One take, by Robert Weide in The Daily Beast. First, who he is:
I produced and directed the two-part PBS special, Woody Allen: A Documentary, that premiered in the U.S. on the “American Masters” series. I also supervised and consulted on the brief clip montage that aired as part of the recent Golden Globes telecast, when Allen received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Now, his take:
I was actually somewhat impressed with Ronan Farrow’s now-famous tweet from the summer of 2012: “Happy father’s day—or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law’s day.” The target was fair game, and I remember thinking Ronan had inherited his father’s wit—before his actual paternity came into question. (A good sense of humor and the ability to think on his feet will serve him well on his own show on MSNBC.)
A different take, this one by Maureen Orth in her long Vanity Fair article last November:
Allen brought another action before Judge Wilk in order to be able to see Dylan and to resume unsupervised visits with Ronan. He and the boy had never gotten along. As I reported in the 1992 Vanity Fair story, Ronan, at three, had kicked Allen, and Allen had twisted the child’s leg until he screamed. According to court testimony in the second trial, in June 1996, Ronan’s psychiatrist testified that on a supervised visit to Allen’s apartment in 1995, Ronan, then seven, reported that he had kicked Allen, who then grabbed him by the neck with both hands and threw him down on the couch. Shortly thereafter, the supervised visits were suspended.
At the end of the trial, in which both sides referred to Ronan’s “phobic reaction” to Allen, Judge Wilk informed Ronan that he would have to resume visits with his father in the office of his psychiatrist—which Allen vehemently objected to. Ronan started heaving uncontrollably, collapsed on the floor in front of everyone, and had to be carried out. The judge ruled that Dylan did not have to see her father at all. Allen appealed again and lost. He never saw Ronan again either. Last year on Father’s Day, Ronan tweeted, “Happy father’s day—or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law’s day.”
Weide thought that tweet was a piece of wit, something to smile at, a sign of talent and quick-thinking. Great god almighty.