Lindsey Graham's death forces Jon Stewart to confront the gerontocracy

Sometimes the Daily Show is given a challenge. Even in an age when the president can go on his personal social media app to gloat about Robert Mueller’s death, there’s still the expectation among the rest of polite society not to mock someone who recently died. The Daily Show mostly adheres to this, but sometimes a death can really make the subtext text and illuminate a grave issue. In the case of Lindsay Graham’s recent demise, which somehow came before Mitch McConnell’s, it allowed Jon Stewart to deliver one of his strongest segments in some time by making Graham’s death an example of how our frail, elderly government is failing its people. 

Graham died amid rumors of McConnell’s end, multiple geopolitical breaking points, and President Grandpa calling in to various morning news shows to disparage Graham’s golf game. But he also died amid the oldest Congress in American history, and its members are dropping like flies. Six members have died this term alone. Members of the gerontocracy argue that we, the people, benefit from their experience, except we’re living through one of the least effective governments in history. As we approach the sixth month of our latest forever war and the government creates an explosive diarrhea outbreak because it no longer tests our food supply for the parasite causing the outbreak, we have to wonder how much longer we’re going to tolerate our doddering old government.