Mad Men

I've been catching up with the television series Mad Men.

Regular readers of this blog are of course aware that I’m a fan. Not-so-regular readers can become aware in detail easily enough:  here.

The first episode of the new series (formally known as episodes 1 + 2, I gather, though it was seamless dramatically) drew a lot of attention for Megan Draper’s (actress Jessica Paré’s) rendition of Zou Bisou Bisou (“shoo kiss kiss” according to a quick cheap net translation).  Here’s a link courtesy of YouTube.  And certainly that’s attention getting.

But an equally fascinating subplot involved the fantasy life of Lane Pryce. To review: Lane Pryce is the fellow sent to America by the Brits, Puttnam Powell and Lowe, when PP&L briefly owned the ‘old’ Sterling Cooper, to ride herd over these unreliable Americans. He took part in the shenanigans that helped create a newly independent ad agency, and for his help became a partner in what has since been Sterling Cooper Draper and Pryce.

We’ve known, or at least been given opportunity to sense, for some time already that Pryce has an inhibited and potentially troublesome sexuality. This episode seemed to bring that to a new level.

Pryce finds an abandoned wallet in a taxicab, and becomes infatuated with a woman in a photograph there. There’s also a lot of money in the wallet – Lane, a man of honor in all matters financial, returns the wallet with all the cash intact to its proper owner: a Mr. Polito. It’s a lot of cash, and Polito may be some sort of mobbed-up big shot.  Pryce has, though, pocketed the photo of the gal that both he and Polito now in a manner share: Delores.
In a brief telephone conversation, Dolores seems open at least to some flirtation with Pryce.
I’m not really taking any huge leap here when I say I smell trouble.  

Episode 3 is Betty-centric, and gives us a chance to catch up with Betty and her new husband, Henry Francis. Betty is wonderfully portrayed by January Jones, as a woman facing weight gain and, as the show develops, fears that something much worse is behind it.

The writers use Henry Francis to comment on contemporary (2012) politics.  After all, it is now certain (as certain as such things can be) that the Republicans will this summer nominate Mitt Romney for the office of President of the United States. Mitt is the son of George Romney, who was a rather big wheel in the Mad Men era.

In the summer of 1966, when George Romney was Governor of Michigan, and the former CEO of American Motors. He was widely considered serious presidential timber (a status he would eventually – in 1967 -- forfeit with an ill considered remark about how he had been “brainwashed.”) Romney was also seen as the heir to Nelson Rockefeller as the moderate/liberal Republican most prominent in the presidential sweepstakes. After a loss to Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Republican convention, Rocky seems to have lost interest in presidential contention and in effect he was thereafter a supporter of Romney’s own jockeying in 1966.

So much for reality: what about the fictive world? Henry Francis was an aide to Nelson Rockefeller when his relationship with Betty Draper began. He has left Rocky’s employ, and is now working for the Mayor of New York City, John Lindsay. So Francis is making a career for himself on the leftward end of the viable intra-party spectrum within the GOP. Francis is exactly the sort of person most likely to have been an enthusiast of George Romney at this time.

It is startling, then, to see Francis briefly on the phone, apparently with somebody who works for Gov. Romney. Francis is refusing an offer of a joint Lindsay/Romney photo op because, he says, “Romney is a clown.”

You can see a clip here.

I have no reason to argue with the opinion that Mitt Romney is a clown. But George Romney was not especially clownish, certainly not from the perspective of a Henry Francis. Nor was he clownish from the perspective of electoral success – that November he would win re-election by an impressive margin. I think it odd and unfortunate that the writers of Mad Men would let 2012 exert a sort of backward causation into their plot in this way.

Still … the show makes us think. And I enjoyed both (all three!) of these episodes.

Game Change

I read the book Game Change, by John Hellemann and Mark Halperin a year ago, long before it became a TV movie.

In fact, I wrote about it in this blog:

Click.

I was a little bit surprised by the direction the TV movie took. The book looks at several "game changing" moments, and the title seems to refer to them all generically.  On the Democratic side there was the libidinous self-destruction of the once-formidable populist candidate John Edwards, for example (hasn't anyone made a TV movie out of that yet?). There was a debate in Philadelphia in October 2007 when Hillary stumbled badly in her handling of an immigration-related question. Hellemann and Halperin make the case that this undermined her status as the front-runner.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, one of the game changers was the indictment of Bernard Kerik, a Giuliani protege, which they see as devastating to Giuliani's nomination campaign.

After the two nomination fights were setled, there are two further game changers of note.  One was the selection of Sarah Palin. The other -- the final deciding change -- was the Lehman bankruptcy and resulting stock market crash.

Their book takes in all of this.  And a good deal more (as you can gather if you follow the above link to my earlier discussion).

For the movie, most of it has dropped away, and the screenwriters seem to have focused exclusively on the McCain-Palin dynamic.

That is the nature of Hollywood. Screenwriters simply, intensify the focus, limit the expostion, etc.  There is no reason to complain about it, but perhaps a mini-series might have delved into the whole of the 'game' and its many changes.

In 2008 the incumbent could not run again, so the winter/spring campaign was double barrelled. This year of course that is not the case, the obvious winter/spring dramatics are so far all on the Republican side.

About this week's round of voting, where Santorum won the two critical states (Alabama and Mississippi) I have a couple of thoughts. First, the "cheesy grits" thing surely hurt Romney. I gather that real grits-eaters would have said "cheese grits." Also, real grits-eaters would have respected a non-grits eater who didn't pretend to be a grits eater. But Romney fell into neither of those two respectable categories.

Second, these results finally mean that Gingrich is an irrelevance, whether he chooses to get out now or nort. Santorum is the anti-Romney hereafter.  Not Gingrich and not Paul. One can hope that Santorum, as such, will now develop enough strength to force a deadlock at the convention, in which case something interesting may happen there!

P.S. STILL NO DAMNED SOUND CARD!!!!!  What is up with that?

NOON UPDATE:  I now have a sound card, and sound.  Working will no longer feel like burying myself in the cone of silence.  Yeah!

Pressure on Newt?

Memo to Newt Gingrich:

If you don't feel a lot of pressure to drop out right now, you should.

Mitt Romney won handily in Arizona, and beat off a significant challenge in Michigan, largely because you stay in and you take some of the anybody-but-Mitt vote away from Santorum.

Personally, I have no sympathy for Santorum. None. The only more-or-less mainstream candidate who makes sense to me at all is Ron Paul, for the pragmatic reasons I believe I've discussed here before.

But Paul is almost certainly an irrelevance now. If you disappear, most of your votes naturally go to Santorum, and there is some chance of heading off Mitt. If you want that ... act. Furthermore, people might well be excused for thinking that you do want that. When it seemed (briefly) that you were the leading non-Mitt candidate, you made exactly that appeal, hoping that Santorum would drop out and leave clear the field for you to stop the steamroller.

So, if your desires are larger than ego gratification -- act similarly now.

Even if your desires go no further than ego gratification, getting out would seem to be the best move now.  For then the remaining candidates will have to come to you looking for an endorsement. And you'll provide it in your own sweet time, possibly at your own price.

If, on the other hand, you actually want Romney to get the nomination ... I may have misjudged you.  Because if (but only if) that is your goal, your present behavior as a spoiler is tactically brilliant.

Steamroller Repair

Mitt Romney proved this week that he has repaired his steamroller, the one that suffered a minor break-down in South Carolina.

I now see no likelihood of anyone other than Romney getting the Republican nomination, though Newt can keep it entertaining in the meantime.

That still doesn't tell us how the end of this political year is going to go.

On another, but not an unrelated point, I was talking recently with bright finance-industry people in east Asia. They said two things.  First (my paraphrase), some of them say: buy Samsung. The year 2012 is shaping up as a good one for Korean industry in general and for that company in particular. (By the way, if you actually are stupid enough to buy Samsung based on hearsay in this or any a blog ... just please don't. Stick with broad-based indexes, some of which can get you exposure to east Asia in general.)

The second thing I've taken away from these recent conversations is more intriguing, and more worth passing on to you, dear reader. Some of them believe that there has been too much emphasis on the part of certain analysts, in London and New York, about how China is going down for a "hard landing." My sources believe there will be some contraction in the PRC, but it will be rather soft, as landings go.

I don't know whether that's true. Surely the PRC seems to be due for some sort of landing, and indeed a contraction is underway.  If my friends were kidding themselves, wacky optimists as they may be, and it really is a hard landing, a bursting of a Sino-bubble on the way, then this could have macro global implications.

Which brings us back to the politics of this campaign.  We could be hearing an awful lot about China before November.

Mike Huckabee again

I think, frankly, that it's refreshing to find a conservative Republican who can talk like this:

"You know, I've never hated the Clintons. I still don't, I have great respect for them. He made a lot of mistakes — a lot of personal ones — but you know something that I think should not be forgotten. There's two things about Bill Clinton I tell Republicans, it drives them nuts, but here it is.

"Number one, don't get it lost on you that a kid out of a very small, Southern rural state aspired to be President of the United States. This kid came from a dysfunctional family — alcoholic abusive father. And yet he didn't just aspire, he was elected president of the United States not once, but twice. That is an affirmation of the system. And it's a wonderful testament to give to every kid in America that no matter where you've come from, you've got an opportunity to do something extraordinary.

"The second thing, and this'll really wrangle, again, some of my Republican colleagues. Bill Clinton and Hillary went through some horrible experiences in their marriage, because of some of the reckless behavior that he has admitted he had. I'm not defending him on that — it's indefensible. But they kept their marriage together. And a lot of the Republicans who have condemned them, and who talk about their platform of family values, interestingly didn't keep their own families together."