Roger Ailes Is Smarter Than You

"Let's face it, there are three things that the media are interested in: pictures, mistakes and attacks. That's the one sure way of getting coverage. You try to avoid as many mistakes as you can. You try to give them as many pictures as you can. And if you need coverage, you attack, and you will get coverage." 

- Roger Ailes (1988)

As quoted in David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havt's book, The FOX Effect, Ailes dropped that line during a post-mortem of the 1988 Presidential election conducted at Harvard University a few months after he had helped George Herbert Walker Bush defeat Michael Dukakis.  That campaign was defined most memorably by the "picture" (and "mistake") of Dukakis, a veteran, looking ridiculous riding in the open hatch of a tank, and an "attack," a campaign ad about a black prisoner in Massachusetts, Willie Horton, who committed a brutal assault and rape while on a weekend furlough from jail, so Ailes was clearly onto something. 

Indeed, that Ailes would make such a prescient observation is unsurprising.  He cut his teeth 20 years before that rehabilitating the image of Richard Nixon, using tactics that are now familiar - the carefully scripted "town hall" meeting stocked with sympathetic voters, the use of wedge issues to mobilize the electorate and the staged photo used to convey an image and not a message. At the Presidential level, many in "the media," cowed by the aggressive tactics of Ailes and others on the right-wing, have largely shed their role as neutral arbiter of "facts" in favor of Greek chorus for the political food fight that passes for reasoned discussion in the Age of Obama.  And who can blame them?  The rise of the Internet and cable television has stripped away the traditional role that media at the national level - places like the newsroom at CBS and The New York Times, once held. Rupert Murdoch now owns The Wall Street Journal and an entire network that does nothing but ape Republican talking points while any reporting that even has a whiff of dreaded "liberal bias" is immediately pounced on to suggest the left secretly runs the media. 

While smarter people than me have written about the media (a great primer is the essential "What Liberal Media?" by Eric Alterman), Ailes's observation about campaigns plays an increasing central role in the way we select our Presidents.  Consider "mistakes."  We are at the point where full sentences are no longer needed to frame them; say the following and people know immediately what you mean: "$10,000 bet," "Etch-A-Sketch," or "Oops." These boo boos feed the news cycle, often for days and, if mistakes are repeated, begin forming a broader narrative of the candidate.  It is unsurprising that Mitt Romney comes off looking like some sort of latter day Thurston Howell III.  Not only did Romney, a millionaire many times over, offer to make a $10,000 bet on national television, he mentioned in passing that his wife owns two Cadillacs and referred to more than $350,000 in speaking fees he received as not a lot of money.  That he hired a lobbyist to gain a local zoning variance so he could install an elevator for the cars in his California's mansion seemed apt in the context of these other disclosures.  Rick Perry's inability to remember the three federal agencies he would shutter if he became President torpedoed his campaign and even though no one thought Herman Cain would ever be elected, his glib response to a question about Uzbekistan said all that needed to be said about his lack of readiness for the national stage. 

Of course, the best way to fight off mistakes is to attack.  Indeed, while the media will gladly feed at the trough of an offhand remark like "I like to fire people" or a modest slight about the source of cookies at a campaign rally for a day or two, what they really want is a manufactured dust up to drive the news.  Such was the case with Hilary Rosen's comment that Ann Romney could not relate to working women because she (Ann Romney) had not "worked a day in her life."  The blowback was immediate, with critics (including the President) rising to the defense of stay-at-home mothers.  Of course, candidates can "overreach" when they feign outrage, as Ann Romney did, by "defending" her "choice" to raise 5 kids (a luxury afforded her by her husband's great wealth) while telling a group of fundraisers that she basically manipulated the whole incident to garner sympathy (referring to it as a great "birthday present.")  Her husband got caught in the undertow as well when it turned out he had called for women with children as young as 2 to be forced to work if they wanted public assistance.  

And what was learned from this one incident?  Nothing.  And what political gain (or loss) was achieved? None. Polling done after wall-to-wall coverage of this non-story indicated that it changed no minds about who people would vote for.  In the balance, no greater discussion of the two candidates' positions was revealed, no critical examination of their policy views was deduced and of course, at least in Romney's case, no follow-up reporting/commenting was done by the news media (Romney rarely does press availabilities and generally avoids the media except when his poll numbers are lagging). But what it did accomplish was sucking up hours upon hours of cable news time, page views on myriad political websites and fake outrage.  Kudos.

Attacks matter both because they obscure the weaknesses of a candidate and define their opponents. Governor Romney's tactic of imputing on President Obama negative outcomes that Romney has himself been tarred with is a new spin on the Rovian idea of turning a candidate's strength into a weakness.  Thus, Romney claims Obama's presidency has been bad for women because of purported job losses they have suffered while he has been President glides over the fact that public sector job losses, in sectors like teaching where women predominate, are largely due to the policies of state level officials, and a refusal by Republicans at the national level to extend aid to states that would help avoid these layoffs.  It also obscures his poor jobs record as Governor of Massachusetts (47th out of 50) and the litany of layoffs and firings in companies he acquired as head of Bain Capital. 

By throwing out the attack, Romney also deflects attention away from policies he has taken that poll poorly among many women.  For example, Romney came out in support of a personhood amendment in Mississippi that would have declared an embryo a "person" and thus making all abortion, and many forms of birth control, illegal, and the Blount-Rubio Amendment in the Senate that would have allowed employers to refuse to offer contraceptive coverage in their medical plans on vaguely worded "morals" grounds.  But in the instant gratification, reductionist media of today, all that is heard is some spin about women making up 93% of job losses under Obama. For the media, so long as there is a good "he said/he said" narrative to report, the underlying facts are not germane.  Neither the manner of the attack nor the veracity of it is important, so long as someone is calling someone else a no good so and so, the blood suckers happily tap away on their laptops and iPhones, writing, blogging and tweeting about the latest contrempts on the campaign trail.  

Days are now spent talking about the U.S. Secret Service's prostitution scandal, with Republicans loudly inveighing against their conduct, but where were those Republicans when one of their own, David Vitter, turned up in the "little black book" of a D.C. madam?  Instead of raising that legitimate question of hypocrisy, journalists look for the slant on how it affects President Obama, who had nothing to do with it.  Same thing with the GSA.  A waste of taxpayer money? Of course.  Imputed to Obama, huh? In the meantime, legitimate stories about actual governance, as when members of Governor Romney's staff bought their hard drives at the end of his term in office, go unreported.  Might that action suggest a certain desire for secrecy we, as voters should be conceded about?  Sure, but the press is too busy chasing its own tail about the horse race and polling to focus on substantive issues. Why bother looking at how a person actually governs when ancillary stories that have nothing to do with the person are far sexier?  

Think none of this matters?  Consider the Republicans' favorite boogeyman, the national debt.  If you just listened to people like Paul Ryan, you would think this debt appeared out of nowhere when Barack Obama took office; however, rarely reported is Ryan's complicity in the creation of this debt through his votes for massive tax cuts (2001 and 2003), unfunded wars in Iraq & Afghanistan and the Medicare Part D drug benefit, all of which occurred under a Republican President who mocked a fiscally responsible position during the 2000 election to put the Social Security surplus in a "lockbox."  

You remember the lockbox, right? That was either the nadir or high point of the media's intellectual laziness (depending on your perspective). It was derided in the media, on Saturday Night Live and of course, by the Bush campaign. Simply put, Al Gore proposed taking the trillions in Social Security surplus that had accumulated and making that money off limits to the rest of the federal government, which, as a matter of course, had borrowed against that surplus for decades to make budget numbers look less bad than they were.  Gore's idea grew out of the budget surplus he and President Clinton helped create and the fiscally responsible idea that government should prepare for the retirement of the Baby Boom generation.  In other words, a "little c" conservative position to take to help ensure the country's future financial stability. 

We all know what happened next.  The media focused on important issues like Gore's sighing during debates, who voters would prefer to have a beer with and blithely looked away when shenanigans during the Florida recount occurred.  For their interest in the sizzle over the steak, we got the most fiscally irresponsible president in our nation's history. Instead of reserving the surplus that had assiduously accumulated, Bush spent it, all of it, and then some, on his tax cuts, wars and drug benefits, raiding the Social Security trust fund to help do it, and generated an enormous structural budget deficit that exploded in the financial meltdown in 2008.  Now, 12 years after that 2000 election, our fiscal house is in complete disorder and that army of soon-to-be seniors looms that much closer on the horizon.  Had the media focused on the risks of trillions of dollars in tax cuts in 2000 instead of whether Gore invented the Internet (something he actually never claimed to have done), well, who knows.  Of course, in the contemporaneous reporting on our fiscal problems these days, 2000 is down the memory hole, unfunded wars didn't happen and the Medicare D benefit might as well have happened under LBJ.  In the meantime, the media politely allows Republicans to whitewash their own history and push an agenda that would cover up their fiscal recklessness by destroying the social safety net.  

One thing W's team perfected was the manipulation of "reality" and how journalists who depended on fact and examination of policy to come to truth were missing the point - that Rove and his ilk could bend reality because there was no arbiter of what was and was not truth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community). Once you have destroyed the Moynihan rule of "you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts" there is no end to the lying you can do in service of your ultimate goals because the truth no longer matters. This happens even when candidates and consultants are shown saying diametrically opposed things (Jon Stewart has owned this particular form of illustrating hypocrisy) or attempting to backtrack off of things previously said in the service of present day expediency (Etch-A-Sketch anyone?). 

This shit matters, people.  In fact, it matters more today than it has in recent memory because the precipice we find ourselves on is that precarious. As has been documented elsewhere, this Republican Congress is as conservative as has ever been seen and seems willing to burn down the village to save it - that is, to completely eviscerate the social safety net that tens of millions of elderly, young, poor, disabled and homeless rely on for a modicum of decency and leave the rest of us at the mercy of a privatized, for-profit world in which there are few regulations, little oversight and no accountability.  

Relying on the "mainstream" media to ensure coverage of the Presidential campaign that consists of more than pictures, mistakes and attacks is unlikely.  Reporters at the national level are well paid, largely unaffected when social policy changes and desirous of the cache that comes from being inside the heady bubble of Presidential politics.  Ultimately, that's the dirty little secret.  The media, at least most of it, is not invested in getting to some greater truth, some core of objectivity that will actually enlighten instead of entertain for fear they might get snubbed at the White House Correspondent's Dinner or not have their calls returned by the Romney campaign's political flacks.  The relationship between these campaigns and the reporters who cover them is both symbiotic and incestuous.  That it is also destructive to the political discourse in our country goes without saying, but I kind of think Roger Ailes is cool with that. 

Megan Draper Must Die

Megan Draper makes her husband Don happy.  She keeps an eye on his drinking, encourages him to socialize with his co-workers, and is sexually available to satisfy his kinks.  She's good with his kids, doesn't (overly) abuse her position as his wife with his co-workers, and has done nice things for him, like throw a surprise birthday party.  Don speaks glowingly of her, rebuffs the entreaties of a former paramour and tells Pete Campbell that had he met Megan before Betty, he never would have erected a double life of suburban husband and philandering advertising executive. 

Pretty awesome, right?  After watching Don's tortured life unspool over 4 seasons, he's now in a good place, with a wife he dotes on and adores and a healthier attitude toward work and people.  Unfortunately, this happy place has made the Draper character 99.9% LESS interesting than he was before we caught up with the Mad Men crew a month ago. While Season 5 has afforded the writers the opportunity to move peripheral characters more to the center (I'm looking at you, Pete Campbell), the show's core is Don Draper and this guy is someone who, as Peggy noted in the season premiere, is not someone we recognize.  This guy is just a square (http://scarylawyerguy.blogspot.com/2012/04/don-draper-is-square.html) who, at worst, might experience some mild mid-life crisis (likely health related, as he's bedded more women than Wilt Chamberlain) but otherwise, appears eager to downshift into middle age with a wife he loves and children he adores.  How BORING.  

This is why Megan Draper must die.  I have nothing against Jessica Pare, or the Megan character generally (though her craptacular Zou Bisou Bisou serenade in the Season 5 premiere might have been the most painful 2 minutes in the show's history); however, stable, settled Don Draper who is open to client suggestions, meets his wife (instead of his lover) for lunch and isn't a raging alcoholic is simply no fun.  Admittedly, manufacturing some crisis to take Don down a dark path may be contrived, but Don Draper without existential angst and a tortured psyche is just another 40 year old white collar professional quickly falling on the "Perry Como" fault line of the 1960s.  

There are three ways to play the 2d Draper marriage and killing off Megan is the most plausible of the three.  Consider:

Don & Megan Start A Second Family:  This is the most obvious direction to go in.  The cliche of the middle aged man starting a second family with the "trophy wife" would not be breaking particularly new ground and anyway, Megan made an off handed comment about not being able to have children while Don was getting handsy on the way back from the Campbell's dinner party in Signal 30.  Even if they went with the baby angle, what could it really be mined for?  Either moving Don and Megan back to the suburbs (which Don equated to blowing one's brains out) or keep them in the city with her at home and he conveniently going back to his adulterous ways?  Implausible, I say.

Megan Turns Out To Not Be Who We Think She Is:  Possible, right?  She's an actress after all and what do we really know about her, other than she's French-Canadian and has an overbite (sorry, mean).  Is it possible that Megan is really a grifter or some sort of soulless temptress who is going to … what, exactly?  Take Don's money? Have an office affair? Other?  No realistic way to expound on this theory considering there's been no suggestion she's into hanky-panky with anyone in the office and has not been sending secret coded messages to persons unknown.  Sure, she might have some friends Don finds a bit unusual, and he might get dragged to Fire Island to see them, but if anything, that would confirm his security in his marriage, not undermine it. 

Megan Is The Victim Of City Violence:  This scenario makes the most sense and is the most consistent with the vibe and theme of this season, which has been littered with references to death and mayhem - riots, mass murder, random shootings, allusions to suicide, the Vietnam War and Don scribbling a hangman's noose on a pad of paper.  1966 may mark the cusp of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, but it's also the harbinger of a lot of societal turmoil in our cities - major riots in places like Detroit and Newark, the assassinations of MLK and RFK, massive protests against the Vietnam War and of course, the Manson Family. Mad Men has already been touched by random violence (the mugging of Roger and Joan) and with the increasing lawlessness our country was facing in the mid-late 1960s (consider the exterior at the end of Signal 30 - a dark, foreboding and menacing building), would something like a pretty young woman getting killed in Manhattan seem that far-fetched?  I say not.  

The benefits of killing off Megan are three-fold - (1) total game changer in terms of story telling; (2) a buzz worthy (and plausible) story line and (3) it would completely devastate Don Draper.  Yes, I am rooting for Don to return to his dark and broken past because I cannot tolerate this man's happiness.  I'm sorry, Megan, you're collateral damage in the war to make Don a miserable (but eminently watchable) bastard.

Howard Stern Lawsuit - DISMISSED

Earlier this week, New York Supreme Court[1] Judge Kapnick dismissed, with prejudice, Howard Stern’s lawsuit against SiriusXM Radio. Howard filed a lawsuit based on his belief that a performance-based payment clause in his 2004 contract with Sirius required them to pay him up to $300 million based on the company’s reaching certain subscriber numbers.  Howard’s case was predicated on the belief that once Sirius acquired XM, all XM subscribers must now count toward the performance standard because XM became part of Sirius, the company.  Not surprisingly, Sirius argued the opposite – only subscribers to the Sirius service, even after XM was acquired, counted. 

The dismissal, via summary judgment, was a bit of a surprise to me[2], but the judge’s opinion[3] made clear that she found the language of the contract unambiguous – for the purpose of the performance-based clause negotiated by Stern and his agent, Don Buchwald, only subscribers to the Sirius radio service, not the merged SiriusXM company could be counted.  Moreover, she pointed out that the parties included a separate provision that paid Stern $25 million when Sirius and XM merged[4], which, she held, evinced the parties “explicitly distinct treatment of subscribers acquired by merger[5].”  Taken together, the Court concluded that the understanding of the parties at the time the contract was signed and the plain language of the agreement precluded, as a matter of law, the interpretation Stern claimed. 

There’s no way to spin this decision as other than a complete and total win for Sirius.  Even though the Judge’s opinion was brief, just 11 pages, let me answer some questions that you might have and throw out a few random thoughts of my own:

What is Summary Judgment & Why Is It Important?  Summary judgment is often used at the beginning of a case by a party that thinks the lawsuit filed against it is frivolous. It is a concept that says, “even if every single fact the non-moving (i.e., the party that did not file the motion, in this case, Stern and Buchwald) party alleges is true, as a matter of law, you have to rule in our (i.e., the party that filed the motion, in this case, Sirius) favor.” Summary judgment affords the court the opportunity to dismiss meritless cases quickly, and without significant legal cost. 

In this case, to rule in Sirius’s favor required the Judge to look at the October 1, 2004 contract and essentially, nothing else, in making her determination.  That is, Judge Kapnick said that as a matter of law, the language in that Agreement was unambiguous and not subject to more than one interpretation. In fact, because the only interpretation that could be read into the Agreement was that “Sirius Subscribers” meant subscribers to that service, not a merged company that included XM subscribers, none of the performance-based awards Howard sought in the lawsuit were triggered and therefore, the case must be dismissed.

This decision is important for a couple of reasons.  First, in opposition to Sirius’s summary judgment motion, Stern argued that the motion must be denied because the terms of the contract were either plain (in his favor) or ambiguous.  By granting summary judgment to Sirius, Judge Kapnick not only said the terms were plain in Sirius’s favor, but that no fact-finding was necessary to reach her conclusion. In other words, Howard was denied what’s called “discovery,” the phase of a lawsuit where each side must produce non-privileged information and submit witnesses for depositions (sworn pre-trial testimony) to the other regarding the lawsuit and from which, each side constructs its case.  Second, by dismissing the case with prejudice, Howard is precluded from refiling the case utilizing different arguments. 

What Happens If Howard Appeals?  But Scary Lawyer Guy, you say, the case is not over!  Howard said on his radio show that he will appeal the judge’s ruling!  Victory is close at hand.  Not so.  Let’s be clear.  As of right, Howard can appeal; however, because the judge has dismissed Howard’s lawsuit, the best outcome for him at the appellate level is for the court to overturn the trial court’s decision to dismiss the case and allow it to proceed.  That is, the appellate court would be saying the contract’s terms are not unambiguous and discovery must occur.  Because Stern did not file his own motion for summary judgment, the appellate court cannot rule on the underlying merit of his complaint – i.e., that the contract is unambiguous in his favor.  On the other hand, if the appellate court upholds the trial court ruling, the dismissal with prejudice will hold and the case will go away forever. 

How Long Will The Appeal Take?  It will likely take a minimum of 9-12 months for the appellate process to unfold.  First, Howard’s team will file a notice of their intent to appeal, followed by submission of a legal brief explaining why the trial court erred.  Sirius will file its brief (court rules vary state-to-state, but I’m guessing 45 days after Howard’s brief is filed) explaining why the trial court should be upheld.  It is possible, though I do not know the New York court rules, that Howard’s team will get a chance to submit a reply (or rebuttal) brief within 10-15 days after Sirius’s submission. After all that is done, the Court will set an oral argument date, which is usually several months later.  Oral argument will occur and then, well, we wait.  Appellate courts do not issue rulings the same day as oral argument and they are under no time restriction for when an opinion must be issued.  It could take a few weeks, it could take a few months, it is totally up to them.

When Will This All Go Away & Allow Me To Stop Reading Your Blog? Good question. Howard could choose not to appeal and the lawsuit will be over.  If he does appeal, the parties could still hammer out a settlement under the theory that Sirius would carry some minor litigation risk if it lost at the appellate level and the case was remanded to the trial court; however, I do not think that is likely.  With a dismissal at the summary judgment stage in its hand, Sirius’s negotiating position is strong and they have little incentive to pay anything to Howard at this point.  If the parties go through the appellate process, see above.  Even if the appellate court rules in Sirius’s favor, that won’t happen until late this year or 2013. 

If Howard wins and the case is remanded, you may see more meaningful settlement discussion because we now know Sirius’s downside risk is more than $300 million.  Of course, the trial court has already tipped its hand on the merits of Howard’s lawsuit.  What is also important to note is that while Stern supporters may think discovery would unveil some “smoking gun” document, if such a document existed, it would have likely been produced by now.  That is to say, Howard’s team would have led with more persuasive documentary evidence for its case than some 10-K filings and press releases and/or Sirius would have done the same.  Moreover, if Sirius knew that documentary evidence existed supporting Howard’s position, they would not have stiffed him on the performance payment in the first place. In short, we can reasonably surmise that no contemporaneous notes, emails or documents exist showing the parties contemplated counting potential merged subscribers as part of the contract, leaving Howard, if he is able to resuscitate his case through a successful appeal, opting to continue spending a lot of money on lawyers on a case he is unlikely to win. At that point, he may take a slice of the loaf and hope that Sirius might agree to pay legal fees and some modest settlement amount, but I would not count on it (good thing he’s got that AGT money rolling in now!).

Anything Else?  I would still encourage people to get the facts about the lawsuit, which you can do be accessing all of the electronic records filed in this case.  I’ve listened to Howard for almost 25 years and enjoy him immensely as an entertainer; however, it’s also important to not get sucked in by the spin and slant he provides.  In his view, the Agreement is clear, but if you read it, as I did, you will find that not to be the case.  He never publicly mentioned the $25 million merger payment he received until after the court issued its ruling and then, as I mentioned above, gave an entirely different explanation for that clause than what his lawyers said in their court filings.  From an equity perspective, it is also difficult to feel sorry for Howard.  He was paid (literally) hundreds of millions of (well earned) dollars; however, if his agent inserted a bad, or inartfully written clause into his contract, he should blame his agent, not his employer. Howard is about to experience a mainstream rebirth when America’s Got Talent premieres with him as a judge.  If I were him, I would stop trying to squeeze money from my employer and be content with the riches that have already been showered on me and the acclaim from a whole new platform I am about to receive. 

---

[1]   In New York, state trial court is referred to as “the Supreme Court.”

[2]   My full analysis of the lawsuit can be found at: http://scarylawyerguy.blogspot.com/2011/11/breaking-down-stern-v-siriusxm.html)

[3] http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/89702610?access_key=key-1hd80gybcqxz0jnwedj0 or

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=JIDUU1614fTcaMd0kHhotw==&system=prod

[4]   After the Judge rendered her decision, Howard claimed on his radio show that the merger provision was inserted for his protection in the event XM acquired Sirius and sought to terminate his employment.  In the legal filings, he argued that the purpose of the merger clause was to defer some of his compensation so the financial hit to Sirius was not as hard when he signed. Judge’s Opinion at 8.

[5]  Opinion at p. 11.

Mad Men Season 5 - Boulevard of Broken Dreams

What if I told you that you would get everything you want, but you would still be unhappy?  For five seasons we have watched Pete Campbell claw his way to the top.  Professionally, he first tried to usurp Don (way back in Season 1, Pete's goal was not head of accounts, but creative director), then tried to blackmail him. He ingratiated himself to Duck, only to cut him off at the knees when he realized Don was the true power player in the firm.  He was pitted against Ken in a competition to see who would earn the title head of accounts and lost, but was scooped up for the new Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Last season, he came into his own, standing as the solid core of the firm, working hard to ensure its survival, even turning down an offer to leave for another agency as a name partner.  

Meanwhile, Pete, who bedded Peggy days before his wedding, had a predator's view of women.  His liaisons were either clumsy and awkward (in his office or in the apartment of a model living with her grandmother) or forced, as when he assaulted a nanny in his apartment building as a "thank you" for having replaced a soiled cocktail dress for her without her host family being the wiser. That incident seemed to have been a turning point for Pete, as his eye no longer wandered, his wife Trudy became pregnant and the idea of fatherhood appeared to ground him.  He had even come to grips with the fact that Peggy had given birth to his child and put the baby up for adoption. 

As it turns out, and as we discover in Signal 30, all of that effort has been for naught.  The Pete Campbell who we see in this episode is every bit the petulant, venal and self-centered asswipe we were first introduced to six "years" ago when the show started.  Suburban ennui is hardly a new topic, but Pete's dislocation is particularly acute.  Having grown up in New York City, he is ill suited to the suburban life, with its leaky faucets, varmints and commuter trains.  His dissatisfaction with his wife is more inchoate.  While he alluded to what we would now call postpartum depression at the beginning of this season, there does not seem to be anything wrong with Trudy per se, or at least nothing that her being a blonde teenager with saucer blue eyes or a high class hooker who calling him "king" would not fix. 

In an interesting bit of role reversal, it is Don who tries to remind Pete of all he stands to lose by carousing. Don's paternal instinct toward Pete played out beautifully in two of the climactic scenes of this episode - first, in the cab ride from the whorehouse they patronized with a potential client, and then, in the elevator, after Pete has mouthed off to Lane and received an ass kicking to show for it. Pete has misinterpreted Don's own infelicitous past as an excuse for his own boorishness, but Don tells Pete that those things he has - the house in the suburbs, the doting wife and the young child - are precisely the things he (Don) wanted, just, as it turned out, not with Betty, but Megan (Don even makes a drunken suggestion to Megan that they have a baby). When Pete tries to process why no one stepped in to stop the fight between the two, Don essentially says "grow up," at which point Pete crumbles, weeping at how he has nothing.  Having worked hard to achieve the things he thought he wanted, Pete looks in the mirror, to the person sleeping next to him, to the house he lives in, the office he inhabits, and fails to see all that he has. 

Wanderlust, ruing, and the disappearance of youth, hope and opportunity, all of these feelings that something has been missed or lost were also expressed through Lane and Ken, the former's ambivalence about his own marriage and lot in life was well known, while the latter has been an under the radar screen account man uninterested in making waves.  For Lane, his opportunity to seize some semblance of the life he wanted is reflected in the solicitation of a fellow Englishman who works for Jaguar.  When his attempts at landing the man as a client fail, Peter, Don and Roger swoop in to close the deal, only to have it unravel when it is discovered they took the man to a house of prostitution.  A dressing down by Pete and a rejected pass at Joan further emasculate Lane, who only recovers some modicum of his dignity by knocking Pete out during a partner's meeting. Lane never had the adventurous life of war or the suave glibness of an account man, he has been a bean counter his whole life, an indispensable man based solely on his ability to make the trains run on time, but, like many men who achieve a certain station in life, questioning what could have been.  Unable to break away from a wife he does not love, he is now resigned to his fate.

Ken, on the other hand, has quietly pursued his real passion of being a writer to such a degree and level of success that a book of his short stories may be published under his nom de plume.  He writes of the future, no more gold violins, and is encouraged by his wife, a quiet woman who seems to fit his personality well.  Even when Roger chews him out for his hobby, suggesting that by having enough time to write he is not working hard enough, Ken is non-plussed.  He continues to write, just under a different alias.  Perhaps it is that Ken does not live for his job like the others do (he famously passed on trying to hit his father-in-law, a senior level official at Corning, for work in the wake of the Lucky Strike fiasco) and does not see the corner office as the end all/be all of his existence that allows him to blithely ignore Roger's directive or that he appreciates that he is still young and can make a life the life he wants for himself that keeps him writing.  Either way, he refuses to be like the robots in his stories, blankly doing what they are told.

In this way, the episode nicely shows the men of Mad Men along an articulable continuum.  Kenny, still young and vibrant, and unwilling to bend.  Pete, sliding quickly into the morass of drinking, infidelity and moral compromises that defined Don's prior life, Don, wizened by the destruction of his own first marriage and yearning for the simpler life he ruined, and Lane, reaching for that last vestige of dignity a man sliding into middle age clings to.  As Roger notes in a bracing moment of self-awareness, he is now Emeritus Head of Accounts, put out on that iceberg referenced way back in Season 3 who can still woo a client and get him laid at a whore house, but otherwise, waiting for the final curtain to fall. 

The Beauty Myth

I have made it through more than 40 years feeling as though I know less about women the older I get, but it seems as though women are clearly having their moment, or at least their latest moment, the moment after Betty Friedan, Fear of Flying, bra burning, the ERA, the Phyllis Schlafly backlash, sky rocketing divorce rates, cracking various glass ceilings, the mommy wars and a lexicon of acronyms for white, upper middle class marriage and all its discontents and battles (don't believe me? Check jezebel.com - it's all there).  I half expect TIME to preemptively name this the Year of the Woman.  

In the past year, popular culture has made a meaningful pivot to consider the role of women in post-housing bubble America.  While TV has been feeding us a steady diet of Real Housewives, Kardashians, and other tripe that dates to Jessica Simpson being unaware that Chicken of the Sea was a brand of tuna fish and not chicken, Kristen Wiig's breakout movie Bridesmaids (which this viewer thought not particularly funny and about 20 minutes too long) heralded a string of potty-mouthed (and brained) TV programming that showed women could think dirty thoughts, do dirty deeds and have raunchy conversations about their vaginas and sex just like men joke about their dicks. Why scaling that particular comedic mountain was important is unclear to me, but nevertheless, Wiig spawned Whitney, Two Broke Girls, Don't Trust the Bitch In Apartment 23, and Best Friends Forever (any maybe one or two others, I didn't do an exhaustive check), all of which share a more ribald, and sometimes more cynical view of women's empowerment.  

Invariably, the protagonists are unmarried, or recently divorced or unsure whether they want to get married, or some combination therein.  In other words, marriage is still the alpha and omega - just as it was for Barbara Billingsley in the 1950s (look it up, kids), Mrs. Brady and a whole part of TV's family tree that holds up marriage and children as the defining role for women in society, it's just that today's female leads are more ambivalent about it, even though, deep down, we are led to assume they really do want marriage and kids, just like women of prior generations. Whitney Cummings may be a tart tongued ingenue, but she lives with a good hearted guy and fears/wants marriage.  The women of Best Friends Forever are respectively, living with a man and divorcing one (but already looking for her next mate). In this way, the language and attitude may be different, but the underlying theme is unchanged - marriage is to be valued and desired. 

The latest entrant to this genre is HBO's Girls, which examines the lives of twenty-something white women in Brooklyn navigating that delicate, and as portrayed in the show, aimless period of time after college but before any sort of responsibility is accepted.  As a commentary on entitled, upper middle class white people, the reviews suggest the show is a home run.  But if Lena Dunham is not archetypal for the majority of Americans who didn't go to a small liberal arts school and have accomplished artists as parents, the story she tells says something about middle class yearning, or more specifically, the idea that these young women were sold a bill of goods.  Having been coddled and babied growing up, with the "helicopter parents" and the shadow of 9/11, they have been birthed into an adult society they are ill-equipped to handle, the gains made by the feminists of yore handed back in the grimy hook ups on filthy couches, trips to free health clinics and a deep cynicism that would have those who fought for women's rights two (and four) generations ago, spinning in their graves (or leaping onto cable TV to bemoan.) 

Of course, in 2012, never has there been a time when art and life are further apart.  In the real world, there is, depending on who you believe, either a "war on women," or said war is just a manufactured drama made up by a bunch of liberals to make women hate Republicans.  Hilary Rosen stirred the mommy wars by indelicately stating something most people understand to be true - the wealthy have options to have a parent at home that the poor and middle class often do not - and when forced to make sacrifices in support of those actions, those with lesser means than Ann Romney have a better handle on what is important to women than she does (unless we're talking about which of one's two Cadillacs to drive.)  

Meanwhile, legislatures across the country have passed more laws restricting access to abortion than at any time since Roe v. Wade, the term "transvaginal ultrasound" is now widely known thanks to the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of Texas, and a near majority of U.S. Senators voted to approve a law that would have permitted any employer to refuse to provide contraception options within their health plans to their female employees based simply on "moral" objections. Mitt Romney bemoans job losses experienced by women but fails to mention that they have largely occurred in the public sector, where professions disproportionately represented by women, such as teaching, have been among the hardest hit by the cutbacks that have happened in states throughout the country.  

And therein lies the disconnect between the pretend world that Hollywood manufactures and the far more nuanced world we live in.  Ironically, all of this is playing out while the voices of those who are truly affected are rarely heard.  Lena Dunham is hailed as a voice of her generation, but what generation is that exactly?  Surely, it is not the generation of women whose boyfriends and husbands enlist in the military or the single moms in their mid-20s who did not have the luxury of attending pricey private universities. In the real world, where policies take away things like funding for Planned Parenthood and budgets are cut that remove teachers from classrooms, the laugh track does not cue the happy ending after 30 minutes.  

Hollywood produces what it thinks is profitable.  Tabloid magazines exist and flourish because people (primarily women) buy them.  As Americans, we enjoy piously judging celebrities, their flaws, weight gain, embarrassing photos and actions while being deeply envious of the lives they lead yet we wonder why the flesh and blood women in our lives are self-conscious about their weight, their looks and growing old.  Interestingly, rarely in modern times has the distance between what is being produced on television been so removed from the reality women are experiencing.  There is no Roseanne meditating on the paycheck-to-paycheck existence of blue collar America or Mary Tyler Moore representing the liberated woman of the 1970s. 

If anything, the entire movement runs the risk of collapsing on itself.  On the one hand, women have never been more accomplished - they matriculate into college, law school and medical school in greater numbers than men - yet continue to be underpaid for doing the same work, and are underrepresented everywhere from the CEO's boardroom to the halls of Congress. Perhaps their antennae is warped because the mixed messages society sends them about being career oriented  but having that dreaded "clock" ticking toward the oblivion that will be their barren uteri (?) at a time certain.  The closest analogue to where women are in 2012 is not in Brooklyn, but Manhattan, circa 1966 in the offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.  There, women of another age are grappling with the problems and limitations that today's political reactionaries seek to relitigate - of sexual freedom, of being able to work and have children, of not being reliant on men to provide, of being able to make choices with one's life that are not dependent entirely on your ability to give birth to children.  Watching Mad Men through the looking glass of today's fixation on women is fascinating precisely because it feels current, which is sad.  One would have thought those battles had been fought and won once and for all. But like I said, I know nothing about women. 

Mad Men Season 5 - A Wolf At The Door

Mad Men has never been a particularly upbeat program.  Its main characters constantly struggle with their own foibles and shortcomings, often making bad decisions and acting callously.  But where in years past their emotional turmoil and suffering was expressed existentially, in introspective poses that suggested desperation and quiet moments alone with their thoughts and the repercussions of their actions, the show's velocity no longer affords such distance.  Now, crises appear in color and right at their front door.  

A third of the way through Season 5, a quartet of episodes have moved the show calendar less than two months, but the atmosphere and tone has turned dark and foreboding.  Everywhere our characters turn, danger lurks just out of sight.  The mood is set early, with references to riots, worker strikes and the killing of eight women in Chicago by a psychopath. It is against this backdrop that new copywriter Michael retools a pitch for women's shoes after the client has accepted an initial idea.  His brooding on the idea of a Cinderella being pursued in the dark of night ends up resonating with the executives but earns him a stern reprimand from a feverish Don.  

Back at the office, Peggy successfully leverages Roger's panic at being unprepared for a pitch meeting with Mohawk Airlines into a big payday for doing extra weekend work.  When she discovers that Dawn, Don's new African-American secretary, has been sleeping at the office because of fears set off by the Speck murders and also because she lives too far away from the office to safely commute late at night, she invites Dawn to stay with her.  Peggy's self-satisfied moment of bonding quickly dissolved when, back at her apartment, a pregnant moment occurs where she realizes her purse, now stuffed with $400 from Roger, is laying on the coffee table within Dawn's easy reach once she goes to bed.  The following morning, Dawn has quietly alit from the apartment, the only sign of her stay being a polite courtesy note thanking Peggy for her hospitality.

While Peggy and Michael channel the news of the day, Joan experiences the uncertainty of being a "war bride" front and center when her husband Greg returns from Vietnam.  At first, their reunion is heartfelt and full of promise, with Joan's mother discreetly leaving the two alone so they can have sex, but quickly dissolves when Greg reveals he has volunteered for another year's duty.  Whereas Joan had accepted Greg's initial enlistment with some frustration (but resignation), she is no longer willing to mutely comply with her husband's unilateral decision. In an intense scene, they finally have it out - Joan digging up, albeit in code, Greg's ugly rape of her in Don's office before they were married and Greg expressing his desire to feel like a "good" man, something that only occurs when he is leading a team of doctors in the theater of war.  The denouement is Joan's simple, but difficult decision to tell Greg to leave their home for good.  When he threatens to take her up on it, she says nothing, and so it goes. Divorce and dislocation, something that was dirty and private when the show began, now feels far more pedestrian and mainstream. 

The Speck murders linger in the background of the Francis home as well.  Grandma Pauline, babysitting for Sally while Henry and Betty are out of town, wants to shield Sally from this horrific news.  When precocious Sally pilfers a newspaper from the trash and reads about the senseless killings, she is frightened beyond belief, asking to sit up with Pauline and ultimately being doses with seconol to help her sleep.  When Henry and Betty return the following morning, the two are comatose, grandmother slumped on the couch and Sally out like a light underneath the couch, like a scared cat. 

The other person all of this unrest affects is Don, who has a brief encounter with a former paramour in the elevator at work in front of Megan, resulting in an awkward moment.  Later, as he's struggling with a fever, the woman, Andrea, reappears at his apartment door, seeking a sexual liaison.  Don shoos her out, wanting to be faithful to Megan and not sliding back into his old habits.  When Andrea somehow comes back in, he relents and they have sex, but afterwards, she angers him, and he chokes her to death.  Of course, this is all a hallucination, but the intensity of his reaction to his own conduct says everything.  He is a man still haunted by his demons.

In the span of an hour, and in "show time" two days, the world our characters inhabit spiral quickly out of control.  Joan is getting divorced, Peggy's subtle bigotry exposed, Sally has now been introduces to pharmaceutical medication and Don has (literally) wrestled with his demons.  If this was not bleak enough, show creator Matt Weiner chooses a song titled "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)" to end the episode - it's lyric of violence an apt coda to this dark and disturbing hour of television. 

How To Negotiate Like A Republican

In the wake of dishy insider accounts recently reported in The New York Times Magazine and The Washington Post of last summer's debt ceiling negotiations and the public release of Congressman P90-Xs, excuse me, Paul Ryan's latest "how to fuck the poor and elderly" budget, one thing is clear about how Republicans roll at the national level - when it comes to wielding the budget ax, they are more than happy to swing it heartily and deeply at social programs while the concessions they offer in return are ill defined, rely on sketchy budget "scoring" and are as ephemeral as cotton candy. 

Let's start with the debt ceiling negotiation. You remember that, right?  It was the episode of "Government By Hostage Taking" that occurred last summer when, what had been, under every prior Administration of oh, the last 50 years, a routine matter of extending the government's credit line, turned into a game of chicken manufactured by Republicans in Congress to get the President to agree to drastically cut the "big three" entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) in return for an increase to the debt ceiling caused almost entirely by those very same Republicans' votes for unfunded wars, Medicare Part D and massive tax cuts, most of which went to the wealthiest Americans. Welcome to politics in America circa 2011.  

For reasons that were never sufficiently explained, instead of calling the Republicans' bluff and seeing if they would, in fact, vitiate the "full faith and credit" of our government's monetary printing press, the President took the bait and engaged in negotiations with House Speaker John Boehner to try and reach a  so-called "grand bargain" that would bend the debt curve and show, I don't know, the bond market, the rest of the world (who must have been laughing at us), the American people, or perhaps our evil alien overlords that we were "serious" about reducing our long-term debt and deficit.  

As reported by Matt Bai in the New York Times Magazine and, based on reporting that was done after the deal broke down, Obama agreed to very specific cuts the Republicans wanted, including raising the Medicare eligibility age, tweaking the formula for Social Security (that would result in less generous benefits), and hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, pensions for civilian and military personnel and reductions in farm subsidies on top of a $1.2 trillion reduction in overall discretionary spending over 10 years.  Of note, the big ticket items, such as the Medicare cuts, which were estimated to save more than $1 trillion over 20 years, could literally be done in a single line, by changing the number that qualified "eligibility" from 65 to whatever the new number would be.  Similarly, the new formula for Social Security would simply be swapped in for the existing formula used to calculate benefits.  In other words, the cuts the President agreed to would be very simple to make, literally small strokes of the pen largely devoid of the potential for any chicanery.  

And for these major concessions that went against the most deeply held convictions of the Democratic party since FDR was President, surely the Republicans were willing to sacrifice a few of their sacred cows, right?  Wrong. As reported by Bai, the one major concession Republicans were willing to offer was a tax increase that wasn't really a tax increase because it was based on using fuzzy math and relying on a reconfigured tax code to somehow magically land on just the right amount of additional revenue without capturing one penny more. 

Instead of simply agreeing to a tangible step, like rolling back the so-called "Bush Tax Cut" rate for people making over $250,000, Boehner used a convoluted calculation distinguishing "current law" scoring estimates from "current policy" estimates to come up with an offer of $800 billion in "new" tax revenue.  But this would not be accomplished through something simple like a roll back of taxes or a millionaire's surcharge, either of which could be accomplished through inaction (the Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this year) or at most, a few paragraphs of information (creating a surcharge at $1 million in net income), but rather, through amorphous "tax reform" that would eliminate deductions (Boehner did not say which ones) while lowering rates.  Of course, any reform of tax policy is a far more complicated thing to do than say, raising the Medicare eligibility rate from 65 to 67.  Reforming the tax code would open the process up to all form of lobbying by special interest groups and would likely drag on for months.  And even if tax reform occurred, one need only remember that a similar effort was undertaken in 1986 only to have those efforts undermined by the very exemptions, special interest language and loopholes people now rail about! 

Indeed, so concerned was the President that Republicans would double cross him on the debt deal that he asked for triggers to be inserted into the deal if the tax reform Boehner desired was not implemented.  The cost?  Oh, just the elimination of the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act.  What did health care have to do with raising the debt ceiling? Nothing, other than it being another hostage that Republicans were happy to take in their effort to destroy any Obama policy legacy.  Ultimately, the sides walked away from the deal (the long read stories are mixed in who to "blame") and a convoluted bill passed that ensured the debt ceiling was raised, but at the pain of losing out Triple AAA rating from Standard & Poor.  

While the debt ceiling debacle may be more an example of Obama being a weak negotiator or Republicans being savvy enough to leverage a looming crisis to their advantage, Congressman Ryan's budget is a doctrinal statement that offers a similar theme of concrete cuts in exchange for vague and ill defined changes to tax policy that will, like that supply side voodoo, magically cut taxes but grow revenue. 

Right out of the gate, the premise of Ryan's budget is wholly undermined.  As reported by Ezra Klein (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-unrealistic-assumptions-behind-paul-ryans-budget-numbers/2011/08/25/gIQAEZrePS_blog.html) literally, in the first paragraph of the Congressional Budget Office's "scoring" of Ryan's budget, they note that their scoring of his budget is based (at Ryan's request!) on assuming all of his estimates for tax revenue, how much each program will cost, etc. are accurate and true.  Which is not unlike a parent asking a chid to accept as an article of faith that a rotund man in a red suit comes down the chimney and places presents under a tree. A few pages later, the CBO spelled out the "rules" Ryan and his team laid down, which, unsurprisingly, are entirely unrealistic and will never be met.  

So if you get past the fact that the budget Ryan created is based on fake numbers that have never been replicated in modern American history, you can drill down into the "substantive" parts of his document.  The "cuts" part is pretty straight forward.  It repeals the Affordable Care Act (not a difficult thing to do in theory, but when you get into the nitty gritty of the myriad good things the ACA does, would never be repealed in full unless the Supreme Court does it), which would, ironically, raise deficit forecasts, since the ACA has been scored to save trillions over 20 years and, even more ironically, transforms what is now a government guarantee of health care for the elderly (a/k/a Medicare) into a voucher program that would leave seniors scrambling to buy policies …wait for it… on the open market, much like what the Affordable Care Act set out to do.  Apparently, irony is not something that was factored into the budget drafting in P90-X's office. 

While Ryan and his team attempted to finesse the "end Medicare as we know it" label that his 2012 budget was tagged with, even in his new proposal, which would kick in for retirees beginning in 2023, seniors would still get that vaunted voucher to purchase private insurance, but this time, Ryan would guarantee that the voucher would be enough to pay for at least one insurance policy in full.  Sounds reasonable, right?  Look at the fine print. That guarantee is only for the *first* year. After that?  You're on your own, granny.  Good luck finding the $6,600 additional dollars to cover what your voucher does not.  Other specific cuts would reduce the number of young people eligible for Pell grants, reduce research funding for NIH and kick hundreds of thousands of poor children off Head Start.  Of course, this type of austerity for the elderly, infirm and young is called "heroic" among the chattering class in Washington, D.C. (for more on the Ryan budget's true effects, check out: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/04/06/getting-facts).

Lastly, Ryan wants to block grant Medicaid, that is, send a lump sum of money to states and allow them to manage this crucial health program for poor people.  The only problem with Ryan's plan is the formula he uses to fund it is based on consumer prices, not the increase in cost of health care, which, unsurprisingly, goes up at a far greater rate than consumer prices.  By doing so, Ryan would cut $800 billion from the program while, according to the Kaiser Foundation, throwing nearly 20 million people off Medicaid.  If you add the roughly 14 million people who will become eligible for Medicaid in 2014 under the Affordable Care Act, which expands eligibility to 133% of the poverty line, the Ryan budget would almost half the number of people who would otherwise be able to acquire health coverage under Medicaid in 2014. 

Indeed, as Klein notes, almost the entire difference in the cost savings realized under the President's plan and Ryan's comes from the latter's evisceration of programs that largely help the poor.  Of course, when it comes to taxes, like Speaker Boehner, Ryan is maddeningly unspecific about the hard decisions.  He puts one easy one out there, reducing to two the number of tax brackets within the tax code, but somehow, his policy is "revenue neutral" because he assures us various loopholes, subsidies and other tax giveaways will be removed but no additional revenue above what the government currently collects will occur.  Which loopholes will he close? No clue, and as with Boehner's idea for "tax reform," would leave the details to a Congress under the sway of the wealthy, who are keenly interested in protecting their interests.  

In short, just like the Speaker, Ryan is excruciatingly exact when it comes to where he wants to cut and who would bear the entire burden of those cuts (the elderly, poor and children) while being as opaque as a Monet haystack painting when it comes to touching tax revenue (except when it comes to lowering rates, naturally). Moreover, all of the pain that is inflicted on the poor is immediate, while changes to Medicare are punted 10 years down the road.  If it is true that a society is measured by the manner in which it treats its poor, elderly and children, Ryan argues in favor of a dystopia that Dickens would instantly recognize. 

Of course, facile plausibility is all that Republicans seek.  If they can frame budget policy as shared sacrifice, even though the sacrifice is specific and immediate as to the poor and working class and vague and somewhere in the future (if ever) to the wealthy, it is of no moment.  An "in the weeds" discussion of policy is lost on most Americans who are either uninterested or unwilling to get into the minutiae of proposals to read the fine print (it's also part of the reason so many people take out bad loans, but that's another story).  As long as Republicans can hold themselves out as fiscal stewards (their record of borrowing and spending notwithstanding, but when did facts get in their way?) and as long as they can manufacture the idea of a "crisis" in programs like Social Security or Medicare, they can bullet point their way through any cable gabfest and appear reasonable even though a 10th grade debating class could point out their hypocrisy and contradiction, something most talk show hosts appear unwilling to do (I'm looking at you, David Gregory). 

In this way, the Republicans have adopted Barnum's maxim that no one ever went poor underestimating the intelligence of the American people.  Republicans have successfully gotten middle and lower middle class people to vote against their economic interests since Reagan waltzed into office and they think they can get away with it again.   It is only when people take the time to get informed about policy that the charade will end.  An ignorant electorate might hand Republicans a huge political win, but such a victory would be an enormous loss for the country.  

Oh, and if you're interested in reading a plan that actually achieves the things Ryan claims to (balancing the budget) while also making investments in infrastructure, education, securing Medicare and Social Security and protecting the poor, check out: http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=81&sectiontree=5,81.  No one in "official" Washington likes talking about it, but don't let them tell you there is not a progressive alternative. 

Don Draper Is A Square

"My God, so square you've got corners." Megan Draper to Don Draper

Long time Mad Men viewers have been caught short in Season 5 at the abrupt emasculation of Don Draper.  Having watched Don bed a succession of women during the show's first four seasons, swing his metaphorical dick at anyone with the temerity to challenge him in the office and basically, as he told Rachel Mencken in the show's very early days, live his life like there was no tomorrow, this older, more reflective, and frankly, less fun version of Don is taking some getting used to. Or, as Peggy put it in the season premiere, "I don't recognize this man. He's kind and patient … it concerns me." 

As "The Sixties," as we now think of that decade, have bled into the previously staid offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, Don now seems reactionary.  When he strikes up a conversation with a Rolling Stones groupie backstage at one of their concerts, instead of seduction, which would have been the default for Don in years past, he comes across as a scold, admonishing the young woman about giving herself freely to a musician and questioning what she knows about psychiatrists.  Her posture is telling.  Instead of recoiling from Don's authority, she impishly pulls his tie off and gives a lecture of her own, questioning why Don's generation, who didn't "have any fun" wants to deny hers of their enjoyment.  Don's response? "We're worried about you."  She can't be bothered, blowing Don off at the purported sighting of Mick and the boys.  

While Don's boorishness and poor treatment of women may have spoken to an Eisenhower-era view of the sexes and his casual infidelity as of a piece of the broader subjugation of women as housewife and harlot, at his heart, Don is a "little c" conservative.  His values are animated by his Midwestern upbringing, where it was impolite to talk about yourself and you never discussed money.  In Don's world, men don't have bawdy conversations in elevators with women present (and they certainly don't leave their hats on while doing it), smearing a man's "name" as the younger copywriters and account executives did at Freddy Rumsen's expense, is poor form and even when your wife has discovered you are a philanderer who has faked his past, *you* don't ask for the divorce, she does. 

Don's provincialism and simplistic view of gender roles went unchallenged through his adulthood, where everyone's place in society was well defined and rarely challenged.  At the show's inception, he's involved with Midge, a beatnik in Greenwich Village whose friends get a firm lashing from Don when they criticize his job. Of course, in those days, when the cops showed up to Midge's building to investigate a report of domestic violence, Don is the only one who can leave the apartment unmolested because of his suit and tie.  And even when flashes of changing culture invaded his neat little universe, as when he discovered Sal was a homosexual, Don, who knew something about hiding secrets, was non-plussed until it affected business. After Sal rejected a pass made by Lee Garner, Jr. putting the Lucky Strike account in jeopardy, Don's distaste and bigotry bubbled quickly to the surface, as he referred to gays as "you people" and suggesting Sal should have acquiesced to Lee's sexual come on before cruelly firing him. 

Perhaps Don's personality change is just a natural evolution that many people experience as they reach middle age or maybe this is Don's attempt to, as someone speculated, become the Dick Whitman he always wanted to be, and shed the Draper persona.  If nothing else, Matt Weiner and crew should be given credit for allowing Don's character to remain consistent.  A man who could not utter the word "infidelity" or "cheating" but instead referred to his indiscretions as not being "respectful" toward his wife is not the kind of man who will easily understand a youth culture that will glorify free love and recreational drug use. To a man who grew up poor, serving fancy people at a roadhouse who would not allow him to use the toilet, the rebellion of teens in the 1960s will unquestionably challenge his worldview.  And for a man whose own children are quickly growing up in a country that will careen toward social revolution, Don seems ill equipped to evolve with the times.  The world Don now inhabits is not one where a man's word is his bond and a handshake seals the deal. Now, kids openly get high, snub their elders and protests for civil and equal rights and against war, will define life for years to come.  Since we should not expect Don to "tune in, turn on and drop out," the next few years are likely to cause him to become more conservative, in his attitudes, conduct and behavior, than less.  The evolution, as with all things Mad Men should be fascinating.

Mad Men Season 5 Episode 2 - A Matter of Life & Death

In seasons past, the theme of mortality was dealt with at the margins of Mad Men.  Grandpa Gene died, but he was old.  Don was advised by his doctor to cut back on smoking and drinking, but, some "performance issues" aside during a getaway with Betty, lead being in his pencil has not been an issue. While Roger flirted with death in Season 1, his back-to-back heart attacks are now mentioned only in passing.  It was probably inevitable that as the show migrated into the heart of the 1960s, where youth was coming into its full flower, the generation that fought World War II and Korea would start to feel the creeping grip of death.  

The writers of the show also made a virtue of necessity by converting January Jones's real life pregnancy into a storyline related to middle age weight gain instead of a more predictable "new baby" storyline, but Betty's cancer scare is the closest the show has come to bringing life and death into the conversation around the show's main characters since Roger was wheeled out of Sterling Cooper nearly 6 years (in show time) ago.  If Don has always been a handsome cipher (as the reporter from Advertising Age described him in Season 4), Betty has always been a blank page, drifting through years of suburban anomie with little direction or motivation.  Her one move of empowerment saw her jump from the bed of one accomplished, yet distant white collar professional to another. 

Whereas Henry and Megan seem to be mirror images of each other, the former, taking his second chance at marriage as an opportunity to erase the mistakes of the past, the latter not having been corrupted by the years of drudgery typically associated with children and a house in the suburbs (see, Campbell, Pete and Crane, Harry, but more on Mr. White Castle later), Betty is very much a woman locked in her past.  Upon receiving her potential diagnosis, she immediately picks up the phone to call Don, all she wants to hear is "what he always says," that everything will be ok.  He easily shifts to calling her "Birdie," his pet name for her.  Their shared concern is for *their* children, not the people who they are now married to.  Betty falls to pieces when a charlatan reads her tea leaves and calls her a strong woman because she knows she is not.  She is a college educated model who has trafficked on her looks that are now fading and, along with her attendant weight gain, make the idea of burning out, rather than fading away, more appealing (perhaps that is where Neil Young got the idea?).  

A different kind of mortality is being shown within the offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.  After landing Mohawk Airlines, Pete makes an ostentatious display of humiliating Roger in front of the entire office, asserting his alpha status by reminding everyone that Roger will have day-to-day oversight of the account while he (Pete) is kept fully advised of its status.  Don feels the hot breath of youth on his collar too, he just refuses to submit.  Although Megan may not be that much stronger as a dinner companion than Betty was, Don lowers himself to slinking backstage at a Rolling Stones concert with Harry Crane after his Heinz contact suggests a twist on "Time Is On My Side" as a jingle for a commercial.  

The choice of song was not unintentional.  Time is something that Mad Men typically does a good job of inserting into the show's broader tapestry.  Harry is a man attempting to evolve with the times, in his clothing, in his attitude and his style.  He is taking the skirt chasing mentality of his elders and transferring it to the burgeoning free love movement, expertly handles marijuana and the looser morals of the day while expressing the same lament of boredom and tedium in his marriage. Don, on the other hand, rebuffs any flirtation with a backstage groupie in favor of attempting to pick her brain about understanding the youth movement and how to market to it.  Don is quickly sized up as a square who is not hip to the culture, but that is because the gap between Don the ad man and Don the parent is not that acute.  Although he wants to understand how to get young people to buy things, he also lets slip a deeper motivation - "we're worried about you" - he tells the groupie, a clear nod to the slowly expanding generation gap that will threaten to tear the country apart. 

My one quibble with the season thus far is the dissonance between, on the one hand, the ham (and heavy) handed and, on the other, the deft touch, the writers are applying to the rapidly changing culture.  Whereas Don's 40th birthday party and the backstage at the Rolling Stones scenes felt like they could have been done by some of the cheesier (and short-lived) shows like American Dreams, the writers have shown they do not need to be that obvious in commenting on social change.  Pete's total emasculation of Roger spoke volumes about the power structure within SCDP, and more generally, about the torch passing (or grabbing?) of one generation to the other in a much more organic way than Harry taking deep pulls of a joint at a rock concert.  Along a longer spectrum, Peggy's slow accretion of power and prestige has been noted at multiple points along the show's history - from Don's selection of her (over Kinsey) to leave with him to SCDP, debating who to fire at the end of Season 4, and now, in Roger's acknowledgement to Peggy of her enormous value to the firm.  The introduction of Dawn, Don's new black secretary, spoke for itself, but a caricatured "loud Jewish" copywriter felt forced and obvious, especially since Peggy's boyfriend seemed to be similarly stereotyped last season.  

One thing is clear.  This season will be about birth and death, of a generation looking at the precariousness of life and another just coming into its own.  For those who are lustily booing from the bleachers, I sympathize, but also recall that in past seasons, the sum was always greater than the individual parts.  While each season does have its stand out episodes, when you watch them in full, you come to realize it is the accumulation of storyline and character development that makes the show unique.  So sit tight and have some faith.  Who knows, maybe Harry will dose the office coffee pot and we will go through the looking glass too.