Mitch McConnell is alive! And heading back to work. See? There’s no conspiracy here, as some of the dim bulbs in Trump’s orbit were suggesting, like Laura Looney – um, sorry, my bad… I mean Loomer – who, amidst the four weeks of secrecy and cagey information released about the senator’s condition after being hospitalized, did what the Conspiracy Industrial Complex of MAGA does best: make shit up. So according to her, Senator McConnell was in a “vegetative state” and “brain dead.” And Steve Bannon crawled out from under his rock to suggest that the senator’s office was concealing his health status from the public to “avoid triggering a special election” that would enable outgoing Kentucky GOP representative and Trump foe Thomas Massie to run for McConnell’s seat as an independent.
But the circus is over. We have “proof of life,” as they say in the movies – a picture. He’s sitting upright, propped up by pillows. He’s wearing a reddish-pink button-up shirt with a kindof checkered pattern, and not the golden hooves and black robes he normally wears to meetings at the lodge with his fellow Soldiers of the Underworld brothers. On his face is a vacant, lipless mouth that seems to be attempting a smile for the camera. I say “attempting” because he hasn’t really pulled it off – he looks like he’s weeing through a catheter into a urine bag just out of shot. This was the best take, was it? I’d like to see the rejected ones. In a statement, McConnell said that he had been hospitalized after a fall, and was being treated for pneumonia.
Conspiracy theories continue…
As reported in Newsweek, the nutjobs are not satisfied, insisting the full photo which can be seen at right and includes his wife Elaine, a former Trump cabinet secretary, was generated by AI, claiming the newspaper is blurry and there is a change in the color of his skin at his left wrist joint.
Now, I sincerely wish him well. Having been in the hospital (ER) twice in the last week, and more times than I care to count over the last twenty years, I know firsthand what it is like. Despite some pretty amazing people doing a job that requires them to be both professional and compassionate while their “clients” (for lack of a better term, like “patients”) are at their worst, a hospital stay of any length is not fun. I have been hospitalized after a fall (which resulted in a broken hip, which was replaced with a new model), and I’ve been hospitalized and treated for pneumonia. I do not wish to repeat either experience, and I genuinely feel for Senator McConnell and what he must be going through. I do wish him a speedy recovery.
But here’s the thing. I am not one of the 100 most powerful, and arguably essential, people in the country. When I was hospitalized with pneumonia in 2024, I was there for a week. My dog missed me (I’m told Gordon was an absolute drama queen and basket case the whole time) and some of my plants died because it was August in the desert and they didn’t get watered. When I returned to the “land of the living,” weakened physically by my whole ordeal, all I had to do was rest (doctor’s orders), replant a few plants, and give Gordon belly rubs. My job is being retired. I was not returning to a situation where I affect the lives of thousands of people I will never meet, vote on legislation affecting millions more, confirm (or reject) personnel for key positions in our government (which also affects millions of people), and, well, everything else a US senator does.
We seem to be okay with, and our system of government seems to be set up for, old and frail men (and women) running things. The whole McConnell affair of the last month makes one thing perfectly clear: the only job requirement to be a US senator is to be alive. I am perhaps particularly sensitive about this because I am a Californian and we all watched our own senator, Dianne Feinstein, wheeled around the Senate in a wheelchair before she died at 90 years old, in office, in what I can only describe as a morbid theater of the absurd – we all remember, with horror, when she launched into a speech on the defense appropriations bill and had to be nudged by her fellow senator on the appropriations committee, Patty Murray of Washington state, to “Say aye. Aye. Just say…” like someone cutting off their grandma whose talking about the time she saw Dean Martin in Vegas rather than passing the stuffing at the Thanksgiving table.
Chuck Grassley, a sitting Republican senator from Iowa, is 92; his current term will end when he is 94. Let’s not forget Donald Trump who at 80 seems increasingly meandering – more so than usual – and has been seen falling asleep during meetings; at a time when the country he leads is at war he devotes himself to the kind of idle “home improvement” projects that retirees thrive on, like pool beautification and remodeling the house. In my grandfather’s golden years, he thought and spoke of little else than adding a ballroom to the house where my father grew up in Culver City.
Let me be perfectly clear about something. I am at least twenty years younger than all of the people I live with in my assisted living facility, who range in age from 78 to 90. I have nothing but respect and admiration for most of them; I have to admit, there’s a few I can’t stand – I am human after all! Ageing is not failure; just the opposite, it’s a triumph. And if I’m honest I appreciate the collective wisdom and experience of those around me, especially my LGBTQ+ elders who had it so much harder than me being homosexual in a heterosexual world.
But they are not elected to represent constituents, to navigate complex foreign and domestic policy affecting millions, to make decisions on how best to spend America’s tax dollars. About the biggest question facing the seniors here is whether or not to go on the outing to Albertsons supermarket to stock up on snacks for their apartment, or book time with Ron the haircut guy for next Monday.
There is nothing wrong with being old. With any luck, we all will be one day. But a man who is too old to suffer a fall in his home without needing a month-long hospitalization while staff and aides (and colleagues) cover for him is not my first choice to play a role in our government. Or my second. Or my third. What is offensive about the gerontocracy we live under is the lie it reveals: politicians say they are for us, but their effort to hold on to power, even in the face of diminished capacity, says they are for themselves. I can think of nothing less American than that.
To our seniors, I say, “well done, thank you, have a rest.” But let’s all just acknowledge the true meaning of the acronym MAGA – Make America Gray Again.
