The ladies of Slate’s Double X run an experiment on what it would be like to drink like the cast of “Mad Men” while running a magazine.  It’s not pretty.

Apparently, these women have no previous exposure to alcohol, no understanding of how alcohol affects the human body, and no concept of elapsed time as portrayed on a one-hour drama.

The gals are completely hammered after a single morning Bloody Mary and act like a bunch of sorority girls at the ensuing meeting. This, despite the fact that they’re still drinking said beverages during the meeting. (Incidentally, I don’t recall any of the boys of Sterling Cooper drinking Bloody Marys during the workday — much less during morning staff meetings.)

The gals then have martinis at lunch. This is completely kosher: Roger Sterling did this frequently during the first two seasons of the show. But, unlike the silver haired name partner in the fictional advertising firm, the ladies of our virtual magazine are now completely unable to have coherent conversations.

Now, I tend not to drink much during the workday. On rare occasions, I’ll have a beer or two at lunch and sometimes I’ll do some more writing after a 5:00 martini on a Friday. Afterward, I function reasonably well doing intellectually demanding work. Then again, I’m not a novice drinker. And, like the more serious drinkers on “Mad Men,” I’m well over 200 pounds. It’s not polite to talk about women’s weight but I will boldly conjecture, having seen the video, that Hanna Rosen, Emily Bazelon, and the other Double Xers go considerably below that.

This, naturally, matters. Consider these charts from Virginia Tech:

Leave aside the issue of legal limits for operating a motor vehicle, which are the subject of some controversy. We see that small women are generally “significantly affected” by the first drink and even women in the 140-pound range are quite heavily intoxicated by the third drink in a relative short period. By contrast, a 200 point man doesn’t reach the .10 level until the 6th drink!  And notice that there are two charts:  There’s no gender equality in this game.

Rosen says “The Mad Men do this 40 times a day.” No. They don’t.

My wife chides me all the time for picking nits with logical inconsistencies in television shows and movies, telling me I should just suspend my disbelief because IT’S JUST A TV SHOW. So, perhaps I shouldn’t cast any stones on that front. Still, I’m fully cognizant of the fact that a one-hour television episode typically does not represent one hour in real time. Indeed, violating this convention is what made “24″ novel. A typical “Mad Men” show takes place over a week or more.

Don Draper and Roger Sterling might have six drinks over the course of a very long workday that extends deep into the evening. But they’ll have had maybe 2 or 3 in the course of a two hour lunch, be completely sober in time for the 5′oclock cocktail, and then pace themselves throughout a long evening during which they’ll have a very heavy meal rich in protein. Metabolically, there’s no reason they can’t maintain that pace indefinitely without being significantly impaired.

Overall, the show does a realistic job of portraying alcohol and its abuse. The junior staffers, apparently not having built up their tolerances, are frequently rather inebriated on the show by the end of the day. As the Double X ladies giggle about over lunch, one of the senior execs is depicted as a drunk who winds up fired after embarrassing himself because of his problem. Another major character is a recovering alcoholic who falls back off the wagon to his peril. Early in the current season, an executive is maimed and his career ruined by a stupid, alcohol-inspired act of an employee.

It’s not all fun even on a show that seems to glorify the good old days of being able to drink at work.

Story tip via Jason Kottke

Are you ready for some fantasy football?  The one-time pastime for geeks has long gone mainstream, with tens of millions of men playing each year.

I’m a relatively recent convert to the game, having started in the 2002 season.  Most years, I play in two or three leagues, though, so I’ve got more than 20 virtual seasons under my belt. I’ve won my share of championships and virtually always make the playoffs.

Why?

Certainly, it’s not because of my encyclopedic knowledge of the depth charts of all 32 teams or my Rain Man-like capacity for doing statistical analysis in my head.  No, I simply prepare well for the draft and then play the percentages during the year.

Preparing for Your Draft

I don’t have any great insights into who’s going to have a great year, beyond such obvious gems as “That Adrian Peterson sure is good” or “LaDainian Tomlinson ain’t as good as he used to be.”  What I do is this:

Check the draft lists

Every year, lots of websites pay their “experts” to rank the best players on how they should perform during the next season.  They’re not great at it for a variety of factors but, unless you’ve got 12 hours a day, six months a year to study fantasy football stats, they’re probably better at it than you are.

Don’t get suckered into paying money

Don’t waste your money buying expensive draft books or “exclusive” online access.  They’re either crap or written too far in advance to be reliable.

Some folks who’ve been at it awhile and provide excellent draft cheat sheets for free:  ESPN, NFL.com, Yahoo, CBS SportsLine, and About.com.

Depending on how much time you have, you may just have to go with one of them and do your  best at factoring in what you’ve read elsewhere.  If so, you may as well pick the one associated with the site hosting your league.  I mostly play in Yahoo leagues these days but all the sites should have their lists integrated into their draft software so you can see who the “best” players on the board are.

Know your league(s)’ rules

The rankings and strategy suggestions you get here and at most of the above-linked guides presume you’re playing in a standard QB-RB-RB-WR-WR-TE-K-DST league with a fairly standard scoring system.   They’ll work pretty well if there’s also a flex player.  If you’re doing something radically different — a keeper league, an auction league, a two-quarterback league, etc. — though, they may not.  Also, if you’re in a point-per-catch league, wide receivers will suddenly become much more valuable and will impact your draft strategy immensely.  Seek out ranking and strategy guides designed around the type of game you’re playing.

Make a spreadsheet

If you’ve got a couple of hours, though, you’re much better off integrating multiple lists together in a simple spreadsheet.  Three lists ought to do it — more than four is overkill and even two will help correct for wild overreach on the part of one site’s compilers.   Note:  Don’t do this more than a couple days before your first draft unless you have to; rankings change late in camp as injuries, trades, and roster moves happen.

Keep it simple:  Player name, position, overall ranking (that is, not positional ranking), team, and bye week.  (Add the bye weeks in last — just sort by team and add them in all at once.)  It’s also worth marking the elite quarterbacks and tight ends by highlighting in yellow, bold text, red font, or some such so you’ll know where the huge drop-off in talent is for those positions.

For players expected to be drafted in later rounds, there will be wild fluctuation in the rankings.   In fact, that’s why you’re doing this exercise.  There will be players ranked 50th on one list, 100th on another, and unranked at all on two more.  What I do in these cases is to simply enter the numbers given and assign a score of 101 to those players not ranked on a given site (you can also just leave it blank and Excel will average it based on the figures available).

Enter your rankings in your league’s online software.

I’m not going to lie to you:  This is a pain in the butt.  If, however, you somehow get disconnected during your draft and have your own picks entered in rather than getting the 12 quarterbacks and 4th round placekicker the autodrafter will pick for you, you’ll thank me.

Also, the draft itself can be stressful given the ticking clock and the heckling from the other competitors.

In Yahoo leagues, at least, you can just start with their rankings and drag-and-drop.  Save frequently.  If you play in multiple leagues using the same system — and I now refuse to play anything but Yahoo leagues for this reason — you can just transfer these to all your teams.  (I’ve played in CBS and ESPN leagues and they’re fine, too. I’m just saying that maintaining leagues on multiple sites is harder than doing it all on one site.)

Keep an eye out for late-breaking injuries and other news

You don’t want to be that guy who wastes an early round pick on a player who everyone else knows is going to be on IR or has just been suspended for giving steroids to drunk dogs.

Draft Strategy

There are a lot of competing theories out there.  Traditionally, I’ve simply followed the “Best Available Player” strategy until the late rounds.  Based on recent experience and changes in the way non-fantasy football is played, though, I’m going to argue for a variation on that theme.

First, though, some general rules.

Inviolable Rule

You must not draft a kicker until your very last pick. More than any other position in fantasy football, kickers are wildly unpredictable.  One year, a guy’s lights out; the next year, he’s mediocre.  Beyond that, the difference between the best kicker in the league — and, again, you will have no idea who that might be until the end of the season — and the 12th best kicker (subrule 1b – you may only have one kicker on your team at any time) is about 2 points a game averaged over the year.

Near-Inviolable Rule

You must not take a defense or defense/special teams until your second-to-last pick.  While it’s often said that “Defense wins championships,” this is not said about fantasy football except in derision.

Every year, two or three defenses are projected to do so much better than the rest, the experts will rank them high enough to justify taking them in the 5th or 6th round.  Sometimes, that pans out; sometimes it doesn’t.   I’d rather have another running back or wide receiver.

Generally good rule

Unless there’s someone available late who’s too good to pass up, I never take a second TE, DST, or K.  Only the last is inviolable (after all, if you don’t take a kicker before your last pick, how can you take two?).  That’s not to say that backup TEs and backup DSTs aren’t useful; just that the low end guys are interchangable and you’re likely better off taking a flyer on a rookie RB or WR.

Two Running Backs

When I first started playing fantasy football a few years ago, all the experts agreed:  Take a running back with your first pick and then take another running back with your second pick.

In my very first draft, I wound up taking two wide receivers (Marvin Harrison and Randy Moss) with my picks because I drafted late and everyone else followed that rule.  It worked out well.  It would have worked out even better if I hadn’t let myself get talked into trading Moss, who had an outstanding year, for Corey Dillon, who was hurt most of the year.

But I digress.

The reason behind this conventional wisdom was that running backs were much more reliable point scorers than wide receivers or quarterbacks, especially as the weather got bad late in the season, and that receivers and quarterbacks available in the middle rounds weren’t all that much worse than the ones available early.

Over the last couple of years, though, the emergence of the running back by committee in the NFL has thrown a wrench in this tried-and-mostly-true system.  Now, few running backs get 30 carries a game.  And a guy might get 200 yards in a game and get zero touchdowns because they team employs a short-yardage specialist.

Running Back-Wide Receiver

The main competing school of drafting now says that you take the best RB or WR left on the board and then, with your next pick, take the best guy from the other position.  So, if you draft a RB in the 1st round, you grab a WR in the 2nd and vice-versa.

The rationale is two-fold.  First, you’re likely to get a top flight wideout with this approach whereas you almost surely won’t if you wait for round 3.  Second, you’re likely to wind up with two better players this way than if you took two RBs.

Wide Receiver-Wide Receiver

A true maverick approach that’s being touted by a handful of gurus is going with two WRs.  They argue that the combination of the decline of the bell cow RB and the pass happy nature of the league puts so much of a premium on wideouts that you should grab the best two you can early.  Furthermore, contrary to the conventional wisdom, there are actually a ton of very good running backs available in the later rounds.

ESPN’s Ken Daube is one advocate of this school.  He’s run the mock draft scenarios and demonstrates that WR-WR produces more points in the first five rounds than other combinations:

As you see, WR-WR is not only the best system according to the chart but RB-RB winds up worse than the RB/WR combos, too.

Best Available Athlete

My problem with such charts, though, is that they’re built around averages of various mock drafts and try to extrapolate to how your league will draft.  But your league will only draft once this year and the behavior of your fellow managers may depart radically from the norm.  For example, there’s always the Homer, who tries to get every single player from the Patriots.  Or the guy who takes quarterbacks early.  Or the guy who doesn’t show up and gets autodrafted.

What I’ve tended to do in the past, then, is just grab the Best Available Athlete, period, in the early rounds.  The top guy on my draft board spreadsheet is who I go with.   If it’s a RB, I take an RB.  Ditto for WR or QB or TE.  I’ve wound up with some really terrific talent with that strategy.

The downside, however, is that you may wind up with a lot of talent on the bench.   If you go RB-RB-RB-RB in the first four rounds — and I’ve done it — you’re going to have not only two solid starters at running back but have depth there to deal with injuries and bye weeks.  And you’ll leave fewer of them on the board for your opponents, who may overpay in trades to compensate.

But you’re going to be tempted to switch out for matchups during the year and often guess wrong.  And, if you’re in a league with grownups with families, like I am, you’ll find that not all that much trading goes on.  So you may just have a lot of points going into the ether while you have mediocre guys in required starting slots.

My Best Advice:  Modified Best Available

Given that, you’re better off following a modified Best Available strategy.  Take the top guy on your spreadsheet the first five picks unless you’ve already filled your starter allotment for that position.   So, if you went RB-RB or WR-WR, don’t take a third WR or RB.  Or, if you took a QB, don’t take another one.

If you’re in a standard league, then, ideally, you’ll fill your QB, RB1, RB2, WR1, and WR2 slots with your first five picks (although probably not in that order).  Be flexible, though.  Don’t reach for a quarterback if there’s nothing but third tier guys on the board.  And if one of the elite TEs is available early, go ahead and grab him.

You can almost always get quality talent at QB and TE in the middle rounds.  So, if a really good RB or WR drops to you, go ahead and grab that backup with your 5th pick.  If the value is close, though, grab a starter and worry about the backups later.

Roster Strategy

Now that you’ve drafted your team, you’ve still got a long season ahead of you.  While a good draft helps a lot, nobody ever won a championship on drafting alone.

Picking Your Starters

For the most part, I keep my studs in place every week.  If you’ve got Drew Brees or Peyton Manning and he’s had a couple of down weeks, don’t panic and put Jason Campbell in.  It might work, of course.  But it’s not the smart long-term strategy.

If you’ve got mediocre talent at a spot, though, or have a real stud as a backup, it gets trickier.  Read the various fan sites (the ones I’ve linked for draft strategy tend to work well) to get their best advice. Factor it in.  But I tend to ride the hot hand:  I don’t swap out a guy who’s been doing well because he’s projected to score 16.7 points and some other guy on my roster who hasn’t done well is projected to get 17.1.

Beware of Bye Weeks and Injuries

The most aggravating part of fantasy football, aside from people who go back and forth 15 times trying to negotiate a trade, is dealing with injuries and bye weeks.  The byes are at least predictable:  They’re right there on the schedule.  But you’ll have to make a lot of moves to deal with them especially if, like me, you tend not to keep backups for the less productive positions.

Injuries are an especial challenge because coaches lie like dogs.  By the end of the season, half your roster will be marked “Doubtful” with a note saying “Game time decision.”   Since your league likely requires you to set your roster NLT 5 minutes before kickup, “game time” is too damned late.

Here’s what I do:  If I’ve got a guy who I can’t count on and have a backup available who’s, say, 75 percent as good, I just go with the backup and grit my teeth if the “Game time decision” dude has a four touchdown day.   If my best alternative is a last-minute waiver acquisition that’s projected to get 3.7 points, I tend to just hope my guy plays.  That’s especially true if picking up the waiver guy will require me to cut someone I’d rather keep.

Churn the roster

Bill Parcell’s tenure with the Dallas Cowboys was not a happy time.  He was what his record was, which was mediocre.  Still, he knows his football.  And one of his main axioms was “churn the bottom of the roster.”   The players he considered Just a Guy (JAGs) were subject to being cut at a moment’s notice while he brought in guys off other teams’ practice squads or off the street.   Most of those guys sucked, too, but he figured he’d never find the gems other guys were missing without the process.  And, really, what’s the harm in losing a JAG?

The same holds true for fantasy football.  I’m always on the lookout for upgrades for my bench at QB, WR, and RB.  I’d rather carry three QBs than a second TE or DST.   They’re better trade bait, if nothing else.   And grabbing a QB who’s looking like he’s going to take off denies him to your opponents, too.

Similarly, if your kicker or defense or tight end is mediocre — and they probably will be if you follow my draft strategy — don’t be afraid to scour the waiver wires every week to see if there’s a guy who’s matchup is more favorable than your guy.  If so, do the old switcheroo.

Trade strength for strength

If the average age in your league is over 30, there’s probably not going to be as much trading as you’d like.  People just don’t have the time to do more than read a couple of columns and make their roster moves.  It helps, though, if you take the initiative and propose deals that make sense for both sides.

Let’s say your WR1 went on the IR and your WR2 isn’t as good as he was supposed to be. Meanwhile, your second string QB or your fourth RB is a lot better than advertised and just sitting on your bench.  Find another owner with the opposite situation and propose a win-win deal that upgrades him at RB and you at WR.

Obviously, you’d rather get Larry Fitzgerald for a kicker.  And you might find some idiot willing to do it!  But it’ll be a lot less aggravating if your league has one fewer knucklehead proposing stupid trades.

The Luck Factor

The joy and curse of fantasy football is that luck is a ridiculously big part of the game.

I’ve won leagues where I’ve limped into the playoffs with a .500 record only to get hot.  I’ve lost the first playoff game in leagues where I was undefeated in the regular season.  Your world-beating running back inexplicably gets two carries during your playoff game and the other guy’s waiver wire acquisition quarterback throws for 400 yards and 5 TDs.  Or vice-versa.

Do your preparation for the draft and due dilligence during the season. If you don’t, you won’t enjoy the experience very much and you almost certainly won’t win with any consistency.   On the other hand, don’t spend 30 hours a week trying to improve your fantasy roster at the expense of your family or social life.  It’s just a game.

Graphic courtesy Play Game Sport.

“Mad Men” returns for its third season tomorrow night at 10 Eastern on AMC.

If  “Burn Notice” is the best show on TV, “Mad Men” is the hottest, having somehow captured the zeitgeist with its meticulous portrayal of early 1960s Manhattan.  Pocket squares and tie clips are fashionable again, as are classic cocktails like the martini and the Old Fashioned.   Jon Hamm hosted “Saturday Night Live.”  Everyone’s Twitter icon is a “Mad Men” cartoon owing to the popularity of the recent MadMen Yourself meme.  Everyone’s talking about “Mad Men” even if they’re not watching it.

As is usually the case these days, I came to the show late, watching Season One via Netflix as the second season was underway and catching up to everyone else by season’s end.  (I’m not as far behind as Stephen Green, though, since he insists on waiting for the Blu-Ray release and thus just started Season 2 last month.)  I warmed to the show slowly, not much liking it after the first couple of episodes.  But the critics are right:  It’s great television.  While it lacks both the feel-good vibe and morality play quality of “Burn Notice,” it’s gripping and provocative.

What’s so great about it?

The Men

Don Draper and the rest of the men of Sterling Cooper are misogynistic jerks.  Most of them are cheating on their wives, lying to one another, disloyal to their friends and just generally not very good guys.  But there’s nonetheless something decidedly manly about most of them, especially Draper.

Men are still decidedly men and women are decidedly women as the show begins.  We’re about to see that crumble.  Mostly for the good. But “Mad Men” inspires a certain nostalgia for bits and pieces of the old days.

Most of these men served in the military; the older ones went to war.  They have strong work ethic and a sense of duty.  They’re stoic.

They work hard and they play hard, often simultaneously.  They’re at the office late into the evening most days but they’re not corporate drones; they’re men on a mission.  They take long lunches, usually involving steaks and cocktails.  They have bars in their offices.  (Yes, offices!  No cubicles for the Mad Men.) They smoke whenever they damned well please.  They have secretaries to do their errands and answer their phones so they can do real work with minimal interruption.  They’re not tied to their BlackBerries or typing up their own correspondence.

The Women

As with virtually every show in the history of television, the women of “Mad Men” are beautiful.  Christina Hendricks (Joan Holloway) exudes sex in just about every scene and January Jones (Betty Draper) is super model spectacular.   Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson) is intentionally made to appear frumpy but she still manages to be attractive.

But, as I say, that’s not unusual.  Hollywood is so overrun by magnificent looking people that we’re supposed to believe that Sandra Bullock would be thought plain by her fellow FBI agents until she got a makeover.  Drop-dead gorgeous is pretty much the norm on TV.

So, what makes the women of “Mad Men” stand out?

Partly, it’s the period.  These women are amazing despite having to dress quite modestly.  Or, perhaps, because of it. Being sexy without showing a lot of leg or cleavage requires a little more work. While the girdles and stockings and garters and heels and all the rest are ridiculously uncomfortable and impractical for everyday life, they’re undeniably womanly.

Beyond that, while the men are the stars of the show — it’s got “men” right there in the title — and the show was created by and executive produced by a man (Matthew Weiner) most of its writers are women.  And they’ve done a wonderful job of making all of the female characters, including those with bit parts, interesting.  They’re mostly quite smart but forced into supporting roles by virtue of their sex.  Most of them are neurotic and chafing under the burden of their lot in life.

The Style

The clothes are terrific.  Especially, let’s face it, the men’s clothes.

We’re a nation of overweight people who dress for comfort rather than appearance.   Our shirts are untucked and our collars are open.  And, really, that’s not such a bad thing.  I don’t want to go back to wearing wool suits while watching a baseball game in July.

But seeing people dress the way they did back in the day reminds us that we don’t look so hot. I work in downtown DC, which isn’t exactly noted for its sense of style.  But most of us wear dark suits and a tie to work every day, which is unusual in our casual age. Even so, few of us look as good as the Mad Men.

Partly, of course, because we’re not dressed by professional costumers with unlimited budgets.  But men’s clothing was simply better in the old days.  Whether we’re talking about military uniforms or men’s suits, the material and tailoring were far better in the 1940s and 1950s than they are today.

I suspect it’s because we’ve chosen quantity over quality.  Most men, even most ad executives, owned a lot fewer suits — and less clothing, period — then than they do now.  One only has to compare the size of closets in houses built a few decades ago versus those of today to know it’s true.  The Mad Men probably had no more than five or six suits in their closet.  But they were custom tailored and made with much better fabric than is typical of modern suits.  Today, even a $1500 “couture” label suit is likely to be made of thin fabric imported from some third world country and made to fit a standardized mannequin.

Men used to know how to wear a suit, too.  Partly, I think, because military service was mandatory and instilled a sense of fit and uniformity.  They learned how to shine shoes, that a man never needs a haircut (because he’s visited the barber long before he got scruffy) and how to tuck in a shirt properly.

The combination of Mad Men and Tom Ford have finally made a slim fit fashionable again but most American men wear suits that are at least a size too big.  Almost nobody shows cuff anymore. I find that I have to insist that the alterations guy take up the sleeves because the norm is now to have the jacket go all the way to the hand. The result is that most men look like little boys whose moms bought their suits with some room for them to grow into.

The 1960s

Watching the show is like stepping back in time.  The creative team is famously obsessive about their portrayal of the period, down to small details like the plumpness of apples in bowls of fruit.  While “Mad Men” is an idealized view of 1960, it’s not whitewashed in the sense that, say, “Happy Days” or even the contemporaneous “Andy Griffith Show” were.  The prejudices and warts of the day are clearly in view.

But it’s fascinating to watch the characters react to the rapid changes of the period.  The first season opens in 1960, during the closing days of the Eisenhower administration. We’re about to see the election of John F. Kennedy and the dawn of the women’s movement.  The Civil Rights era is a few years away and we haven’t yet escalated our involvement in Vietnam.  Watergate is more than a decade off.  So it’s an American much less cynical about its leaders and its place in the world.  And we’re about to watch all that unfold.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Elsewhere: Everyone’s Talking About “Mad Men”

InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds is hooked on the show but isn’t sure that’s a good thing. “I liked it and thought it was good — in a depressing sort of way. If 1960 was when men were on top of the business world, then this show makes being on top look overrated . . . .”

Over at Big Hollywood, Michael Rulle says the “show somehow touches all my subterranean hot buttons.”

The show has an uncanny ability to convince the audience it is watching people as they were then, with no intrusion of modern sensibilities and judgments. The show’s appearance is a gauzy impressionism, which helps create a nostalgic effect. There seems to be less dialogue than most shows. Characters are developed as much through facial reactions to events as with dialogue and plot lines. When watching the show, it feels like 1962, as I nostalgically remember it, even though I never heard of Madison Avenue until years later. Plot lines are about getting and losing clients, and they can be amusing. But plots are primarily designed to create interest in each character.

[...]

The show is focused on “inner life.” The characters seem like “prisoners” of background and circumstance. Yet they have free will and the power to transcend circumstances, if existentially aware. We, and they, have limits too. Each person needs to find their way. The show’s two “protagonists,” Draper and Olsen, have morally compromised lives. They realize this. They seek redemption, but are also driven to succeed in work, and these two can conflict. They struggle, and as such, are appealing. Is there an implicit political message in this show, a bias perhaps, a hidden jab at the left, or right? Not that I can see. However, what is not seen may be as interesting or telling.

What is not seen? Government. The Nixon/Kennedy election takes up one episode. They all want Nixon to win, but it is not clear why. Perhaps they expect a more friendly business environment. One Mad Man, who fancies himself an intellectual, marches in Mississippi with his black girlfriend (who then blows him off, amusingly). That’s about it. Government policies and politics simply are absent, accept as it might relate to business. No political correctness or anti-political correctness is visible. Just people living day-to-day, trying to make it. Some have broader imaginations than others. Some are nasty, some are brilliant, some are dopes or comical.

Yet no one is looking to “leaders” for salvation. Refreshing.

Amanda Marcotte, writting at TAP, has no trouble seeing the politics.

Mad Men actively runs against the stale narratives that posit the 1960s as driven by young hippies going against their parents’ staid lifestyles after being disillusioned by the Vietnam War and the battles over civil rights. Instead, the show tells a story of how the changes of the 1960s emerged gradually from various historical shifts. Progress wasn’t solely affected by the demands of Ivy League educated youth and a few civil-rights leaders. The rebellion of the 1960s was only made possible because of economic changes and other cultural developments that happened in the early — and less romanticized — part of the decade.

In offering a subtle counter narrative to the stories we all know so well about the tumultuous era, Mad Men manages to make the familiar terrain feel fresh again. Part of it is just the unique choices of what to show — lesser writers would make the characters sympathetic by having them support Kennedy and then mourn his death, but on Mad Men, they vote for Nixon and weep for Marilyn Monroe. Legend has it that the 1950s morphed into the 1960s when the Beatles hit American shores. But on Mad Men, we’re reminded that Bob Dylan was already attracting interest with a sound that would define the era well before the British invasion and the rise of psychedelica, and that the beatniks had already defined a counterculture based around drugs and artistic innovation. The most annoying cliché of politically minded ’60s-era films and shows — the noble white person who heroically stands up against racism — is brutally sent up: A self-important white man registers voters to gain street cred and is then summarily dumped by his black girlfriend, for whom this is not a game.

The show’s ability to create historical context is particularly vivid when it comes to the feminist themes. True, Mad Men addresses the issue of the feminine mystique through the character of Betty, the bored and frustrated housewife of lead ad man Don Draper. But Mad Men also shows the other side of the story, how second-wave feminism was made possible only because apolitical working women paved the way out of economic necessity. The character of Peggy Olson, a secretary at the advertising agency Sterling Cooper who moves into copywriting, doesn’t go to work because she’s an overeducated housewife looking to relieve boredom. She is a working-class Catholic girl from Brooklyn who needs the money and then finds herself addicted to ambition. Peggy’s story, and that of all working-class women who held jobs because they had to, is as essential to the history of women’s liberation as The Feminine Mystique or protests against the Miss America contest.

Esquire has an interesting feature by S.T. VanAirsdale called “What’s So Great About the Sixties Anyway?”

There’s something undeniably irresistible about watching that era, its political crisis, misogyny, discrimination, and disloyalty falling on top of each other but still somehow bundled up into one glossy package with Don Draper’s fedora on top.

Indeed, Mad Men succeeds primarily as a dramatic love letter to an utterly unlovable era. But that’s the 1960s for you — even the late ’60s, which culminated at Woodstock forty years ago this week with less a cresting wave of peace, love, and music than one final, white-hot eruption of generational protest. It, too, will soon receive its Hollywood close-up in Taking Woodstock, a film that director Ang Lee claims he took on as a way of lightening up after making two tragedies in a row. Yet, like Mad Men and so much more of the ’60s culture we fetishize today and especially late this summer with so much generational abandon, the nostalgia deflects deeper truths about just how ugly an era it really was. There is nothing particularly “light” about optimism’s dying breath, particularly one choking on mud and suffering from a shortage of food, water, and working toilets.

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Which isn’t necessarily to say that Hollywood has duped you with its reliving of the ’60s. You’ve just been kind of sentimentally misled (and that’s something we should have gotten used to earlier in this decade). Sensational as it is, Mad Men is a prime offender here. Think back to late last season, when one of the series’ best episodes placed its characters’ enduring self-interest in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis; the gossip about their ad agency’s buyout harmonized with rampant speculation about the literal end of the world. We know the upshot while we’re watching — the crisis would end, the Soviet Union would fall — but the moment is depicted almost too romantically for its own good, coaxing a sort of glamour from the very real terror of mass panic.

Vanity Fair welcomes the show back with a feature by Bruce Handy (with photos by Annie Leibovitz, no less) called “Don and Betty’s Paradise Lost.”

A more interesting measure of the show’s impact is the fact that its title has become a kind of shorthand: you can now talk about a Mad Men skirt or lampshade or pickup line where once you might have used “space age” or “Kennedy era” or “Neanderthal.” But while the show, like its subject, has many surface pleasures—period design, period bad behavior (if you like high modernism, narrow lapels, bullet bras, smoking, heavy drinking at lunch, good hotel sex, and bad office sex, this is the series for you)—at its core Mad Men is a moving and sometimes profound meditation on the deceptive allure of surface, and on the deeper mysteries of identity. The dialogue is almost invariably witty, but the silences, of which there are many, speak loudest: Mad Men is a series in which an episode’s most memorable scene can be a single shot of a woman at the end of her day, rubbing the sore shoulder where a bra strap has been digging in. There’s really nothing else like it on television.

Amy Chozich writes on “The Women Behind ‘Mad Men’” for WSJ.

Behind the smooth-talking, chain-smoking, misogynist advertising executives on “Mad Men” is a group of women writers, a rarity in Hollywood television. Seven of the nine members of the writing team are women. Women directed five of the 13 episodes in the third season. The writers, led by the show’s creator Matthew Weiner, are drawing on their experiences and perspectives to create the show’s heady mix: a world where the men are in control and the women are more complex than they seem, or than the male characters realize.

Pajamas Media’s John Boot wonders “Why Do Women Love Mad Men?” given that the men are such jerks.

Though women’s fondness for fictitious sexy rascals has been there forever and will never go away, Don’s misbehavior comes as part of a package that women find hard to resist. In Don’s world, women aren’t likely to rise to the top in the working world but they assume total command of the household. They may not know where their men are in the evenings when they say they’re at “business dinners” (and frequently are, with young models or foxy department-store heiresses) but that leaves them plenty of time to conduct discreet little flirtations of their own.

And if Don and Co. close off large portions of their manly doings behind a wall of omertà, that means the women don’t have to listen to any sniveling about their men’s anxieties, their feelings, their doubts. The men know their mission is to take charge, work hard, and give their families what they need financially, not emotionally. Emotions are women’s work. The astonishing number of women with advanced degrees who today elect to drop their careers and stay home with the children shows that equality did not make women quite as happy as they thought it would. Maybe the working world is what men have always considered it to be: not a source of freedom or self-actualization but a necessary routine, a duty, a bore.

The women who watch the show aren’t just sighing with lust for Don. They’re sighing with relief in contemplation of a world that, though unfair and imperfect, is carefully ordered and stable, at least on the surface. Yet Mad Men is a testament to how important surfaces can be when there is a consensus that the unpleasant parts of the past ought to be enthusiastically buried. There’s no monster of the deep so fearsome that it can’t be chased away for a moment or two with a pitcher of martinis.

Belmont Club‘s Richard Fernandez takes that a step further:

As Saving Private Ryan and Jurassic Park proved, liberal audiences don’t mind watching powerful and unbridled creatures rippling in action provided the scene is set at a safe distance. The Greatest Generation is admired despite the fact — of perhaps because of the fact — that it incinerated cities, interned alien races and nuked enemy population centers into radioactive ash. The key to understanding the popularity BBC’s historical dramas or science fiction fare is that they provide acceptable action settings for the kind of people politically correct society no longer allows. Like Walter Mitty such societies have a life of secret longings hidden behind their pursed and narrow lips.

It is double-think at its finest, and nobody needs it more than the Left. After all, what committed socialist likes to be reminded that all government money comes from private enterprise? That would take all the fun out of spending it. Who wants to tell the European Union that the only reason it isn’t a nonentity like the African Union is because it stands on the shoulders of a history it despises? Where would all their moral authority go then? Fantasy is an indispensable part of modern political life.  Contradictions must pass unnoticed if the play is to be allowed to continue. Yet the tug of the outside world forces the audience to occasionally glance outside the windows of the theater. Part of the attraction that Left feels for Jihadis and primitive warriors lies is precisely in that they haven’t followed their politically correct instructions. Groucho Marx once said that he would never want to be a member of a club that would accept him as a member. In an analogous kind of way the Left never truly admires someone stupid enough to believe them. Desert raiders are liked exactly because they aren’t timid souls living in council housing staring down at their shoes waiting desperately for the community policeman whenever ‘youths’ come to rob them.

Much more at all the links.

John Wayne died 30 years ago this summer but he remains one of the iconic images of rugged manhood.  Here are some great quotes from his movies.

“I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”  – The Shootist (1976)

Wayne’s last film and one of his best.  Then again, most of my favorites were toward the tail end of his career, when his characters became a little more crotchety and sardonic.  These words are almost impossible to live by in our more politically correct age but it’s the right attitude.

“Well, there are some things a man just can’t run away from.” – Stagecoach (1939)

From, ironically, his first starring role in an “A” movie — nearly forty years earlier.

“All battles are fought by scared men who’d rather be some place else.” – In Harm’s Way (1965)

A fine corollary to the last.  Or perhaps vice-versa. It echoes George Patton’s line that “The courageous man is the man who forces himself, in spite of his fear, to carry on.”

“Out here a man settles his own problems.” – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

One of the Duke’s iconic films but one where, like “The Searchers,” he’s admirable only in a rather dark way.

“Don’t apologize—it’s a sign of weakness.” – She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

Said to a young lieutenant under his tutelage.  It’s one of Wayne’s most iconic lines, quoted constantly.  It’s one of Gibb’s Rules on NCIS.  And, strictly speaking, not one I believe to be true.  Admitting when you’re wrong is often a sign of strength. But what Captain Brittles was trying to get across is that mistakes are a part of learning and that what’s important is to actually learn from them and to think about the consequences of your actions beforehand to avoid unintended harm to others.

It is, however, a sign of weakness to apologize reflexively before doing something you have every intention of doing.  I love all the websites that, for example, require you to “prove you’re human” by deciphering some barely readable gibberish while simultaneously saying “Sorry.”

“Sorry don’t get it done, Dude.” – Rio Bravo (1959)

A corollary to the above, this one is usually true.  The “Dude” in question is his longtime friend, played by Dean Martin, a sheriff who’s drank himself into sorry incompetence after a failed romance.  Rather than allow him to wallow in self-pity, the Wayne character (John Chance) lets him know his actions are unacceptable and takes it upon himself to do his job until he gets himself clean and sober.  Which, naturally, he does.

I’m amazed at how often people think a perfunctory apology makes up for the consequences of their carelessness or failure to live up to their responsibilities.   Contrition is great.  Now, what are you going to do about it?

“Now you understand. Anything goes wrong, anything at all… your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault… it don’t matter…I’m gonna blow your head off. It’s as simple as that.” – Big Jake (1971)

This is from my favorite Wayne movie, which has so many great lines in it that I could write a whole post on it.  (And I just might!)  But it’s really a classic statement of manhood: Life has serious consequences and it doesn’t matter if they’re fair or not.  In this case, he’s talking to the villain who has kidnapped his grandson and thereby brought upon himself responsibility for anything bad that happened.  ( In fairness to said villain, he kidnapped the boy thinking Jake was dead.  A common mistake throughout the film.)

“That’ll be the day!” – The Searchers (1956)

Said in response to, “You wanna quit, Ethan?”  and later to “I hope you die.”   Simple, defiant, and matter-of-fact.

“I haven’t lost my temper in 40 years; but, Pilgrim, you caused a lot of trouble this morning; might have got somebody killed; and somebody oughta belt you in the mouth. But I won’t. I won’t. The hell I won’t!” – McLintock (1963)

Mostly here for its comic value. But, sometimes, people need a punch in the mouth.

“Well, son, since you haven’t learned to respect your elders, it’s time you learned to respect your betters.” – Big Jake (1971)

Another classic line setting up a well-earned punch to the mouth of someone who’d earned it.  In this case, his character’s son (played by his real life son, Michael).  Who, incidentally, learned both lessons by movie’s end.

What great Wayne movie lines have I missed?

1. James Bond – The 2006 reboot of this longstanding franchise was a breath of fresh air.   To purists, Sean Connery will always define the Bond character but the Daniel Craig version is better.  I have liked all the actors who’ve played 007.  Connery was always my favorite, as he combined the ruggedness and smarts the character demanded.  George Lazenby’s single turn was a radical departure that gave us a prettier but less physical Bond. Roger Moore, the Bond I grew up with, was campy but good.  I even liked Timothy Dalton in the role, putting me in a small minority.  Pierce Brosnan was a return to a more serious Bond.

But Craig is simply stunning in the role.  He’s got the physique to carry off the ridiculous acts of derring-do and the attitude to seem like he ought to have a license to kill.  Of all the Bond actors, he’s the only one that seems plausible in all aspects of the character.

Moreover, the plots in both “Casino Royale” and “Quantum of Solace” move.  With the exception of “Thunderball,” all of the Connery Bond flicks are dull and plodding by comparison.  The Bond of the 1960s just spent too much time laying around, driving from scene to scene, and otherwise filling a lot of screen time doing boring things.  It’s not Connery’s fault, of course, or even that of Terrence Young, Lewis Gilbert, or the other directors of the day; that’s simply the way movies were back then.  But, man oh man, they just don’t stand up.

2. Star Trek – The 2009 reboot directed by JJ Abrams and starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto in the Kirk and Spock roles was an unexpected surprise.  “The Original Series” was my favorite of the Trek shows in terms of great characters but it was a low-budget affair from a different era. The plots were uneven, to say the least.  “Next Generation” was an improvement in most respects but, as great as Picard and company were, they never matched up chemistry-wise to the Kirk-Spock-Bones combo.  “Deep Space 9″ and “Enterprise” had a lot going for them but they’re not at the top of the canon.  And we’ll just pretend “Voyager” never existed.

The new “Star Trek” manages to keep the good qualities of the original crew — including figuring out a way to work Leonard Nimoy in as Spock the Elder — with all the advantages of modern writing and production sensibilities.  Sure, we had the movies of the 1979 to 1994, feature films starring the original characters in their original roles.   And “Star Trek” was no “Wrath of Khan” or “Search for Spock.”  But it didn’t have the absurdity of a crew full of elderly senior officers doing the same jobs they did as ensigns, either.

3. Superman -  I’m cheating here and talking about the John Byrne comic book reboot of the franchise in 1986, although several of the television and movie treatments have been quite good, too.   By the time I started reading the Superman books in the mid-1970s, they had gotten pretty lame even by the standards of a pre-adolescent.  Decades of monthly stories had created a whole ridiculous cast of characters powerful enough to make Superman interesting, ranging from Mr. Myxlplyx to Comet the Super-Horse.  The “Crisis on Infinite Earths” mini-series and the Bryne turn on the writing and drawing kept the good parts of the storyline and (temporarily at least) swept away the crap.

Thanks to Byrne, we also got the two best television treatments of Clark Kent:  “Lois and Clark” and “Smallville.”   Gone is the silliness of Clark having to pretend to be a cowardly, 98-pound weakling despite being built like an NFL tight end.

4. Battlestar Galactica -  I missed the 1979 to 1980 iteration of the show, starring Lorne Greene as Commander Adama; or, quite possibly, I repressed the memory.  I’ve caught a few episodes here and there since and, my word, they were dreadful.  Greene was iconic as Ben Cartwright on “Bonanza.”  He was even fine in those Alpo commercials.  But he never worked as Adama.  The show was campy without being intentionally funny and serious without being dramatic.

The 2003 “reimagining” by contrast was one of the best television sci-fi shows ever, perhaps second only to “Babylon 5.”  And I was fully prepared not to like it, initially annoyed at the politically correct choice to make the Starbuck character a woman.  But it was awesome.  Edward James Olmos was perfect as Adama.  Katee Sackhoff was, once I got used to her, excellent as Starbuck.  James/Jamie Callas’s Gaius Baltar is one of the more interesting villains ever.  Michael Hogan’s Saul Tigh was terrific.  And the supporting cast was great.

5. Ocean’s 11 -  The 1960 Rat Pack version of this was rather lame.  Frank, Dean, and Sammy defined “cool” for a generation but the movie was . . . meh.   The 2001 Steven Soderbergh/George Clooney remake was a fun caper flick which spawned two perfectly enjoyable sequels of their own.  And it’s not every day we get to see a dozen mostly-big-name Hollywood actors get together to a movie together just for the fun of it.

In the summer of 2007, USA Networks put out a small, summer replacement show called Burn Notice. The premise, on paper, doesn’t sound like anything special. Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) was a spy for an unknown agency. One day, in the middle of an operation, Michael finds out that he’s been “burned”–he’s no longer working for the government. He’s black bagged and wakes up to find that he’s now stuck in Miami permanently, with no job, no credit, no history, nothing. While in Miami, he is reunited with his ex-flame, Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) and an old buddy from his intelligence days, Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell). Michael spends most of his days trying to find out who burned him so he can go back to his old life. In the meantime, he does odd jobs for people who are in trouble with the criminal underground in Miami.

Reading that summary back, I’m struck with how basic and mundane that the premise of the show must seem on paper. It sounds like the kind of show that runs for six seasons on CBS on Friday nights and never, ever gets watched by me. But Burn Notice had one feature that guaranteed that I would sit and watch the pilot: it co-starred Bruce Campbell. I’m a Campbell fan from way back, and I’ve seen every TV series he’s ever had cancelled. I love The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and the little seen but awesome Jack of All Trades. So you better believe I was there to watch. And I’m glad I was, because as it turns out, Burn Notice is the best show on TV today. Here’s why:

1. Story, Story, Story

TV is a peculiar medium, and as such, it has its own needs. Because it is ongoing without a set point of closure, the way in which a show structures itself becomes essential. Some episodes, particularly sitcoms and police procedurals, are episodic–the story beats are pretty much wrapped up in one episode, with few character arcs pulling through, but nothing major. Other shows, however, consist of long, complicated story arcs of the course of a season, such as Heroes and 24. Still others consist of multiple seasons telling the same overall story, which is great when done well, like in Babylon 5, but terrible when the meta-plot takes over the entire show and makes it tough to follow (I’m looking at you, Lost).

Burn Notice has what I think is the best of both worlds in television. Every episode tells a discrete story in and of itself, while there are threads that tie the overall narrative of the show together. Season One asked and answered the quesiton “Who Burned Michael?” Season Two asked and answered “Why was Michael burned?” Now Season Three appears to be asking the question “Can Michael become a spy again?” Each season we’ve gotten closer to the mystery, with just enough bits and pieces to add some excitement to the episodes without disrupting the main plot of each. It’s a terrific balance that it pulls off well. Well, with the exception of Season Three’s mini-arc of Michael’s antics becoming the focus of a police investigation. Don’t get me wrong–I thought the idea was good. But the actress they cast as the detective, Moon Bloodgood, has about as much personality as a ventriloquist’s dummy–minus the vantriloquist.

2. Characters With a Shared History

One of the nice touches, and something that makes Burn Notice unique, is the way the show focuses on Michael Westen’s relationship with the rest of the leads. The sexual tension between Michael and his ex-flame Fiona has a chemistry and realism that a lot of shows think they have and don’t. Michael and Sam have a shared history which is alluded to in war stories and by the way they talk about people they know. And, of course, Michael’s relationship with his mother, played brilliantly by Sharon Gless, is one of the highlights of the show. As played by Donovan, Michael Westen is a stoic on the outside and a man of deep feeling on the inside. The relationships between the characters highlights that. As an added bonus, the show only shares the past in hints and stories. Not once has there been a flashback on the show. And according to the show’s creator, Matt Nix, there never will be.

3. Handy Tips on Spying

First person narration in a television series is typically a curse, and the sign of bad writing. Not so with Burn Notice, which takes advantage of Westen’s store of knowledge to provide voice-over narrations on how to conduct a successful spy operation with limited resources such as those available at your local hardware store. In addition to showing off the MacGuyver-esque skills of Westen, they also introduce little insights about his character. Bon mots like my all time favorite “Guns make you stupid. Better to fight your wars with duct tape. Duct tape makes you smart.” show that Michael clearly prefers elegant, clever solutions to brute force ones–which is a theme that carries over into the show as a whole. (The most important tip I’ve learned, by the way, is that cell phones are the most useful gadgets on the planet.)

4. The Acting

Do they give Emmys to casting directors? If so, whoever casts Burn Notice deserves about a dozen. Jeffrey Donovan is brilliant as Michael Westen, not just in his ability to portray the character, but his ability to embody other roles as Michael during his cases. Gabrielle Anwar and Bruce Campbell have both pretty much nabbed the roles that their careers have been waiting for, and both have a fantastic chemistry with Donovan. But the real casting coup is Sharon Gless who is absolutely perfect in the role of Madeline Westen. She manages to be annoying and colorful, but still a smart, loving mother–albeit one who’s a tad on the dysfunctional side. She’s just brilliant and steals every scene she’s in. The guest stars are also almost always excellent, which is always a bonus in the type of show with lots of new characters every week.

5. A Million Little Things

In addition to the great, solid aspects of the show, there’s also a million and one little details about the show that are just fantastic. The show has a great sense of gallows humors and wit. It also has the best intro to new characters with its captions. I won’t describe them–you just need to watch the show. But also, in addition to the wit and humor, there is a definite sense of values that the show brings. Contra the trends of the last 30 years of spy literature, Michael Westen is not an amoral thug for whom the ends justify the means. He is an actual hero, who fights for the little guy and is always trying to do the right thing. (As Michael says, “As a spy, it doesn’t matter if you’re helping rebel forces fight off a dictator, or giving combat tips to a third-grader. There’s nothing like helping the little guy kick some bully’s ass.”) It’s the nature of his work that he has to engage in some unlawful things, but he always strives to minimize damage (if he steals your car, he’ll have it back by five and keep it clean), and works within the system whenever it’s at all possible. Hell, speaking of values, there’s a great episode devoted to interrogation where all of the spies involve instantly dismiss the usefulness of torture and concoct a much better way to do it–I hope Jack Bauer was taking notes.

It’s this combination of all these elements–the structure, the characters, the writing, the values, and wit–that make Burn Notice required television. The first two seasons are out on DVD, and USA is fond of running in-season marathons. So do your self a favor–get yourself caught up so you, too, can learn why guns make you stupid, and duct tape makes you smart.

A modified version of this article was originally published at the e-zine Heretical Ideas.