I’ve been so dis­ap­pointed by the fourth sea­son of “Big Love” I’ve taken to send­ing jeer­ing e-mails to a friend who still likes it. My lat­est said I’m start­ing a peti­tion to send it back to Uni­vi­sion and restore the orig­i­nal Span­ish dia­logue, because surely this allegedly pres­ti­gious HBO drama was kid­napped from its ances­tral home in the telen­ov­ela big house.

But then, watch­ing it, I real­ize it’s been like this since at least the third sea­son, although that one stopped just this side of the line between incredible-but-entertaining and ridiculous-and-insulting. This sea­son is turned up to 11.

What hap­pened? In the first sea­son, the story of a polyg­a­mous Utah busi­ness­man bal­anc­ing a house­hold of three wives was promis­ing and inter­est­ing. It raised ques­tions: What is fam­ily? How do we inte­grate reli­gion into our Monday-through-Saturday lives? What do we owe our com­mu­nity, and what do they owe us? When we’re pulled in more than one direc­tion, how do we keep from being pulled apart? And so on. The sec­ond sea­son was even bet­ter, once the pro­duc­ers fig­ured out that sex with three women on con­sec­u­tive nights isn’t all that inter­est­ing, even by HBO stan­dards, and started look­ing at the toll polygamy takes on women, both in the sub­urbs and in the creepy rab­bit war­ren of Juniper Creek. It was in many ways a replay of Carmela and Meadow Soprano’s tango with the mob in that other show, but it was still worth explor­ing, and raised another ques­tion: Why do we cling to the chains that bind us? (Answer: Because they make such pretty jewelry.)

If anyone’s ask­ing ques­tions now, they’re right out loud and in the script: Don, will you take the bul­let? Was that baby you’re car­ing for kid­napped from an Indian reser­va­tion? Could it be because you’ve never really dealt with the mis­car­riage you suf­fered in Sea­son 3? And so on.

I swear, if it weren’t for David Simon, HBO would be toast with me. “Entourage” moved from ridiculous-but-entertaining into just-plain-offensive vir­tu­ally overnight; when­ever I land on it now I stay long enough to see whether they’re still serv­ing the same tired salad of misog­yny sprin­kled with screech­ing homo-hatred (“Ari: Keep your eyes on Andrew Kline. Lloyd: Keep my eyes on him how? Ari: Pre­tend he’s Zac Efron’s ball sack.”), with a side of sure-I-believe-Jamie-Lynn-Sigler-likes-short-fat-penniless-guys. Look, one of the gang has a new girl­friend! She’s tall, beau­ti­ful and anorexic. Look, Ari’s on a ram­page! He’s insult­ing his gay assis­tant again. Actu­ally, Ari’s the most inter­est­ing char­ac­ter on the show, in the sense that it’s inter­est­ing to watch the blackly self-loathing Jeremy Piven deliver lines like this:

Mrs. Ari: What time is it?
Ari: I don’t know. My cock doesn’t wear a watch.

And he ran away from a David Mamet play? I’m not the world’s biggest Mamet fan, but he’s William Shake­speare com­pared to this.

Hurry hurry hurry, “Treme.” Which is sort of a nice segue to the blog­gage. (Yes, I know, a bit early, but I’m hav­ing a bad morn­ing, peo­ple. I am Ari Gold today.

Any­way, I’m told the par­ents of this young actress will be fea­tured extras in “Treme.” Although now I’m look­ing for­ward to their daughter’s career:

And for any­one who’s ever had a rel­a­tive whose last words were “Hey ever’body, watch this,” the sad tale of one man’s attempt to top his last wacky party stunt. Must read­ing. For once, the com­ments on a Free Press story are worth a look: He’s GOTTA be a white guy. Well, hell yes.

The cock crows 10:30. Time to start the day.

This seems to be going viral — I read it on Face­book, where it’s now being talked about more or less openly — and it deserves, nay requires, its own entry:

The John Good­man char­ac­ter in “Treme,” the upcom­ing David Simon series for HBO, finds his roots in our very own Ash­ley Mor­ris. One of his friends is open­ing the bag based on this photo, which makes it sort of obvi­ous. Ash­ley was a Saints fan, as we all know.

The con­fir­ma­tion I got warns it’s more of an “inspired by” char­ac­ter, rather than a “based on,” but I for one can say that if I hear Ash’s great FYYFF rant com­ing out of the mouth of John Good­man, I can die happy.

Pre­miere is April 11. Can’t. WAIT.

What to say about David Let­ter­man? Cad? Sex­ual harasser? Sugar daddy? All of the above. My head hurts. I’m struck by this unsourced gos­sip, via Defamer, which implies a gig work­ing for Dave was win-win all around, if you didn’t mind occa­sional sex­ual ser­vice in return for hav­ing your law-school bill paid. For the record, I dis­ap­prove. For all the good that will do.

A man I know once told an approv­ing anec­dote about an ambi­tious female jour­nal­ist who got a cov­eted job by sleep­ing with the right peo­ple, that this is the way of the world, who are we to judge, etc. Well, I’m judg­ing. Con­sent­ing adults aren’t always co-equals, and the more comely young assis­tants there are in the world will­ing to do kneepads work with the boss in return for grad­u­at­ing from law school debt-free, the taw­drier the world gets. I’m not after a per­fect one, just one a lit­tle less tawdry.

What­ever hap­pens to Let­ter­man is obvi­ously up to his bosses. My guess is, he’ll sur­vive and thrive. He has a lot of fans, and he’s good at his job. He’s no hyp­ocrite; while he mines his per­sonal life for mate­r­ial, he’s never claimed to be perfect.

A top­i­cal Top 10 list.

Well, OK. Pals, this week has been bru­tal, and today dawned — if that’s the word for it — over­cast, rainy and chilly. Which means it’s a per­fect day to go to Costco and buy in bulk. Also, I’m look­ing for­ward to tonight, when I chap­er­one one of the middle-school dances our com­mu­nity is known for. I’ve been told by oppos­ing parental camps that they are either a) fun affairs with lemon­ade; or b) dodgy dens of mis­be­hav­ior approved of by short Polish-speaking film direc­tors. I vol­un­teered to help so I could see for myself, but I’m not expect­ing to see much beyond option A, above. If noth­ing else, it gives me yet another ham­mer to hang over a cer­tain seventh-grader’s head: If you don’t do X, I will shake my booty on your dance floor. Talk about a motivator.

Now to do the cross­word puz­zle and try to beat Eric Zorn’s time. Have a great week­end, all.

Yes, Jeff, I did see “Mad Men.” I’m gonna be doing some spoilin’ here, so take a minute and leave the room if you must and OH MY GOD THEY RAN A LAWNMOWER OVER THE ENGLISH GUY’S FOOT. I’m not sure what this show is try­ing to tell me this sea­son, but for now I’ll set­tle for Joan’s dead­pan sum­ma­tion: “One minute you’re on top of the world, the next some sec­re­tary is run­ning over your foot with a lawn mower.”

At first I saw the sale of Ster­ling Cooper to Put­nam Pow­ell and Lowe (aka, the Brits) as the sort of thing dra­matic series tele­vi­sion has to do to stay fresh — that is, import some vil­lains. Con­flict = drama is Screen­writ­ing 101, and when you’ve cre­ated a fairly vast cast and made them all “inter­est­ing,” the big risk is that the audi­ence is going to start lik­ing them, too, and then you end up with shows like “M*A*S*H,” where every­one wears a halo by the time the Very Spe­cial episodes roll around, and after that — meh. So you bring in some antag­o­nists. “The Sopra­nos” paroled a new one every sea­son: Richie Aprile, Ralph Cifaretto, Feech La Manna, Tony Blun­detto et al. The crime-family story struc­ture made it per­fectly accept­able to bump each one off when their dra­matic pos­si­bil­i­ties had been fully explored. Tony even said it out loud, before mak­ing his move on Feech: “Did I learn noth­ing from Richie Aprile?” Your writ­ers sure did, Ton’. Other shows have to make do with more ridicu­lous farewells; remem­ber when “L.A. Law” threw Ros­alind Shays down the ele­va­tor shaft? That was awesome.

So the Brits, with their ter­ri­ble swift sword of cost-cutting and bean-counting, are this season’s bad guys. I’m not so sure where they’re going with it, other than wacky sym­bol­ism — how amus­ing that the mower in ques­tion is an all-American John Deere. The show has too much respect for real­ity to have SC sold again at season’s end (at least I hope so). But once you’ve sev­ered the foot of your par­ent company’s ris­ing young star, you have to go some­where with it, and I hope they have some ideas. If noth­ing else, it did wake up the sea­son with a roar at close to its mid­point. I watched the scenes where Stumpy MacK­endrick is being shown around the office, and was impressed by how…comtemporary he seemed, with his empty plat­i­tudes and English-accented bull­shit. “You…are a very impres­sive young woman,” for instance. I can’t believe I used to swal­low crap like that. I can’t believe peo­ple still dish it out.

(One of my old bosses was fond of writ­ing mash notes to her favorites, lit­tle mis­sives I came to call Wowsers, because they all started the same way: WOW. The remain­der was full of empty superla­tives that by their very vol­ume and pitch were trans­par­ent crap­ola: WOW. I have never read a story as mov­ing and funny as yours. I feel so grate­ful and proud to work with such a mag­nif­i­cently tal­ented staff...and so on. She would have felt right at home at Put­nam Pow­ell and Lowe.)

And how amus­ing that the cost-cutting of this sea­son — 30 per­cent of the staff, we’re told — some­how spared dumb Lois, pro­moted from the switch­board but barely capa­ble of basic sec­re­tar­ial work, and cer­tainly not able to nav­i­gate a rid­ing lawn mower around an office full of tipsy partiers with­out maim­ing one.

My other favorite detail: The Brit-speak, shed­jools and cur­ricu­lum vitae and enjoy the delicatessen.

Some­one — can’t remem­ber who — men­tioned that Joan’s gory dress in her final scenes fore­shad­ows a cer­tain blood-smeared pink Chanel suit com­ing by year’s end. Hadn’t thought of that. It’s even the same nubby wool.

So, Jeff, what’s your take? Where are we going with this?

Me, I got web work to do. Do I have any blog­gage? Maybe.

John D. and Cather­ine T. finally give some dough to a working-stiff jour­nal­ist, and it’s not me. But it is money well-spent. Here’s hop­ing his bosses don’t lay him off.

Roger Ebert came home from Toronto with bad news: Indie film is effec­tively comatose. There goes my sec­ond career. (Can you peo­ple tell I’m kid­ding when I say stuff like that? I hope so.)

Web work. Russ­ian drills. Later.

God, I hate it when NPR tries to be hip. I also hate it when they show will­ful obtuse­ness in the face of pop cul­ture. On this score, I’m impos­si­ble to please, and should prob­a­bly just tune out when they try some­thing like an “appre­ci­a­tion” of Patrick Swayze, which didn’t quite work. Terry Gross could have han­dled it, but she’s got her own fish to fry, and can’t be pop­ping in to the other shows to give them notes.

It’s hard to say what was wrong with the Swayze piece; maybe it was done by some­one too young to really grasp the dual won­der and dis­ap­point­ment of the guy — he was always the best thing in a bad movie, but couldn’t really make the leap to good ones. He belonged in a dif­fer­ent era, when his Gene Kelly com­bi­na­tion of phys­i­cal grace and unques­tioned mas­culin­ity could have been pack­aged in his own “Sin­gin’ in the Rain.” Either that, or he needed to live a lit­tle longer, until Quentin Taran­tino could have built a script around him, like he did for John Tra­volta and Robert Forster. As it is, he’ll be remem­bered for doing his best work in indi­vid­ual scenes where he could shine — the last few min­utes of “Dirty Danc­ing,” the Chippendale’s sketch from “Sat­ur­day Night Live” — rather than one sin­gle movie.

If you’re a fan of “Point Break,” I don’t want to hear about it.

And while I hate it when blog­gers link to their own past work like it’s some sort of schol­ar­ship, I reread what I wrote about Swayze at the time of his diag­no­sis last year, and I’ll stand by it. You can read it here.

I just watched the “Dirty Danc­ing” clip again. Great danc­ing, of course, but why did the rest of the movie have to suck so bad? Why is Jerry Orbach glow­er­ing when every­one around him is happy? Why is the orches­tra leader con­duct­ing, when we’ve already clearly seen they’re danc­ing to a record? And when the old peo­ple join in I have to pull the cov­ers over my head and die a lit­tle bit.

(You know a movie I’d pay to see? One about Jen­nifer Grey’s nose job. I know it’s been dis­cussed on TV, but a smart movie that drills down into plas­tic surgery and all its impli­ca­tions, using Baby’s rhino­plasty as a through line? That would be worth doing.)

Oh, and my all-time fave Excru­ci­at­ing NPR Pop-Cult Moment is when Noah Adams tried to lead a seg­ment expli­cat­ing the career of the late Big Pun, the rap­per. Yeah, that guy. Yeah, Noah Adams. It’s still one of the fun­ni­est things I ever heard.

Friends, it appears that cast­ing a cou­ple worms in the job pool this morn­ing has eaten up my blog­ging time. What are we think­ing of “Mad Men” so far this sea­son? I’m think­ing it’s simul­ta­ne­ously won­der­ful and awful, which is, I has­ten to add, a very good thing for me. I love enter­tain­ments where every­one involved points at the high­est rows in the house and says, “That’s what we’re aim­ing for” and then maybe falls short, but dies try­ing. The mood so far this sea­son seems to be “the thing that’s com­ing? It’s get­ting very close…” It’s not quite there yet, so we’re see­ing a lot of Peggy slowly get­ting the mes­sage about what women are worth, really, and Betty ditto, and we really need more Joan, but so far it’s hard to see how it’s all com­ing together. The last scene this week was won­der­ful, all of Betty’s hopes desert­ing her at the time hope likes to do so — in the mid­dle of the night — while the pri­mor­dial ball-and-chain of all wom­ankind wails from its crib. (Yes, it’s a joy, too. It’s both. That’s the point.) She’s going to have the worst post-partum depres­sion ever.

I’m get­ting a lit­tle tired of the hol­laback lines and scenes we’re all sup­posed to tit­ter over. From the un-seat-belted chil­dren play­ing with dry cleaner bags in the first sea­son, we’re now expected to gasp over the OB nurse telling Betty to get ready for her shave and enema. stan­dard for child­birth back in the day. This feels forced.

What say you? I’m off to the gym to think about it.

Today I plan to spend most of the day at the Volk­swa­gen dealer’s, get­ting the car ser­viced. I assume the inter­net ser­vice is still a sin­gle crappy, for-your-convenience 90’s-era PC with track ball mouse — yes, way — so I’m tak­ing a bunch of work that will ben­e­fit from no inter­net distractions.

That includes you guys.

If I’d had time, I’d have writ­ten some­thing yes­ter­day for today, but yes­ter­day was like today, only sun­nier and warmer. I did get a chance to see “Hung” on demand, the lat­est set-in-Detroit series to take advan­tage of those fat tax incen­tives. I believe most of it is shot else­where, but the credit sequence and the pilot had some seri­ous D-town loca­tions, the most amus­ing being the final scene, in which the main char­ac­ter finds his son wait­ing in an all-night line to buy con­cert tick­ets. The line is at Harpo’s, and both Alan and I guf­fawed at the idea of a nice sub­ur­ban mom allow­ing her teenage son to spend the night out­doors at the cor­ner of Chalmers and Harper Avenue in Detroit; he’d be safer in South Waziris­tan. I seem to recall the for­mer Mrs. Eminem used to buy her drugs in that neighborhood.

Oth­er­wise, I liked the pilot. The rest? We’ll see. Any­thing with Jane Adams can never be a waste of time.

No blog­gage, but why I love the New York Times: Their reporters can use “Sty­gian” in a lead.

Back later, I hope.

I started this sea­son of “Big Love” the way I do most HBO series runs in the post-“Wire,” post-“Sopranos” age — hope­ful but pre­pared to be dis­ap­pointed. And, to be sure, this chron­i­cle of polygamy-on-the-DL-in-the-suburbs hasn’t been all that. The ratio of soap opera-like plot devel­op­ments to the less flashy, more inter­est­ing glimpses of the human heart has been a bit lop­sided, but OK, it’s tele­vi­sion. And there’s a rea­son soap operas run for years and years — it’s always fun to check in on oth­ers’ action-packed lives.

But beyond the soapy stuff (writ­ers, I saw Sarah’s mis­car­riage com­ing like a brass band), the show is still find­ing the sorts of sto­ries that make HBO’s native series so much bet­ter than Showtime’s. Things are build­ing to a cli­max in the world of Bill Hen­rick­son and his extended fam­ily, and it’s fun to watch.

At this point I should prob­a­bly note some spoil­ers are com­ing. You’ve been warned.

One theme, this sea­son, has been how Bill’s choice to take addi­tional wives has affected and com­pro­mised those women, as well as oth­ers who come in con­tact with them. His life is a wreck. All three of his wives are mis­er­able and cop­ing in their own ways. A fourth entered and left the fam­ily in a mat­ter of hours. His busi­ness part­ner, also mul­ti­ply wed, saw two of his brides run off together, a pay­off we’ve been wait­ing for since sea­son one, when a sin­gle shot of them play­ing foot­sie under a card table sug­gested they had their own spe­cial bond. And the poi­son is seep­ing into his chil­dren — a preg­nant teenage daugh­ter, a son in love with wife No. 3, a tween girl up to var­i­ous nefar­i­ous activ­i­ties. The more recent chil­dren, those of wives two and three, are too young to raise much hell, but their day is surely coming.

The early sea­son ques­tions were mainly about how the sex stuff works. This sea­son, Bill lost a whole bot­tle of Via­gra down the bath­room sink drain, which left him sug­gest­ing an evening of cud­dling to wife No. 2, but she’s already got his num­ber — what really makes Bill’s dick hard are his var­i­ous busi­ness inter­ests, all of which seem to involve high-wire nego­ti­a­tions, slam­ming doors and blood oaths.

But this week was an emo­tional pay­off of sorts. Bill, who has been grop­ing toward an under­stand­ing that polygamy has a truly evil side (don’t expect him to grasp that he’s part of the prob­lem, not for a few more sea­sons, any­way), will have to con­front it directly, now that his sister-in-law-to-be has had her neck bro­ken, flee­ing a forced mar­riage to a truly insane FLDS “prophet” and his trans­gen­dered first wife, and…

I told you it got a lit­tle soapy from time to time.

Any­way, this episode was the best of the sea­son, as each wife digs into her per­sonal hell and shores up the bunker walls. First wife Barb is even more the bul­ly­ing boss lady. Sec­ond wife Nikki finds, for the first time in her life, a man she actu­ally wants to have sex with. Third wife Mar­gene, the cur­rent baby fac­tory, is over­whelmed by the cacoph­ony of children’s voices she endures all day and dreams of trips to the gro­cery store. Mean­while, back at the Juniper Creek com­pound, Hol­lis Green stirs his creepy stew, and caught in the mid­dle is poor FLDS pawn Kathy, the bride-to-be, with her sig­na­ture braid deliv­er­ing the death blow after a brief flight to free­dom. Will it dawn on Bill, the part he plays in all this female mis­ery? Of course not. But that’s why it’s fun to watch.

Dis­cuss, if you like.

Or, we can con­tinue to talk about Rush Lim­baugh. I won­der how much those Domini­can pros­ti­tutes charged him. I fig­ure he had to hide C-notes in his flab rolls and let them go explor­ing. Some things just can­not be expected at mar­ket prices.

I leave you with a joke I heard the other day: One of these things is not like the oth­ers: Her­pes, AIDS, gon­or­rhea, a house in Detroit. Can you tell which one? The answer is: Gon­or­rhea, because you can get rid of that.

It’s impor­tant to keep a sense of humor in dark times. Remem­ber that.

Well, this has cer­tainly been an …inter­est­ing cam­paign sea­son, hasn’t it? Two weeks ago, I thought there was a good chance Obama was fin­ished. Last night, it’s look­ing as though McCain is toast. All of it — “sus­pend­ing the cam­paign,” Palin’s foreign-affairs cram course (which, unfor­tu­nately, brought the “Cari­bou Bar­bie” image home — world lead­ers and col­or­ful native cos­tumes sold sep­a­rately!), the Let­ter­man thing — makes him look des­per­ate and weak, and that’s a very bad thing to be when you’re run­ning for pres­i­dent at a time like this.

(“The Let­ter­man thing,” I real­ize, makes me sound like one of those “low-information vot­ers” who votes based on who did bet­ter with Ellen and Tyra, but the truth is, no one has aged into his Jack Paar elder sta­tus quite as grace­fully as Dave. Doing the late-night chat shows is as impor­tant as doing “Meet the Press,” and McCain should have known that.)

Today, though I know the chat about this will be lively, let’s try to give one another a break. One rea­son I’ve come to hate the four-year elec­tion cycle is how eas­ily I allow my but­tons to be pushed, how cul­ture war pushes every­thing else to the side. Deb spoke yes­ter­day of yelling like a crazy lady when she sees a McCain yard sign, and I know exactly what she’s talk­ing about. I’m grate­ful there are so few signs of any sort on my block, because I really don’t want to start doing the same thing. For a while when the war was going very badly, one of the houses in the next block had a sign in the yard that was phrased as a com­mand: SUPPORT PRESIDENT BUSH AND OUR TROOPS. I had to avert my eyes. I didn’t want to put a human face to the house. I wanted the social lubri­cant of neigh­bor­li­ness to remain intact as long as possible.

I bring this up because we’ve already had a player car­ried off the field here, our old pal Jeff the Mild-Mannered, who wrote me last night:

I seem to be pro­vok­ing more unpleas­ant­ness than is my pref­er­ence, and it isn’t a posi­tion i’m used to occu­py­ing; that, and at 47 i’m already on lisino­pril, and don’t need to up my dosage, so i’m just going to grace­fully bow out through the elec­tion week. When i’m tempted to be extremely un-mild man­nered in response to oth­ers, it’s a sign i need to pause and reflect and (for­give me) pray.

Oth­ers have writ­ten sim­i­lar thoughts, and have taken shorter time-outs, and surely oth­ers have sim­ply stopped com­ment­ing and read­ing with­out announc­ing it. One of my conun­drums as a blog­ger has always been how I might “mon­e­tize” this site, and it reminds me of how I was always told to mon­e­tize my career when I was a colum­nist. Peo­ple would say, “You need a niche, a cause, some­thing peo­ple will asso­ciate with you,” but I could never do it. If I made this site all about pol­i­tics I would doubt­less pick up more out­side link­age, and traf­fic, and maybe 35 more cents in my Google Ads account at the end of the month, but I’d hate doing it. I’d rather keep this blog about a lot of dif­fer­ent things than one big thing, and attract­ing peo­ple who are inter­ested in a lot of dif­fer­ent things and like to com­ment on them.

One thing I like about Jeff is his will­ing­ness to take unpop­u­lar posi­tions here, and I’ll miss him. Even though he’ll be back in six weeks or so.

Let’s keep talk­ing about the events of the day. Let’s just try to remem­ber that the other guy is not nec­es­sar­ily the enemy.

If you need to, when feel­ing over­heated, you can play this video, and repeat as needed:

Pup­pies! All bet­ter now.

A lit­tle bloggage:

“Mad Men” fans, take note. Emma turned me on to this Flickr set of an artists’ images inspired by the show, but did you know this same artist has a shop at Zaz­zle? I’m get­ting the Betty-smashes-a-chair T-shirt as soon as I hang up with you.

Amy Wel­born, Catholic blog­ger, left Fort Wayne ear­lier this year and has writ­ten about her impres­sions of her time there. You Fort peo­ple might like it. Or might not.

Gym-bound. Back later.

I keep mean­ing to call up my old screen­writ­ing prof and ask what he thinks of “Mad Men.” Watch­ing Joan sadly rub the bra strap mark on her shoul­der this week was a rev­e­la­tion of great writ­ing — exactly the sort of detail that reveals every­thing about a char­ac­ter with­out a word being spo­ken, with the added bonus of being some­thing I’ve never seen before. God, I love this show. I hope you do, too.

It’s hard to do even one good sea­son of tele­vi­sion like this, but the mark of great­ness is how it flow­ers in its sec­ond, and I haven’t seen a sec­ond sea­son like this since “The Wire,” and before that, “The Sopra­nos,” so take that how­ever you will. The gor­geous thing about this show, set in the world of Madi­son Avenue ad firms in the early ‘60s, is how we know what the char­ac­ters don’t — that their world is about to be upended by the cul­tural storm of the ‘60s. It’s like a dis­as­ter movie, when we can see the killer sneak­ing up behind the clue­less sap about to be hit with an ax, only in slow motion and with all the car­nage emo­tional. But the early breezes of the com­ing storm are already start­ing to blow. This sea­son is focus­ing on the women, who have a mighty load of resent­ment to tote around from week to week. This week, a mar­riage shat­tered and a woman who’s been suc­cess­ful in the one fem­i­nine strat­egy that tran­scends eras — know­ing how to work a boda­cious bod — finally real­ized the lim­its of her power, and both of these events were con­veyed the way they are in real life, with strained con­ver­sa­tions, a flicker of expres­sion across the eyes, a change in a tone of voice.

I once read some advice on play­wright­ing: No char­ac­ter needs to walk onstage and say, “I’m tired.” All he needs to say is, “Has any­one seen my mag­a­zine?” In “Mad Men,” char­ac­ters love and com­pete, sup­port and betray, some­times at the same time. A few weeks ago, a woman named Peggy seemed to be hav­ing a flir­ta­tion with a young priest. He pushed her away with a ges­ture and com­ment aimed directly at the most vul­ner­a­ble spot in her psy­che. This week he was back, try­ing to coax her into con­fes­sion, and his plea was 50 per­cent whee­dle and 50 per­cent gen­uine con­cern. Nei­ther acknowl­edged the ele­phant in the room, a very early-‘60s thing to do. The final scene showed sev­eral char­ac­ters at the end of the day — Peggy in the bath­tub, Joan the bomb­shell rub­bing her strap mark, and the priest strip­ping off his col­lar and pick­ing up his gui­tar. He strums a cou­ple of tight chords, then belts out “Early in the Morn­ing,” which you might not know was Side 1, Track 1 of Peter, Paul & Mary’s very first album.

The song takes the form of a prayer, and the prayer says what most prayers say: Help me find the way. It’s the per­fect prayer for that char­ac­ter at that moment in time, and it serves as dis­tant thun­der for the com­ing storm and — as this show is justly famed for its mani­a­cal atten­tion to per­fect detail — the album it’s on was released in 1962, and guess what year it is in “Mad Men” this season?

You just can’t watch this show and fail to be impressed. Not if you’re pay­ing attention.

Blog­gage later. I have a busy morn­ing tomor­row and I think I won’t be back until after­noon. Talk amongst yourselves.

Because the New Yorker was made for ink-on-paper read­ing and it arrives days and days late here, I didn’t get to the George Packer essay every­one was talk­ing about until Sat­ur­day. I read it pool­side, pre­sum­ably in the pres­ence of actual con­ser­v­a­tives, based on recent elec­tion results.

“The Fall of Con­ser­vatism” lays out, per­haps too opti­misti­cally for my money, how the polit­i­cal move­ment that defined my adult­hood lost its way and now teeters like a shack on the beach await­ing November’s hur­ri­cane. My ini­tial reac­tion: Well, we’ll see. Pat Buchanan gets the money-shot quote, para­phras­ing Eric Hof­fer: “Every great cause begins as a move­ment, becomes a busi­ness, and even­tu­ally degen­er­ates into a racket.” I’ve seen the rack­e­teers for some time now; it seems like a hun­dred years ago that I started telling peo­ple the suc­cess of buf­foons like Ann Coul­ter and Rush Lim­baugh indi­cated the right had run out of steak and was sell­ing noth­ing but siz­zle, but obvi­ously I was wrong about that one. Packer men­tions in pass­ing the two great rocky shoals con­ser­vatism wrecked itself on — Iraq and Kat­rina, but these were only rocks that showed above the water­line. It’s one thing to argue that gov­ern­ment is always incom­pe­tent; it’s quite another to staff gov­ern­ment agen­cies with incom­pe­tents and then, when they’re revealed as such, yell, “See!? See!?”

I might add that it’s one thing to praise busi­ness and unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism like some sort of god, and quite another to look the other way when cor­rupt finan­cial mar­kets can drain bil­lions from Amer­i­can pock­ets and reward the per­pe­tra­tors, but that’s another discussion.

Here’s what struck and sad­dened me: The way the GOP gained power through what Kevin Phillips called “pos­i­tive polar­iza­tion.” Divide and con­quer, basi­cally, but not only divide — demo­nize. Peo­ple who dis­agreed with you weren’t just wrong, they were evil. In the midst of it, a woman called my news­pa­per and informed my edi­tor she would be can­cel­ing her sub­scrip­tion because a cer­tain female colum­nist had described her­self as a fem­i­nist, and this was sim­ply too much to be endured. Packer thinks it’s on its way out. I can only hope so:

Yet the polar­iza­tion of Amer­ica, which we now call the “cul­ture wars,” has been dis­si­pat­ing for a long time. Because we can’t antic­i­pate what ideas and lan­guage will dom­i­nate the next cycle of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, the pre­vi­ous era’s key words — “élite,” “main­stream,” “real,” “val­ues,” “patri­otic,” “snob,” “liberal” — seem as potent as ever. Indeed, they have shown up in the cur­rent cam­paign: North Car­olina and Mis­sis­sippi Repub­li­cans have pro­duced ads link­ing local Democ­rats to Jere­miah Wright, Barack Obama’s con­tro­ver­sial for­mer pas­tor. The right-wing group Cit­i­zens United has said that it will run ads por­tray­ing Obama as yet another “lim­ou­sine lib­eral.” But these are the spasms of nerve end­ings in an organ­ism that’s brain-dead.

We’ll see. I lived in deep-red coun­try for 20 years and learned to get along with peo­ple who con­sid­ered a self-described fem­i­nist to be a she-devil. Part of my bel­liger­ent atti­tude of late has to do with leav­ing that place for a more purple-hued envi­ron­ment, but I worry that pos­i­tive polar­iza­tion has caught me, too. I cer­tainly wouldn’t pay for a news­pa­per that car­ried Ann Coulter’s col­umn. Maybe that’s the real legacy of the last 40 years: We dis­agree, there­fore, you suck.

Any­way, I think Roy gets it right: Do not count out this move­ment, even with half its teeth miss­ing, syphilis over­tak­ing its blood­stream and the odor of the grave ema­nat­ing with every howl:

The con­ser­v­a­tive heavy thinkers to whom Packer gives much cre­dence may feel as if the world has passed them by, but the rack­e­teers really run the show. As for­merly grum­bling con­ser­v­a­tive oper­a­tives learn to love McCain and go all-in for the big win, phi­los­o­phy is the least of their con­cerns, and their whither-conservatism thumb-suckers become mere padding for pages filled with sto­ries about Obama’s Mus­lim past, inabil­ity to bowl, and other such boob-bait. If you think they can’t pull it off because their approach lacks intel­lec­tual vital­ity, you may be over­think­ing the whole thing.

Josh Mar­shall makes some good points, too.

That’s what I did on Sat­ur­day, when I had to read­just my pool chair six times to find the right bal­ance between out-in-the-sun (too bright to read) and under-the-umbrella (too cold to con­cen­trate). It didn’t even touch 70, but the pool was open (and heated) and by god, we were going. The life­guards sat around glumly in sweats, hop­ing no one needed sav­ing. Sun­day was warmer and Mon­day was down­right hot — upper 80s. I went to sleep last night with all the win­dows open and the ceil­ing fans on, and woke up 90 min­utes later with the blinds bang­ing and cold air rush­ing in to reclaim us. Again. Cur­rent tem­per­a­ture: 48, and fuck you very much, Cana­dian air mass. Frost warn­ing (!!!!!!!) tonight.

As the pre­vi­ous post demon­strates, I finally took up Alan’s fancy shot­gun and took my chances on the skeet range. The dou­ble I got on that sta­tion wasn’t typ­i­cal, but I did pretty well — hit maybe 30 per­cent of the faces of my ene­mies ren­dered in brit­tle ceramic clay pigeons, some fairly tough. I didn’t get any of the “rabbits” — targets launched to roll along the ground — but I came close, and I nailed a few in the incred­i­bly sat­is­fy­ing ways they blow apart. I thought “vapor­iz­ing in midair” was my favorite, but then I expe­ri­enced “break­ing into three pieces, each spin­ning off on its own sym­met­ri­cal tra­jec­tory,” and that was the new stan­dard of excellence.

For what its worth, none of the tar­gets car­ried the face of the pres­i­dent. Hey, I’m evolving!

So, blog­gage of a related note: Any­one see “Recount”? What did we think? I found it sur­pris­ingly engag­ing for being unafraid to take on fairly com­pli­cated legal con­cepts, but nearly unwatch­able just the same, if only for its arousal of the old we disagree/you suck anger. I came away hop­ing some­one learned a les­son or two in that mess, and maybe, by 2006, we did — the cor­rupt GOP estab­lish­ment that nearly turned Ohio 2004 into a rerun of Florida 2000 was ejected on its ear. But the ele­ments that let the fiasco hap­pen are, most likely, still in place some­where. I thought Gore did the right thing at the time, but when I see what actu­ally hap­pened as a result of that elec­tion, maybe not so much.

Skipped Rob’s tor­ture ses­sion this morn­ing, so I’m off to ride my bike until my legs fall off. Make merry in the first day of quasi-summer, when the fur­nace will likely come on.