Congress Is a Nursing Home With Better Lighting, and We’re Paying the Tab

By Tammy-Jo Pritchett · August 13, 2026

Opinion

So the Babylon Bee ran a piece about AOC not being able to find a single man under 90 at her workplace. And yes, I know it’s satire. I did my own research. I read the whole thing. The fake quote about guys in iron lungs made me spit out my coffee. But here’s what nobody in the mainstream wants to talk about: it’s funny because it’s true.

Have you seen the people running this country? I have. I watch the hearings with my own two eyes while folding laundry, and I am telling you, half of Capitol Hill looks like they should be playing bingo at a retirement community in Boca, not writing laws about artificial intelligence and social media. These people were born before color television. Some of them were born before television. And we’re supposed to trust them to regulate the internet? My nine-year-old knows more about how TikTok works than the senators grilling its CEO.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congresswoman from New York.

The Bee’s joke about the dating pool on Capitol Hill being “older than the invention of the cotton gin” is barely an exaggeration. You look at that place and it’s walkers, hearing aids, and people who’ve been in office since my mother was in pigtails. Meanwhile, these are the same folks voting on whether my kids get school choice, what gets taught in their classrooms, and how much of my paycheck disappears before I even see it.

Now, while we’re on the subject of AOC’s personal life, can we talk about what Marjorie Taylor Greene actually said? Because MTG went on Eric Bolling’s show and pointed out, plain as day, that AOC has never been married and has no children. MTG’s exact words: “She’s never been married, she has no children. This is a woman that has really no life experience, has no life wisdom, because she’s never done any of those things.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman from Georgia.

And the media lost its collective mind. Oh, you can’t say that! How dare she! But wait. Hold on. A mom of four is allowed to ask this question: why is it controversial to point out that someone who has never changed a diaper, never sat up with a sick kid at 2 a.m., never budgeted for a family of six on a middle-class income, might be missing a piece of life wisdom? I’m not saying you need kids to be a good person. I’m saying maybe, just maybe, the people writing policy about families, schools, and the economy should have some actual experience with families, schools, and the economy.

But no. The same crowd that cheers when a 28-year-old bartender becomes a congresswoman wants to pretend that’s the same thing as having real-world experience. It’s not. I bartended in college. It taught me how to handle drunk people, not how to run a country.

The Capitol Hill district in Washington, D.C., where Congress meets.

Here’s what it comes down to. Congress is a building full of people who are either too old to remember what decade it is or too young to have lived enough life to know what they’re doing. And the rest of us, the moms and dads actually raising the next generation, are supposed to just go along with whatever they decide? No. I have questions. I have a lot of questions. And nobody in that building seems interested in answering them.

The Babylon Bee wrote a joke. The joke is on us.

Sources

Editor’s note. The author's outrage at the Bee's joke about AOC's age seems to evaporate the moment she mentions her own mother's age, revealing that her 'real world experience' is contingent on a single demographic that conveniently excludes the very people she claims are too young. (W.K.)