Why I Hate Watching “Mad Men”.

I was 13 in 1960 when JFK was elected president, the Cold War was intensifying and Fidel Castro was firmly established as the Cuban dictator just a few hundred miles from where I grew up on the beaches of Hollywood Fl. Up until that time I got my news from satirical sources like Mad Magazine and stand up comics like Mort Sahl, and Dick Gregory and Bob Newhart and the First Family album. Mad Magazine often made fun of the emerging new advertising men, who in my young teen mind were walking clichés. Bob Newhart’s Button Down Mind may have been inspired from his days as an uptight accountant but Newhart’s look was strictly out of Madison Avenue’s corporate control mind set.

Twenty one in 1968 and in radio broadcasting for a few years I would occasionally confront these Dan Draper Ad Men so aptly portrayed on Mad Men. By this time the youth culture had devoured our society and Madison Avenue. Guys like Draper seemed beleaguered and so out of it. I recall having long arguments with these guys, who by now were often demoted to middle management, about the importance of the Beatles and this huge demographic Baby Boomer shift which slamming our society. They just never got it. No clue.

So when I heard of this new TV series a few years ago called Mad Men set in the early 60s I was very interested. The show’s feel for the era is uncanny it is almost like watching a science fiction movie like Invasion of the Body Snatchers where the characters have no idea that they will soon be walking zombies. Also from Here to Eternity where the audience spends over 3 quarters of the movie caring about the incidental lives of the soldiers and women living on Pearl Harbor just days before the bombing in 1941. The viewer actually cares about the characters in these two films and their upcoming doom and transformation makes us care for them even more.
Not so with Mad Men. These characters are so arrogant, out of touch and self involved (these were the people that actually personified the upcoming 1970s Me Decade) that it is difficult for me to have any empathy for them. So as much as I love the idea of the show I just cannot watch it.

When I was that young teen reading Mad Magazine, they always listed their writing staff under the heading The Usual Gang Of Idiots. Come up with a show about those Mad Men and I will watch.