At the Personalist Project: The Personal is Political…is Personal

Earlier this week, late night show host Jimmy Kimmel opened his show with a tearful monologue about his newborn son’s life-threatening heart condition. The video is raw and heart-wrenching enough to go viral just as the testimony of a new father’s too-close brush with human frailty and mortality.

But Kimmel went further. After a long list of thank-yous to hospital staff, family, and friends, he noted that children like his son are affected by the decisions made by lawmakers, and pled with his audience to place children’s lives above partisanship.

He criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health and praised Congress for instead calling for increased funding.

“If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make. … Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right?” he said.

Washington politicians meeting on health care need to “understand that very clearly,” he said. Partisan squabbles shouldn’t divide American on something “every decent person wants. We need to take care of each other.”

Not everybody was sympathetic to this plea. …

Read the rest at The Personalist Project.

[Picture is of my son Pascal, during his NICU stay for prematurity]