Mad Men and Late Night Sunday Open Thread

"I Drink" - Mary Gauthier

Strange piece in the New Times today by Katie Roiphe, "The Allure of Messy Lives" extolling the liberating quality of middle of the day drinking and adultery (not necessarily limited to the middle of the day) as depicted in "Mad Men."  Roiphe seems to think that excessive drinking and adultery have somehow been removed from the cultural landscape in America and replaced by an unhealthy fetish with organic milk.

Roiphe chalks up the hard drinking on Mad Men to the quest for fun.  Now as one who has mastered the fine art of drinking for "fun" -- I've had a mere five ryes this evening -- this strikes me as painfully superficial:

It is true that these days, people of Don Draper’s age and situation pour energy into beautiful vacations, or they cook intricate meals for a dinner party from organic or free-range ingredients. But are they hanging out with the same boozy fluidity, are there wild bursts of bad behavior, are they expecting each day to live up to the ineffable standard of “fun”? Perhaps part of what is so appealing, so fascinating about “Mad Men” is the refusal of bourgeois ordinariness, the struggle against it, in all of its poetic and mundane and tragic forms.

This is one of those instances where one wishes that Ms. Roiphe had gotten out a bit more in her life -- that perhaps a life limited to Harvard, Princeton, and New York City has not given her a very full view of the world. Her take on women in the work force of the early 1960s -- aided by the noted feminist Gay Talese --responding to sexual overtures from their superiors -- again, just the quest for fun -- left me shaking my head:

He also recalls copy girls slipping out in the middle of the day with more than one man to the surrounding hotels. “You didn’t have the word ‘exploitation’ then,” Mr. Talese said. “And mostly it wasn’t exploitation.”

Mostly indeed. 

Ms. Roiphe has been taken to school, as it were, in the past, for her half-baked thinking. It would be good for her to realize that there are large swaths of America in which substances are being ingested promiscuously, even at mid-day, adultery remains a common form of entertainment, and no one gives a shit about either pilates or organic milk. 

I promise I will return to more serious matters when I sober up.  Time to walk Stanley and get to sleep.  A good evening to you all.   

Comments

[oddjob]

Target Corp. & Best Buy have decided to financially contribute to a pro-business group supporting the Minnesota gubernatorial campaign of Tom Emmer, a man who got in trouble for stating that waiters earn too much money, and who also wants MN to contribute less to anti-AIDS work, as well as some other lovely stuff.

More here.

[litbrit]

So the reason cloistered, naïve, semi-inarticulate simpletons like Roiphe have a national platform and I don't is that I didn't go to Harvard, hmmm? I guess being able to write one's way out of a wet paper bag is neither here nor there if the bag bears the wrong logo.

[Corvus9]

Well, I guess I can continue with my plan of not shopping at Target anymore.

Also, Katie Roiphe sucks, but sometimes it is nice to have people like her around, to remind me that just because I didn't go the "Harvard, Princton, and New York City" route, that doesn't mean I am any less intelligent than the people who did.

[oddjob]

So the reason cloistered, naïve, semi-inarticulate simpletons like Roiphe have a national platform and I don't is that I didn't go to Harvard, hmmm?

Also, Katie Roiphe sucks, but sometimes it is nice to have people like her around, to remind me that just because I didn't go the "Harvard, Princton, and New York City" route, that doesn't mean I am any less intelligent than the people who did.

Every so often I am reminded that my lack of education in matters involving contemporary culture is probably a good thing. (I've got a bachelors degree, but it's in an agricultural discipline, and my curriculum was dominated by biology.) ;)

[minstrel hussain boy]

or read de tocqueville. he commented on the amazing consumption of alcohol in early america. john adams had a glass of hard cider for breakfast, and that was nothing unusual.

if we know anything about our "nation of shopkeepers" we know that branding fucking counts.

problems with a war? it can't be that your plans were half baked or your intelligence was lacking. you lost the war "in the media." lost an election? time to "rebrand the party."

out here in the uncultured west branding involves bawling cattle and hot irons.

it would be fun to bring that to harvard yard. i'd have me a ropin' good time.

[big bad wolf]

for katie, i arranged to have one of the ladies from the secretarial pool bring a bloody mary to my front door this morning. after drinking it and dismissing her, i downed two manhattans and headed for work. she wasn't wrong: the morning commute wasn't nearly so confining as it normally seems; i even had the guts to refuse my latte and fiber. i can't wait till lunch. i may rent an apartment.

life by t.v. is the way to go. i see that again. there was a time i hung out at therapists and strip clubs and for people to be beaten or killed, but then it all ended with journey and i felt so used. i would never have trusted and lived by anything that i knew valued journey. now, thanks to katie, i see that t.v. is the key to better living.

[kathy a.]

do you suppose anyone told her that mad men is not a documentary?

in any event, she could expand her sources and perspective by conducting cultural research in the supermarket checkout line, and thumbing the informative publications located there. just this morning, i went to collect provisions and noticed that "messy lives" are not a thing of the past. for a "funner" angle, newspaper and magazine gossip columns are bursting with modern reports. offices used to rely on the "water cooler" method of keeping up with the untoward activities of co-workers, but i suppose that happens less now that everyone drinks individual bottles of water.

[oddjob]

They learn nothing, do they?

[kathy a.]

oh holy shit, oddjob. it is hard to know where to start on the views of gingrich and his buddies, but one thing that comes to mind is the extent to which christianist fundamentalists want to impose their views on every single damned one of us who doesn't agree with them.

we've got the folks who "fight racism" by advocating racial divides. we've got the "pro life" people who demonstrate their commitment by advocating killing of those who disagree with their religious views. we've got those who promote "freedom of religion" with their idea that their own religion is the only real one. and on and on. wtf?

[Sir Charles]

These people are truly nuts.

Evidently Giuliani had to jump on the crazy train too and denounce the "Ground Zero" mosque. What a bunch of assholes.

[litbrit]

IT'S NOT AT GROUND ZERO, for fuck's sake.

Wingnut demagogues: Stupid, crazy, or some synergistic blend of the two?

[kathy a.]

i vote synergistic, with a side of opportunism: even if they know the talking point is a lie, they'll go with it if it is helpful to the larger point of promoting themselves.

[oddjob]

The first term paper I ever wrote (a not very good one) was when I was a senior in high school.

It was on Senator McCarthy. I found the topic deeply disturbing, as well as profoundly disgusting.

I am much reminded of him these days............

[oddjob]

By the mere act of writing an opinion the VA Attorney General (yet another man whose surname ends in a vowel) has turned VA into the East Coast's Arizona.

[kathy a.]

isn't that something, oddjob? my parents were both lifelong republicans, but each thought mccarthyism was really shameful. it seems like time to bring back that history lesson -- after 60-some years, i'm not sure it is well-remembered.

[oddjob]

Anyone with any sense who knows about mccarthyism thinks it really shameful. It's so profoundly hostile to this country's legacy!