When men was men and dames was dames

I haven't paid any heed to this blog in so long - I'm a terrible parent. And then I choose to steal away to it during work. Shame on me!

But. Speaking of mixing leisure with work, I have a new obsession. And it doesn't come from a bar well or the Gawker media network! No, lately I have been fully ensconced in AMC's beautiful confection Mad Men, an ode to the sexist, elitist, Kennedy-era executive kingdom of skirt chasers and four-martini lunches. (As per usual, I am once again slow on the latest brilliant pop culture uptake, as Mad Men has already been lauded by publications like Vanity Fair and graced the cover of Entertainment Weekly.) It's funny, because as misogynistic and philosophically concrete as the time was, there's something still so appealing and captivating about the gloss of it all: the economic optimism, the epicurian habbits of wining(scotching) and dining(smoking), and the impeccable approach to sex and how to sell it. I remember stories of my grandfather (though not in advertising, a thirsty member of Washington's lawyer crowd after he was swiftly ushered out of Kennedy's State Department) spending more time guzzling down lunch than inquiring about his wife and four children. Sure, it sounds a little irresponsible, but as the alpha female of Mad Men, Joan Holloway, says of the behavior, "isn't it the best?"

To sum up the mantra in one scene, here's SterlingCooper's resident slimeball, Pete Campbell, musing for the non-con, ambitious secretary Peggy Olson his idyllic vision for existence:



Fucking hurrah for chauvenism.