The End of the Mad Men Era

The final episodes of Mad Men are scheduled to begin airing this month and I am glad to see it go. Sure, I enjoyed a lot of episodes from the show (and I always enjoy seeing Jon Hamm), but the era that the show represents is not one that I have any interest in examining. Granted, the show takes place in the 1960s before I was even born, but I know enough about that time to know that the world was a place where straight white guys ruled and everyone else was in a race to the bottom. Blacks and other minorities were largely used to serve whites and gays were in the closet. Whenever I hear someone praising Mad Men, I find myself wondering what, exactly, is being praised. The acting? The cast? The scripts? Or do people who love Mad Men long for the days when men drank and smoked at the office and treated women like garbage? When blacks didn't work on Madison Avenue (unless they were operating the elevators or cleaning the toilets)? When screwed up white guys ran the show and destroyed the people around them in the process? 

On a similar note, Indiana Governor Mike Pence has opened the door to open discrimination against gay and lesbian people by signing that religious freedom nonsense into law and the backlash against him and the State of Indiana is well deserved. Maybe the economic hits and media attention will force him to make some changes. This is not the 1960s!