You Should Watch Rachel Maddow Break Down About Immigrant Baby Shelters
“OMG CRYING!”
“I literally sobbed during “Queer Eye”!”
“Stop, you’re going to make me cry!”
The Schmooze isn’t really interested in the commodification of tears (almost always female) as proof of profundity. But the clip that’s making the rounds of Rachel Maddow trying and failing to work through her tears as she reports on “tender age shelters” is worth a watch.
Maddow was attempting to report on facilities where babies and toddlers who have been forcibly taken from their parents are being housed by the US government. The AP reports that the Trump administration has opened three such shelters in Texas near the US-Mexico border. Children at the shelters, say reporters who have spent time inside, are hysterical. They do not know where their parents are.
Rachel Maddow chokes up and cries on air as she struggles to deliver news that migrant babies and toddlers have been sent to “tender age” shelters pic.twitter.com/O6crm8cvyR
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) June 20, 2018
Maddow’s public display of emotion is a worthwhile watch because it reifies the crimes against humanity that she is reporting. And because crying is a normal psychic response to emotion and doesn’t make you less of a professional. And because if watching a person you respect cry helps you contextualize the urgency of this issue, you should watch it happen.
And if that doesn’t do it for you, here is seven and a half minutes of children who have been separated from their families weeping in terror and crying for their moms and dads:
And then, once you’re ready, you can find out how to help.
Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO