I have to ask what working for FOX News has to do with the story. Who even knew he worked for FOX?

Is Douglas Kennedy a god just because his last name is Kennedy and the rules don’t apply to him? Kicking people is not a mature thing to do.

Have any of you been at a hospital when a baby was kidnapped? I was. That is one of the reasons that you cannot take a baby out for a stroll when you feel like it. Hospitals that have had children stolen, make  you leave your driver’s license at the security desk. You cannot leave with a child unless you have paperwork. The child may have been in danger (who takes a 2 or 3 day old out for a stroll?). THe nurses were in danger. He is not above hospital rules. Did they do a test for alcohol or drugs in his system? I’m betting they would have been positive.

His name is Kennedy. What more should we expect. Fox leader Ailes is obviously as sleazy as other media heads. It discourages me. One guy is a doctor (so what) and a friend of the family. Ailes is the head of Fox. The nurses were in charge and that’s that. A typical Kennedy attitude of I don’t live by the rules. A typical attitude of some of the syncophants who worship at the Kennedy altar. 

Mediaite isn’t a news website, they report on the news media and stories that the news covers.

Follow the links provided to get the real story.

As for “the doctor in charge” Frances misrepresented that fact.  The doctor was a family friend that happens to be an ER doctor at the same hospital.

After having worked at a hospital switchboard I know that NO ONE allowed to just walk in and take a baby out for any reason.  The nurses were doing their job.  PERIOD!

I agree with you I am a mild mannered lady, but I would punch  anyone that tried to take my baby from my arms!

I have learnt from experience hospital staff don’t always know best. Sounds like she needed glasses if she didn’t recognise he was the father!

Here in the UK, you get kicked out after 6 hours after giving birth !

Kennedy was being a JERK. If he had any sense in that arrogant, conceited mind of his, he would have appreciated that his son was being protected. Doesn’t he watch the (FOX..haha) news?! What message would that send if the nurses let everyone (even so-called celebrities) walk out of the hospital with babies? Kudos to the nurses. They have to follow protocol–with NO exceptions. If he were a normal human being, he would have just complied. He is NO different than anyone else (But don’t tell HIM that!).

Better than being emotionless like Bush.

????

As an RN for over 23 years I know the hospital is liable for this baby until he is properly discharged! This man was totally out of line! Besides, how much “fresh air” does a newborn need in the middle of winter? Coming from a large family himself and having other children of his own I am sure he knew hospital policy around this issue. It’s obvious to me he felt he was entitled and I’m convinced a judge will find that he IS NOT!

ecstatic adoration to constructive criticismHead Nurse Job Responsibilities

How do you like your Socialist health care?  We’ve had it good in the US for the most part until Obamacare was passed – what a nightmare that will be if not overturned by the Supreme Court or repealed by a new House, Senate and Admin. after the ’12 election.

what the article does not explain & the point that some of you has missed is….(if you have ever had a baby born in a hospital, you know this) the baby was not discharged & it’s the hospital policy (safety of the newborn) that you cannot take the baby off of the maternity ward) The nurse was doing her job!!!  She explained to him that he could NOT remove the baby & he ignored her.  She was attempting to stop the elevator.  Why does Mr. Kennedy feel that it’s OK to ignore the policy of the hospital?  The baby was still under the care of the hospital, therefore, still their responsibility.  What do you think would have happened if he tripped, fell & the baby was injured?  Do you think that nurse would still have her job if she willingly let him go?  Policy is set in place for protection of the patient, that policy should not be waved b/c a parent “wants to take a baby out for some fresh air”, he can take the baby out for fresh air when he is discharged.  He should have had common sense.  I’m glad he was charged….it’s a felony to assault a nurse & he was NOT charged w/ a felony, he is getting a slap on the wrist.

Typical Kennedy…rules don’t apply to them. Now he goes on TV with a strawman argument about “having the right to be with my son”…and invoking the memory of his dead dad??? How pathetic and out of touch with reality. Have fun in jail, you deserve it.