You Know What I Don't Get? - Part 6, I Think

Is it just me, or have the Boomers run out of things to mythologize? We've been over Woodstock, Altamont, JFK and Wavy Gravy so many times we can see through them. So that doesn't leave much, except... to start reminiscing about the establishment.

Which brings us to AMC's new series Mad Men - a show about advertising executives in the 1960s. You know, the good old days of two-martini lunches and slapping your secretary on the ass - while figuring out how to peddle cigarettes. But it's just before the Surgeon General really did the math. Ah, those carefree, innocent days.

As David Spade would say... really, America?

Now I realize my childhood decade - the 70s - didn't have a lot going for it except occasionally some really good, downbeat movies. The seventies were so lame that I remember describing myself as a sixites kid to a friend because I was born in '65, and thought I could squeak through on a technicality.

I know this sounds weird coming from someone who loves the Godfather movies and Goodfellas. Those are portraits of moral bankruptcy, too, right? Sure, but at least those characters - despicable as they could be, had One Thing that they didn't let go of - they'd massacre a hundred people at lunchtime, but get chewed out for being late for dinner. It's a fascinating contrast.

Advertising guys from that era don't strike me as having that One Thing. I picture them making money, wanting more money than the guy on the Ford account, cheating on their spouses, and slowly dissolving their stomach linings over which leggy girl to put in the giant Winston box. Not to mention using lots of cutthroat sport and war metaphors to help themselves forget that their work is about as disposable as it gets - the best that they can hope for is to be able to say, "Remember 'Have it your way?' You don't? Well, that was me."

I'm sorry to all the ad people out there, and I haven't seen the show yet, so it may be great. But I'm just really having trouble seeing this as compelling television.