n the final minute of her show Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow is handed a news bulletin. She begins to read it and can’t finish it. She is fighting back her tears and abruptly ends the show. The bulletin was the Trump administration announcing it has set up three “baby jails” (or what they call it in Orwell-speak, “tender age shelters”), where Homeland Security has incarcerated the babies that have… been taken from their mothers who came to the US seeking asylum. Reading on the air this viscous, vulgar piece of news, news that is read only in totalitarian states, was too much for Rachel to bear. Not because she is weak or sensitive or emotional (each of us are hopefully all of those things).
I believe that the impenetrable conscience and the unbreakable soul that she possesses literally prevented her from reading those abominable words aloud in a free country over a medium that is supposed to still represent what is left of a free press. To her very bones she was simply incapable of uttering the lowliest hate one could ever repeat — that is, the kind of hate that announces the harming of a child, of a baby. Rachel Maddow, our brave, brilliant oracle of truth, involuntarily refused to give Trump’s orders to the masses. Her entire being refused to be a participant in the Leader’s desire to let everyone know it’s his nation, not ours, and he’ll do whatever he damn well pleases, even to an infant. Well, not on Rachel’s show Tuesday night. His vile decree was not announced. She would rather leave the frame of the camera than be a tool. Rachel, we cry those tears with you. And like you, we will rise in the morning and do what we need to do to reclaim this country. I know you, and I know you must feel awful about how you, on live TV, were overcome because of the responsibility you carry on your shoulders. Well, you and I and millions of other know just how strong you are and how you are a ROCK for everyone during these dark times. This was the primal scream/cry/revulsion we all needed in this moment. Thank you. We embrace you, we hold you high, we have your back. And as a great writer once said, “A huckster from Queens shall not, can not, bring down this great land!”