The Senate vs Father Time

The oldest branch of our government, the U.S. Senate, is confronting the reality of its own creation: old people often die. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) died Saturday night. Depending on who you ask, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is:

For some perspective on just how old the Senate has become, the median age of a U.S. Senator is 64. The earliest age you can claim Social Security is 62. A few weeks back, I noted in a video that if Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wins reelection in 2028 (he’s already filed to run), he would be 101 by the end of his term.

So what’s the legacy of these boomers who have pulled up the ladder from behind them for decades? How will we look back at their legacies? More on that in a bit.

But first!

Friday’s video was a bit of a spiritual sequel to a video I did at The Washington Post about the height of buildings in D.C. Except this had 100% more Emo Fact Checker and Arch. Watch it below.

I met Lindsey Graham briefly in 2015. It was the day after presidential candidate Donald Trump, a long-shot ridiculed by the party’s establishment, had given out Graham’s number at a rally. He just … said all the digits.

Graham and his team were understandably pissed. In what ended up being the blueprint for the 2020 presidential candidate TikToks I did at the Post years later, we concocted a video in which he “destroyed his cell phone,” which was actually just seven different flip phones we had purchased that morning.

This video was a major highlight in my early career, while working at Independent Journal Review, a company that was in the middle of an identity crisis. The articles leaned right, but our video team was its own little wacky island working out of Alexandria, Virginia, just making fun of everyone and everything. It was Graham’s participation in this video, and our quick turnaround while the cell phone story was still in the news cycle, that put us on the map in an era in which BuzzFeed video otherwise dominated.

Because of the success of this video (which I worked as a production assistant on), I have always remembered this interaction quite fondly. I specifically remember instructing him to “just put the blender on the slowest mode for a few seconds.” I had tested it before the senator came in and found that it would swirl the phone around but not break anything. Then, as we were rolling, my boss at the time, Benny Johnson, walked up and turned it turbo, breaking the blender and nearly taking off Graham’s head as the phone flew through the air.

In the following years, we all watched Graham do a complete 180, debasing himself and abandoning his ideals for Trump. Once Senator John McCain died, there was nothing left to keep Graham rooted in his former reality. As a YouTuber put it four months ago on the cell phone video:

Benny, who I absolutely loathed at the time and loathe to this day, put his own fascist politics on turbo mode, accepting money from Russia to further divide the country and building an entire identity around Trump — someone he vocally dismissed in 2015.

I think Graham and Johnson’s evolutions over the last decade are quite similar. Graham may have initially expressed contempt for Trump publicly, but ultimately power was far more important. Similarly, Johnson has always chased that high, doing everything possible to go viral. “A hate click is just as valuable as a love click,” he once said.

He also said, “THIS IS THE NEWS BUSINESS” to me in an email, when I pushed back on prioritizing a video about Hillary Clinton’s health because I felt it was a non-existent story, fabricated by Republicans (it was, by the way).

Johnson and Graham, and to a larger extent, the rest of the aging U.S. Senate (including Bernie Sanders, who has also filed for reelection in 2030), are just opportunists in this way. They seek power and want to hold on to it. Some good may be done in that time, but ultimately they are not driven by public service. Caring about your constituents would mean looking to the future and allowing new leadership to take over and steady the wheel before it’s too late and you’re too old to even realize you’re standing in front of a wheel.

As a result, when someone like Graham dies and when someone like McConnell may be dead but no one knows, very few people on either side of the aisle seem to be celebrating them and their legacy.

I rewatched the original Toy Story for the first time in many years, maybe even decades. I have seen every film in theaters, except for the most recent installment. I’m pretty well aware of the lore and characters — I wore out our Toy Story 2 VHS as a kid and have been delighted to learn many people have come around to seeing it as the best of the Toy Story films (which is correct).

One thing that really struck me with the original film was how much it was directed like a live-action film. If toys really were alive and could move, this is how you’d set the camera up and shoot these scenes with them. There’s even a POV shot from Woody’s angle in the opening montage, before we know that he’s alive and experiencing Andy playing with him. This is what made the film so good to begin with. The entire production has bought into the idea that toys are alive. Don’t get me wrong — there are some really incredible animated films these days. I love the Spiderverse films and The Mitchells vs. the Machines, for example. But I can’t currently think of an animated film today that works so hard to convince us an entire world really exists.

So, should I see Toy Story 5? Have you seen it? Is it just another money grab from Pixar after perfectly wrapping up the series with Toy Story 3? Send me your thoughts at [email protected].

This week I am very excited as it’s the beginning of our collaboration with MediaWise around the Teen Creator Network. Every week, I’ll be working with the group of 13- to 20-year old U.S. creators, showing them how to write, film, produce, edit and publish news videos. It’s like having interns again! I’m really excited to work with these young, talented people. You never know when you’re gonna meet your next Chris Vazquez, who you ultimately trick into collaborating with you for the next several years.

Speaking of, here’s one of my favorite all-time Chris videos, from when his initial stint with us on the Post TikTok team ended (it had only been four days).

Not long after, we were able to secure Chris for the rest of the year, then I forced him to give a blood oath to work with me forever he continued to collaborate with me for years to come!