Maddened.

I’ve run through the “Mad Men” premiere episode twice now, and my conclusion is this: Too much is written about this show. So I don’t have much to say about it, other than: I hope this season delivers. The number of commercials in the second half were over-the-top obnoxious, but I can’t deny it — it’s good to see the gang back together, dragging their old baggage, along with a few new pieces, just for grins.

I caught much of Matthew Weiner’s “Fresh Air” appearance today, and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. But like Hank, I can find myself oddly impatient with it — the weird diversions (creepy Glen, and I need say no more), the slow-moving plot lines. On the other hand, is there anything on TV close to it (at the same time)? Not bloody much. I’m in for the duration, and I’m glad it’s back. A few random impressions:

Joan’s mixed feelings of being torn between work and motherhood are so common now I don’t think their uncommonness in 1966 is playing well. Joan’s baby’s name is Kevin. I don’t know any Kevins under the age of 20 these days.

Megan = fabulous. I’m so glad hemlines are climbing and the hair is softening. I’m sure T-Lo will have a great Mad Style post on her any minute now. The sexual interlude toward the end suggests the Draper marriage is an entirely new things, however — she’s madonna and whore, and looks great in a miniskirt.

Don’s journey no longer interests me. It doesn’t interest him, either.

Peggy, now — that girl has some serious pluck. Hair looks great this summer, too, especially when she accessorizes with pencil.

What are your thoughts?

More madness than you could ever ask for, via Zorn.

I need to go to bed.

Posted at 12:57 am in Television |
 

68 responses to “Maddened.”

  1. Dan B said on March 27, 2012 at 1:06 am

    Kevin as a name for a baby boy in the mid-60s is actually pretty reasonable: it was the 13th most popular name for boys in 1965 and the 17th most popular in 1966, according to the SSA site (http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/).

    I’ve gotten mildly obsessed with checking there whenever a name rings false for its era; it very often is wrong-authors often seem to give characters names that are popular now, not when a work of fiction actually took place. But it seems like Weiner actually did his homework in this case.

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  2. alex said on March 27, 2012 at 7:32 am

    He could have done better only by naming the baby David. There were five Davids in my kindergarten class of twenty children in 1967.

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  3. beb said on March 27, 2012 at 8:14 am

    Media Matter reports that Fox News is upset at a T-shirt the Obama compaign is selling, calling it vulgar. The T-shirt reads “Health Reform still a BFD.”

    The Guardian reports that Rupert Murdock’s UK business hired hackers to sabotage a rival’s business. At what point do we just concede that News Corp is a Racketeering Influenced Corrupt organization (aside from RICO being US not UK law).

    And Shaq was on the Daily Show last night. It looked like one of those optical illusions where one person is twice as close to the camera as the other. I knew that Jon Stewart is on the small side but he was dwarfed just sitting next to O’Neil.

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  4. Linda said on March 27, 2012 at 8:15 am

    In fact Kevin was a popular baby name in the 1960s–according to the Baby Name Voyager, it was 14th in male name popularity. I figured as much because every other guy I knew in my 20s–including one I dated–was a Kevin. It has fallen out some, but is still up there, but was hardly known before the 1940s, and zoomed up in popularity, peaking in the ’60s.

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  5. Deborah said on March 27, 2012 at 8:22 am

    My prediction is that Joan’s husband will get killed in Viet Nam. She’ll eventually marry a guy named Bacon who’ll adopt the child. How many degrees of separation would that be?

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  6. Dorothy said on March 27, 2012 at 9:16 am

    Good one, Deborah!

    I have two cousins named Kevin – Kevin Francis McCarthy born in 1960, and Kevin Patrick McCarthy born in 1962. My Uncles Tim and Jack really liked the name Kevin I guess. And I found out yesterday that my niece Janet is good friends with the young lady who played the voice of Delores. The girl was hired as an editor on the show, but my sister (Janet’s mom) tells me this girl is very beautiful, though I doubt she was the girl in the photograph of Delores. I’m fairly sure this will be my only Brush with Greatness associated with Mad Men.

    All the commercial breaks in the second hour allowed me to get laundry switched around so I didn’t mind them one bit. But my daughter commented on it too. She watched it on Monday morning since she was at work Sunday night, and I think she finished watching the show in less than 90 minutes.

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  7. brian stouder said on March 27, 2012 at 9:19 am

    My prediction for the day is that “Court Watchers” will, at the end of the day, be straining to explain why questions from the ‘conservative’ wing of the United States Supreme Court seemed so hostile today. I think that, this summer, we’ll see a 7-2 affirmation of “Obamacares”, if only because of institutional reluctance for 9 unelected Justices to reject the work of both houses of Congress and the White House (ie – the people who We, The People sent there)

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  8. Jolene said on March 27, 2012 at 9:39 am

    You’re in good company, Brian. Have seen lots of commentaries predicting that or a similar outcome. Here’s one such, from Linda Greenhouse in the NYT.

    Wish I could be here to hear the arguments. I don’t think I have the patience to listen to the recordings, but would love to hear the lawyers and to see which justices are asking which questions.

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  9. brian stouder said on March 27, 2012 at 10:15 am

    Jolene, I like Jonathon Turley, and heard him expound on this last night. Plus, Sandra Day O’Conner delivered a tremendously interesting lecture here a year or two ago, and she emphasized the Court’s institutional consciousness; the idea of not getting too far ahead or behind of where the country (and the Congress and the President) is. (She repeated the old line that they read the newspapers, too!)

    And indeed, “cameras in the courtroom” sounds like the bare-assed minimum we should expect from our United States Supreme Court. C-SPAN could do their usual excellent, unobtrusive job, and we’d be the better for it

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  10. MarkH said on March 27, 2012 at 10:19 am

    Brian, the supreme court’s job is to decide the constitutionality of what comes before it, not what’s popular with constituents, regardless of the issue. Your statement strongly suggests it’s impossible for congress to enact a law that goes against the constitution. 7-2? Who would be the odd justices out?

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  11. Angela said on March 27, 2012 at 10:26 am

    I think I’m on the same page, especially about the diversions. The Lane subplots are getting on my nerves, although he’s a minor irritant compared to Glen. I would have been happy if his only scene was the one in which he comforted Joan. The entire wallet storyline had me thinking, “More Peggy, please.” That said, hooray, they’re back. Our little viewing party of five was pretty divided between people who love the slow pacing of this show, and those who were bored by it. (I’m in the first group.)

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  12. beb said on March 27, 2012 at 10:39 am

    I have to disagree with Brian SDtouter’s comment [the]institutional reluctance for 9 unelected Justices to reject the work of both houses of Congress and the White House.

    There are four Movement Conservatives on the bench. They have already proved, in “Citizens United” that they don’t give a flying F for logic or precedence. Depending on which way Kennedy swings it will be either 5-4 for or against healthcare reform.

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  13. Jolene said on March 27, 2012 at 10:46 am

    The speculation I’ve heard, Mark, is that the most likely no votes on the constitutionality issue are, first, Thomas and then Alito. Scalia, who is, of course, always on the side of the conservatives, has apparently made other decisions w/ respect to the commerce clause that suggest he might support the law, but I’m not enough of a lawyer or court- watcher to more.

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  14. Prospero said on March 27, 2012 at 10:49 am

    Speaking of Joan’s rapist husband, GOPer misogyny just keeps giving./a> As for Kevin. Who was that winsome chub at JFK Junior High played by Fred Savage? Now that’s an authentic 60s icon.

    In the glut of lower court ACA challenge cases (and how did those astounding cash boondoggles sit with the Teabangers?), several leading lights of Conservative jurisprudence considered experts on the commerce powers of Congress found the individual mandate acceptable to the Constitution. And the DNC shold be running this nonstop: GOPer supporters of the health care individual mandate. But I wouldn’t put anything past an SC with the hardcore idealogue activists Scalia and his homunculus Thomas, nor those smarmy, sleazy GOP operatives Alito and Roberts, who lied their asses off more than Long Dong in their confirmation hearings.

    The entire activist judges complaint from the right seems to have withered and died with the rise of rightwing judicial activism. Anybody that wants to claim Citizens United wasn’t exactly that is staring out his anus.

    MarkH, that sounds like an originalist argument, when the Constitution was never intended by it’s authors to be anything but a living, dare I say evolving, document. I’d guess the two outliers would be the ultimate idealogues, Scalia and Thomas, the latter who should be impeached for not recusing himself after failing to report his wife’s $400grand income from organizations dedicated to overturning ACA on federal financial disclosure forms. GOPers are strangely silent on this topic while howling about Kagan, who has been a model of recusal decorum, while Thomas sticks with Scalia’s unprincipled approach in the Cheney/Enron energy tea party affair.

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  15. del said on March 27, 2012 at 11:13 am

    It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the supreme court. Brian’s observation about Justice O’Connor emphasizing the court’s institutional consciousness is not surprising. It’s something justices and constitutional law professors do all the time. It’s practically a full time job for them, and their very act of doing so is itself telling. Deciding the constitutionality of a law is not the same as solving an equation, not even remotely. There’s the rub.

    At a cocktail party some years ago I was surprised when an older lawyer eloquently defended our legal system – “Best in the world,” all that jazz. Such glowing reviews of our jurisprudence system are uncommon at best and especially unexpected from a seasoned attorney. Turns out he was a retired Michigan Supreme Court justice — that explained it. Hold on, this Health Care ride may be just starting. Could this be the much anticipated conservative bookend to Roe v Wade? Cue ominous chord: Duh duh daaaa. Ah, but I don’t think so. Let’s hope not anyway.

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  16. Bitter Scribe said on March 27, 2012 at 11:14 am

    I’m more pessimistic. These fuckers have shown themselves to be irredeemably political–Bush v. Gore demonstrated that for all time. Now they’re poised to gut the one chance we’ll have to get health care on anything other than a basis of “pay for it yourself, schmuck.”

    Of course this would be consummate hypocrisy, after years of right-wing howling about “social engineering” by “unelected judges.” But then, hypocrisy is what gets these assholes out of bed in the morning.

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  17. Prospero said on March 27, 2012 at 11:35 am

    Here’s a graphic to spoil a perfect day, that the DNC and DCCC should mail to every American household. Positively obscene cornerstone of GOPer tax policy that Ryan wants to enlarge:

    http://front.moveon.org/which-industry-receives-126-per-second-in-tax-breaks/?rc=daily.share&id=38054-20374123-zTl7thx

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  18. Dexter said on March 27, 2012 at 11:39 am

    For our architect friends, Mies von der Rohe was born 126 years ago.
    http://www.miessociety.org/

    HBO and the old IFC (I say ‘old IFC’ because now all their programming is ruined with incessant ads) and Sundance and Showtime have ruined me for watching shows with long commercials interrupting the action. I have made an exception for “Breaking Bad”, but from what I understand , “Mad Men” is just a five year (so far) soapie. Not for me.
    I do tolerate sports programming with long commercial time-outs built into the game’s progression, and I watch the network evening news,but my tolerance ends there.
    My favorite show is Showtime’s “Shameless”. I have never seen anything even close to it. Some say every block has a family like Frank Gallagher’s family, but I have never even been around one family like the Gallaghers, ever

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  19. alex said on March 27, 2012 at 11:55 am

    Turns out he was a retired Michigan Supreme Court justice — that explained it.

    I would have guessed he was a personal injury plaintiff’s attorney. They think the American legal system is the best in the world because they’re getting fat off of it shaking down people’s insurance companies and getting paid “nuisance value” to just go away.

    As for SCOTUS, Uncle Thomas has done far more unseemly things than just conceal his wife’s earnings from right-wing think tanks. He and Scalia both make money giving political speeches before extreme right-wing groups, appearances be damned. Where’s the outrage? It’s being misdirected at those “activist” judges who gave us Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade.

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  20. Prospero said on March 27, 2012 at 12:31 pm

    Alex:

    Maybe, maybe not. You know, rightwingers claim the problem with American health care costs is all about malpractice awards and premiums. Well, in the grand scheme of the obscene amount of cash USA spends on health care relative to the rest of the civilized world (like, twice as much), the total cost of malpractice awards and insurance premiums for medical professionals is less than 0.5% of the total. It’s harder to quantify the cost of CYA medical procedures with no real purpose, but the number is still less than 1%. California passed medical tort reform bills and malpractice premiums skyrocketed while awards plunged. That is pure profiteering by insurance companies. Settlements and awards are rarely large, and of course, attorneys take these cases on with no guarantee of ever seeing a dime in return. Insurance companies have giant legal armies that majored in stonewalling at Law School. The landscape of personal injury litigation is pretty similar.

    Truly revolting statistics.

    Mies van deer Rohe Google doodle. Nice one.

    Dexter, you ‘ve got that right on ads. When I first started watching shows on Hulu, I was mightily pissed off to see that running times for older series were all 6 min. longer than current shows. The difference is in advertising time. But peopke will insist there aren’t more ads nowadays. Bullshit, and ads aren’t louder than the shows either, I suppose.

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  21. Jeff Borden said on March 27, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    Anything the Roberts court does makes me nervous. And to think that he’ll be the chief justice for maybe another 25 or 30 years. Ugh.

    On a brighter note, it will now cost you $50 to have your photograph taken with angry attack muffin Newt Gingrich. Apparently, Sheldon Adelson and his wife are no longer tossing millions at his campaign and we all know those Tiffany baubles for Calista cost money, so it’s down to ripping off the rubes. Well-played, Newticles, well-played.

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  22. del said on March 27, 2012 at 12:44 pm

    Alex, your take on the plaintiff’s bar is probably in keeping with the prevailing view in Indiana. It’s possible that in more left leaning states the insurance companies are the bogeymen. Don’t really practice in that area myself but a friend who defends doctors in malpractice cases has convincingly explained to me that after Michigan passed a tort reform law capping damages in med mal cases the number of case filings went down, as did payouts (and exposure), but malpractice insurance premiums went up. It reminds me of G.W. Bush blaming medical malpractice plaintiffs lawyers for increasing health care costs. Scapegoating, I think FWIW. The costs are relatively small.

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  23. del said on March 27, 2012 at 12:46 pm

    Yeah, what Prospero said Alex.

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  24. del said on March 27, 2012 at 12:49 pm

    Neuticles = testicular prosthetic implants for neutered pets. It’s really true.

    Newticles = the nerve of a presidential candidate who would charge $50 a head for a photo.

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  25. Bitter Scribe said on March 27, 2012 at 12:51 pm

    When it comes to ripping off the rubes, Newt will never be able to approach Sarah Palin. (The flipside is, she can only do it once.)

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  26. Prospero said on March 27, 2012 at 12:57 pm

    del, The costs of med mal awards and malpractice insurance are down in the electron microscopic range of vote fraud relative to American health care costs. Ther was always about as much truth to the “tort reform” shibboleth as there was to “activist liberal judges”. The tort reform tirade from the GOP was a typical attack based on the right wing perception that “trial lawyers” (by which I guess they mean everybody but RE experts and the dark legions of insurance companies and corporate law, and the IPO palladins) gave more money to Democratic Party candidates. How dare they?

    Speaking of the Dread Pirate Justice Roberts, remember that bullshit “umpire” analogy he pulled over the eyes of the Senate Judiciary Committee? Fracking liar. Impartial arbiter, my ass, MF.

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  27. Jeff Borden said on March 27, 2012 at 1:08 pm

    Bitter Scribe,

    Agreed. SheWho would steal the pants from the old grifter played by George C. Scott in “The Flim-Flam Man.” She’s kind of in a class by herself, though of course, she’s a rank amateur when compared with some of the televangelists out there. Google Trinity Broadcasting Co. if you want to see some very high-powered fleecing at work. . .plus Rev. and Mrs. Crouch have some of the highest hair seen since the days of bouffants and beehives.

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  28. del said on March 27, 2012 at 1:10 pm

    I just looked up the umpire analogy used by John Roberts during his confirmation hearing. At one point in his presentation he remarks of our justice system, “It is the envy of the world.”

    There it is again, and from another supreme court justice.

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  29. alex said on March 27, 2012 at 1:37 pm

    del, you’re absolutely right. In this part of the state juries are very conservative and disinclined to award big windfalls to people. It’s quite different in northwest Indiana (i.e., Chicagoland). I’m just pointing out that there’s no shortage of frivolous litigation generating a handsome living for lawyers who expend little or no effort beyond buying a prominent spot on the cover of the phone book.

    And, yes, I know that the push for tort reform is a crock and insurance costs have nothing to do with litigation.

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  30. Prospero said on March 27, 2012 at 1:50 pm

    Savannah GA has a yellow pages listing for A Able Attorney. Lawyerss I know that do personal injury (including one of my brothers) are loathe to bring frivolous lawsuits. You end up making nothing for too much effort and you get a non compos mentis client you’ll never actually get rid of. I think lawyers like A Able are more in the market for tourists that wake up on March 18 am in Savannah hoosegow in immediate need of a mouthpiece.

    “It is the envy of the world.” is exactly the kind of thing you’d expect from a Wonderbread Rotarian-type white guy boosterist Babbitt like Roberts, who seems to be an example more of title pawn comportment than judicial. Except where it isn’t.

    Books cartoon.

    Anti-contraception coasters for your next 40th Bday surprise party.

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  31. LAMary said on March 27, 2012 at 1:51 pm

    Off topic: I just read another resume that included a “bachelorette degree.” This is the third time I’ve seen that recently. All three of these degrees were from University of Phoenix, so you have to wonder what they’re teaching there.

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  32. Sue said on March 27, 2012 at 1:54 pm

    Hooboy. People in the know are predicting SCOTUS is going to strike down the mandate. Jeffrey Toobin is particularly blunt about it, saying Obama’s lawyer is outmatched by the lawyer representing the state AsG.
    Hope those who’ve been able to keep their children insured enjoyed it while it lasted, among other things. There is no HCR without the means of paying for it.

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  33. Dorothy said on March 27, 2012 at 1:56 pm

    Mary I’m going to be hearing that in my mind now every time I see an ad for U of Phoenix.

    Hey moe I meant to ask you yesterday – how was your trip to Florida?

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  34. Jolene said on March 27, 2012 at 2:07 pm

    NBC’s correspondent was also pessimistic re the law being upheld after this morning’s arguments too. Another reporter pointed to cases in which the attorneys had been questioned harshly, but the court had ultimately found in their favor. Still, it’s depressing to contemplate that, after all the Sturm und Drang, the law might be overturned.

    And being defeated in this way couldn’t possibly be good for Obama’s re-election prospects.

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  35. Jolene said on March 27, 2012 at 2:08 pm

    Bachelorette degrees? Seriously?

    What were their majors?

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  36. brian stouder said on March 27, 2012 at 2:12 pm

    Before I get upset about the Supreme Court, I’m waiting until I hear from Jonathon Turley!

    Meanwhile, if I was a Justice, maybe I’d throw more fastballs at the side I was inclined to find for, if only to test whether my judgements can withstand the best criticisms (and doubts) that I could conjure

    Aside from that, I spent lunchtime waiting in line at IPFW for tix to The Capitol Steps, so they should get a full house.

    And tonight it’s off to Red Cross for pheresis donation #100. They called to ask if I wanted a cake, a pie, a box of doughnuts, or cookies.

    Now THAT is a hard decision…

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  37. nancy said on March 27, 2012 at 2:37 pm

    You read it here first, folks.

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  38. brian stouder said on March 27, 2012 at 2:50 pm

    Absolutely superb!

    (and as you indicated, maybe that guy should have stuck with writing about his gout)

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  39. DellaDash said on March 27, 2012 at 2:50 pm

    Dex – not surprising that you’re a ‘Breaking Bad’ kind of guy. I’ve seen enough of it (even with eyes squinted or covered for the gory parts) to appreciate the gritty attraction. But I had to cease and desist when finally realizing that, of course, nothing is EVER going to break good for Cranston’s Walter White. Can’t take it.

    Yet, ‘Mad Men’ pivotal character, Don Draper, is also on that irrevocable downward spiral…with all the violence either sloshed into pettiness, or erupting behind closed doors in a female’s version of brutality. So, yeah…kind of soapy…but with such impeccable, eye-candy production values; attention to period authenticity (on par with Downton Abby); and an almost European flavor…easy to get hooked on.

    Don may be on track to hasbeenville, but still has enough charisma to wreck plenty of collateral damage. Who in his immediate and peripheral orbit will get sucked in, chewed up, spit out; or get strong enough to move with, yet beyond, the Madison Avenue vortex over which he presides?

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  40. Catherine said on March 27, 2012 at 2:52 pm

    Brian, how about a doughnut pie? http://summerofpie.com/2011/08/09/doughnut-pie/

    And Dan B @1, you are not the only one obsessed with that site. I might as well bookmark it.

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  41. brian stouder said on March 27, 2012 at 3:00 pm

    Catherine –

    wooooooaaaaahhh! That looks goooooood!

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  42. Brandon said on March 27, 2012 at 3:08 pm

    I never watched Mad Men. A good show about the early sixties was American Dreams, which first ran on NBC almost ten years ago.

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  43. brian stouder said on March 27, 2012 at 3:09 pm

    Best stylized show about the ’60’s?

    Dick Van Dyke, period

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  44. DellaDash said on March 27, 2012 at 3:11 pm

    It’s gonna be very, very interesting to watch the lawyers (and pundits) duke it out over the constitutionality of compulsary health policies. Politics aside, some of the finest legal minds of our time are sure to be found in all four corners of the ring on this one.

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  45. LAMary said on March 27, 2012 at 3:15 pm

    All the bachelorettes are nurses. Since a lot of hospitals are now requiring or at least favoring BSNs over ADNs, nurses get the BSN at University of Phoenix after finishing their associate degrees.

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  46. Prospero said on March 27, 2012 at 3:19 pm

    I think both Sons of Anarchy and Justified are better than either Mad Men or Breaking Bad. My problem with Breaking Bad is with Walt’s complete amorality, and it goes way back to when he let Jesse’s girlfriend drown in her own vomit while he made his way to a drug deal. And what character is there to actually like in Mad Men. Closest is probably Peggy, but her character remains a cypher through Season 5 Episode 1. Got, Pete is almost starting to seem sympathetic. Harry Crane used to not be a complete fratboy asshole. Not any more. Roger is there to provide a character more despicable than Don the Dick.

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  47. MarkH said on March 27, 2012 at 3:39 pm

    I’m with Prospero: SOA and Justified. Did not take in Breaking Bad and don’t view Mad Men enough to stick with it.

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  48. Dorothy said on March 27, 2012 at 3:42 pm

    I loved The Dick Van Dyke show, but it was in black and white. The colors on Sunday night’s episodes of Mad Men were groovy, baby!

    I wonder if any of those bachelorette babes were majorettes in high school? Do they even have majorettes anymore?

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  49. LAMary said on March 27, 2012 at 4:05 pm

    When I was about 4 or 5 if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up it was either a nurse or a majorette. I liked the majorette boots better than nurse shoes. I recently found a photo of myself at age 4 in a nurse uniform, hat and cape included. I’m administering some sort of treatment to my Betsy Wetsy in the picture.

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  50. Sue said on March 27, 2012 at 4:08 pm

    Dorothy and LAMary:
    That’s what I don’t understand about the ‘bachelorette’ degree. Nursing school and the test to become a registered nurse are TOUGH. You don’t become an RN by being a babe or not knowing what a bachelor’s degree is. Getting an associate’s degree is nothing to sneeze at, you do your clinicals at the same time you’re doing your coursework so those that disparage an A.D. (even those in the medical field) aren’t giving enough credit to the profession as a whole.
    What the hell?

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  51. Dorothy said on March 27, 2012 at 4:11 pm

    Sue I’m making a wild guess that they had someone else type their resumes for them. Maybe they all had it done by the same person? That would be really unusual, but you’re right – you have to be pretty smart to become a nurse and it’s beyond weird that Mary has had three such applications.

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  52. Sue said on March 27, 2012 at 4:38 pm

    LAMary, when you reject resumes for an outrageous error like that, do you notify an applicant why? Or can you put yourself in an bad legal position if you do, like discrimination against the resume-impaired or something?

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  53. Peter said on March 27, 2012 at 5:01 pm

    Well, Nancy, we’re not at gotcha yet, but Frank Bruni’s got to be sweating.
    One commenter to that article had an interesting insight:

    “Second: There are better things to spend your time on. A catholic church in our area’s primary community service initiative is to protest a nearby abortion clinic. They could be doing things that actually help people that are looking for help but instead they chose to try to make people who already feel like shit feel worse.”

    Boy, is that the Santorum platform or what?

    And happy birthday to Mies. Less is more, more or less, except with the name – he added van der Rohe (his mother’s maiden name) so it sounded better.

    I spent four long years in that building (it would have been five – that’s the standard B.Arch program, but our class was pretty large and masonry/wood year was at the 1892 Main Building). There was no AC in that building, so getting final drawings done in May were BRUTAL.

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  54. Bitter Scribe said on March 27, 2012 at 5:30 pm

    To me, “bachelorette degree” sounds like what used to be called a MRS degree: college as experienced by women who were mostly there to find a husband.

    Maybe instead of being majorettes in high school, the bachelorettes had majorettes in college. And Sue’s right: given how demanding the nursing field is, this makes even less sense.

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  55. LAMary said on March 27, 2012 at 5:54 pm

    I don’t reject them for being bachelorettes if they have experience in a specialty I’m looking for. The latest bachelorette has some excellent experience so I have moved her forward to interview. I know it’s hard to make through nursing school and pass NCLEX, so I’m not assuming any of the bachelorettes are stupid. I’m assuming they don’t know the difference between a baccalaureate, bachelors degree and the icky word bachelorette. It’s all muddled somehow, probably owing in part to lame TV shows and maybe a little to University of Phoenix. Two people who email me a lot have U of P degrees and I find their writing unreadable. One of them has two graduate degrees from U of P.

    I look at resumes all day every day and there’s a lot of stuff I have to overlook. Stupid email addresses annoy me and phrases like ” working as a waitress while I attended college gave me massive customer service skills” are like nails on a chalkboard. Massive? Really?
    I see awesome skills too. My favorite stupid email address was drunkenmonkeyface@……
    Great idea having that on the resume.

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  56. Prospero said on March 27, 2012 at 6:22 pm

    I wonder if any of those bachelorette babes were majorettes in high school? Do they even have majorettes anymore?

    Lord knows what their majors were, but I’ll bet they were all Tri-Delts at Ole Miss or Auburn. And when they went to the University Health Service and were informed by the cute PA the itch and odor were symptoms of acute vaginitis, they giggled, blushed and said “Why, thank you Doctor.” My ex-wife’s first roomie at UGA was one of them.She wasn’t stupid, really, just so dense it seemed as if light bent around her like a black hole. Her fiance was a ZBT pronounced as in English. Frats and Sororities that can’t get the Greek alpphabet right have always had my complete enmity. Whatta bunch assaholas.

    Any of y’all ever see Zero de Coduite My Netflix mail just brought a disk with all of Jean Vigo’s movies. If Our Gang made an anti-extablishment movie that became the basis for Lindsey Anderson’s If…, that’s Zero de Conduit? I am rubbing my hands together in anticipation, like Raskolnikov. Of course, I only saw it once 30 something years ago in a film class to finish up JSchool credits, but I remember it vividly, I hope. Last time this happened, I rented the Classic A Boy and his Dog, Sonny Crock…Don Johnson't teenage post-apocalypric venture. Seen once years before. Even funnier than I'd remembered.

    The net is being bombarded with alleged photos of Trayvon Martin in droopy jeans flashing gang signs. Now who might perpetrate such a reprehensible crock of shit? Three suspects having to do with Breitbart associates, (2)Wayne LaPierre little wannabe gun-toting acolytes that would start crying if a 140 lb. kid or a 60 year old man like me smacked 'em, and (3) and the Sanford,FLA Police Department looking at a monster wrongful death suit, not in Simi Valley. No shit, this is spectacularly vile, and really only for those with a stout-hearted belief in the goodness of God's creation:

    https://uglyamerica.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/the-nigger-in-boys-clothing-trayvon-martin-facebook-photos-show-what-george-zimmerman-knew-the-reason-we-should-all-thank-him/

    The so-called "New American Panthers" come up in this racist miasma frequently. I was involved a little bit with the Panthers in my latter two HS years. It was Detroit and I thought I was a radical. I will guarantee that nobody connected with the actual Panthers would ever have to do with something as dogass as putting a bounty on George Zimmerman. They certainly executed people, back in the day–drug dealers. There was a famous retaliation after drug dealers murdered my schoolmate Bill Thigpen, best HS hoops player I ever saw, while he was working the drug rings undercover for the Michigan Daily. But the New Black Panthers? That's an incredibly asinine invention of Breitbart. He hired some big black scary guys and sent them to a polling place. Only it was in a black neighborhood and nobody was intimidated in the slightest. O'Keefe gets the runs againIn fact, there is footage of Breitbart's coke fueled thugs helping grannies and lifting wheelchairs over potholes.

    Y'all are an intelligent and well-informed bunch. You know, more or less, what an imprimatur is. Right? When there are racist, idiot, murderous thugs straining to go free? How does anybody let a drunken drug-addicted pig like Andrew Breitbart to run wild. And how does an entire cop department let his ubermensch shoot and kil a scrawny kid I could take down without crying for mommy. Ypu phony bigtimers that think you're tough? It's the gun you wastes of skin.

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  57. Joe Kobiela said on March 27, 2012 at 7:32 pm

    One more reason to charter http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/flight-disrupted-captain,0,1121216.story
    Pilot Joe

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  58. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 27, 2012 at 7:45 pm

    Joe, that’s a sad story from what I’ve heard in the last thirty minutes. His behavior (I’m not predicting, just observing) sounds just like the last fifteen bath salts cases we’ve had through the county ER. Or a brain lesion. But that’s more than garden variety anxiety attacks or hypermania.

    The more I hear of Justice Kennedy in today’s audio clips, the more I like him, and that has nothing to do with my non-existent prediction of which way he will jump. He sounds the most unambiguously non-pre-decided, which strikes me as a good thing. Listening, asking, considering; just what I want in a Supreme if they’re not standing behind Diana. I could see a 6-3, but 5-4 is where I’d shove my chips, as long as I don’t have to say which way is 5 or 4.

    Acid test for GOP: the day after it’s declared unconstitutional, they’d better have a plan for national health care policy that goes beyond HSAs. If that’s all they’ve got, they’ll have gotten me to vote Dem in 2012.

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  59. Joe Kobiela said on March 27, 2012 at 8:25 pm

    I really hope the pilot gets help, it could be a tumor of some sort.
    Pilot Joe

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  60. Deborah said on March 27, 2012 at 8:42 pm

    For someone who lives in a Mies building to just be finding out now that it’s his 126th birthday is kind of embarrassing. But true.

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  61. Deborah said on March 27, 2012 at 9:35 pm

    Sue, your comment at #32 is so depressing. How can they not be prepared for the conservative legal questions. That is just so unacceptable. What is wrong with these people that we have put so much faith in. Why are they not prepared for everything?

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  62. Sherri said on March 27, 2012 at 9:47 pm

    Jeff(tmmo), what makes you think the GOP has been keeping a national health care policy in their back pocket waiting for Obamacare to be declared unconstitutional? It’s not like health care is a new issue; they’ve been obstructing it since Clinton. Longer than that, if you remember Reagan and Medicare.

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  63. Dexter said on March 27, 2012 at 9:54 pm

    Pilot Joe…Could the Southwest pilot have been dosed somehow? Will he ever fly again, or is he done forever now? What is going on?…last week an experienced flight attendant wigged out, screaming about terrorism and al-Queda, just as the pilot did today….

    time to beat the odds and spend a buck on a MegaMillions ticket…what the hell…it’s $363,000,000 tonight….

    My good buddy Rico who works keeping the grid up in SoCal reports this:

    from lalate dot com:

    LOS ANGELES (LALATE) – A moderate Fontana earthquake today 2012 struck Southern California, and was felt in Los Angeles County. The Fontana and Rialto earthquake today Tuesday, March 27, 2012 struck moments ago. No reports of injuries have yet to be documented by local news.

    A 3.5 magnitude earthquake today struck Fontana, CA shortly after 1:30 pm PST local time. USGS reports to news that the quake was seven miles below the earth’s surface. Because the quake struck close to the earth’s surface, its impact could be felt across a wide section of Southern California.”

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  64. Crazycatlady said on March 27, 2012 at 11:07 pm

    In the early through late 60’s I never met another ‘Denise’. But I met a lot of teachers (!) who would call my name and pronounce it ‘Dennis’ and be surprised to find I was not a boy! I would correct them and face the laughter of other students. Geeze. You don’t want to know how they mangled my last name (Hudspeth)time and time again. So I married a man named Brown. Nobody mispronounces that one!

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  65. Dexter said on March 27, 2012 at 11:16 pm

    Crazycatlady: My middle name is Milton…it goes back to England many generations…and I carry the name to its end as my children are all girls. A few kids tried to taunt me, calling me “Uncle Miltie” and other derivatives now long forgotten, but most kids never made a case out of it.
    Of course legend has it Milton Berle, “Uncle Miltie”, had a member the size of a goddam Sequoia tree. No relation.

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  66. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 27, 2012 at 11:39 pm

    Sherri – then you’d have to say opposition to any health care reform is purely partisan. Which would mean . . . hey, GOP, you have one more chance to make your case. That’s all I’m saying.

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  67. Sherri said on March 28, 2012 at 12:51 am

    Well, there’s purely partisan in the sense of trying to obstruct Democratic success, and there’s purely partisan in the sense that philosophically, the GOP simply doesn’t believe the government has a role as a social safety net. Both are true, and have been since FDR. The GOP won’t come up with a national health care reform plan, because they don’t believe in it, and never have.

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  68. Prospero said on March 28, 2012 at 8:00 am

    Sherri, Jesus said we all have a role in a social safety net. These aholes cling to Jesus. They are lying sacks when they oppose WIC, SCHIP, Medicare, etc. Jeff, they didn’t decide to attack Obamacare for nothing. It’s also RMoneycar and it works. What they hate is the first five letters of Obamacare, and it is largely racism and largely rich white guy conviction they are supposed to run everything and take home all the loot. The great aspersion that Fake Balls Gingrich has cast at Obama is “anti-colonial” Well how ’bout them Founding Fathers”? What the ammphibian really means is Mau Mau, and they comin’ fer yer wimmen. Seriously, we have the most intelligent and well-spolen President since JFK and elected offidials are sending watermelon emails? This is not a civilized country, it’s a barbarous and cannibalistic nation. And the prey vote willingly for the cannibals.

    National health care is a proven paradigm. Shit, it works in Mexico. The AMA used to abhor the idea, until doctors quit the AMA because it didn’t represent their commitment to healing the sick. How is socialised a bad word in this country? Would somebody tell these yokels there is no threat of a world commoniss takeover any more. Nobody is trying to alter your bodily fluids.

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