Matt, I can assure you, David Plotz is no Roger Sterling. He cooks, he changes diapers, and he’s still married to his first wife. That said, he feels the same way you do. Every time we sit down to watch he yells, “Bring back Roger!” I was thinking of having bumper stickers printed to that effect. (If I do, I’ll send you one.) He’s never articulated why he misses Roger, but I think you put your finger on it: Mad Men is getting too preachy, and Roger is the answer.

I, too, was wary about the drift into the mid-'60s. The whole beauty of Mad Men is that it’s suspended in that moment before the dam breaks. Then the question becomes, can they hold that pose in perpetuity, or for at least five seasons? I think not, because then the show is entirely about style and periodicity and Weiner’s anal accuracy about types of liquor and train schedules, and that’s not ultimately all that interesting.

The new, groovy Mad Men is growing on me. I am curious to see who can make the transition into the new age and who can’t. Don Draper has gone mute and backwards-looking. Betty Draper is clearly frozen in time. The boys in the office—a question mark. Unclear if they will adapt or not. Ditto for Peggy. Roger, God bless him, is definitely moving into the new age of self-fulfillment and free love. As is Sally, who is well on her way to becoming a Goth cutter.

Tags: mad men, TV

Hanna, I actually think the “Who’s the nut bag?” ad is a very effective deployment of a chagrined spouse, even better than Hillary’s long-ago, “I’m not some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” defense of Bill. Roxanne Wilson strikes an authentic note of being appalled by his remark and grateful that the president accepted her husband’s apology. It allows the viewer to agree his behavior was unacceptable (while reminding voters his violation was not so bad as some other South Carolina politicians), then Roxanne gets to remind people he sometimes gets carried away because he cares so much. Unlike so many stiff and phony politicians, she’s a natural in front of the camera. Maybe Mark Sanford, et al. should hire Roxanne to defend them!

Tags: joe wilson, Roxanne Wilson, stupid politicians

Fascinating new research from Stanford and the University of Chicago demonstrates that female legislators are more effective on average than male ones. They bring more money to their districts, introduce more legislation, get more co-sponsors for their bills, and require a shorter period of time to warm up to the job and start getting work done. According to Politico, the researchers suggest that since women have to overcome more obstacles than men in order to obtain their spots, that might work as a filter that only allows the best to emerge.

And once you look at some of the male Congress critters—newly famous Joe Wilson comes to mind—it's hard not to agree with this assessment. Or take our recent nightmare President Bush into consideration, and you really start to see how having white male privilege often means that you can get pretty far in this world while epitomizing mediocrity. Or really, just take the fact that so many men drift through life incorrectly thinking their jokes are funny, because they're so used to indulgent laughter, and you really begin to see how a lot of men don't have to be as good to get the same rewards.

It's also likely that women are just conditioned to take on more work. Many women I've known have gone through the experience of proving your competence in a workplace and then slowly being burdened with ever more responsibilities, because the powers-that-be know that your conditioning (and fears of being judged harshly) make it harder for you to say no. That's why Peggy Olson is such a popular character on Mad Men. How many of us recognize ourselves in her, with her willingness to show up early, stay late, and always do twice as much for half the recognition?

All that said, sadly, there really aren't enough female politicians out there to make a fair comparison. Maybe when women make up 1/3 or even 1/2 of Congress, the sample size will be large enough to make legitimate judgments.

Photograph by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.

Tags: female politicians, politics, sexism

Social networking sites have always been a little bit about voyeurism, maybe more so than about networking. I joined Facebook in its earliest days, in the spring of 2004, as a freshman in college. No one using it then realized that it was going to be a Silicon Valley juggernaut; we were delighted for an easy way to find out more about that dreamy upperclassman on the crew team who, sigh, also listed existentialism as an interest.

A term quickly evolved for these embarassing bouts of recon work on a love interest or even just someone who'd idly grabbed our attention: "Facebook-stalking," a process that got much more fruitful once pictures were added. "Stalk" was definitely ironic (unlike, sadly, that Sartre-loving rower), not a legal term. Unlike real stalking, the Facebook variety was all as harmless as it was silly. Yes, there have been plenty of warnings about privacy and social networking, and yes, even legal action and frightening incidents. But it took a recent Harvard Business School Study on who looks at what on Facebook to finally unsettle me. The findings of show a monumental gender imbalance that casts a creepy shadow over the widespread, jokey use of Facebook-stalking:

The biggest usage categories are men looking at women they don't know, followed by men looking at women they do know. Women look at other women they know. Overall, women receive two-thirds of all page views.

And 70 percent of all actions on Facebook come from people looking either at posted pictures or individuals' profiles.

This is in contrast to Twitter, where men's tweets receive more page views. One theory as to why? Twitter revolves around words, not pictures.

Tags: Facebook, stalking, voyeurism

This is the oddest defense by a wife I've ever seen. Roxanne Wilson, wife Joe Wilson, the South Carolina congressman of "You Lie" fame, makes a video defending her husband after his outburst. After the speech he called her, she says, and she asked him:

Joe, who was that nut bag that hollered "You Lie," or "You Liar?" He goes, "That was me." I said, "No, really, who did it?" I couldn't believe Joe would say something like that.

The rest of her monologue includes gauzy testimonies about how he's a "wonderful father" and has an "incredible work ethic." Which is nice and all, but not really apt. Also the "nutbag" bit is the only part that seems genuine and unscripted. Go figure.

Another round from Matt Labash on Mad Men, Peggy, and lip-plated cannibals. Is he right about why we watch?

Sure, I’d go for that plot twist. But at the risk of offending my DoubleX sisters, I’d actually like to see much less of Peggy until she can figure out what to do with her bangs. They’re distracting. You’re right on all the merits, of course. Never would I suggest for a moment—especially not to you, Emily, who I have struggled and marched with—that women shouldn’t receive equal pay for equal work. Of course they should. But we’re not talking about gender equity in employment law. We’re talking about a fictional subculture on a television show. I’d put Peggy’s subplot in another category from what I was complaining about yesterday (ham-fisted topicality), since her tensions are intrinsic to the goings-on at Sterling Cooper.

But to put you and many of the show’s viewers on the couch for a second, I’d submit to you that the reason you watch Mad Men isn’t to see Peggy collect shards of glass ceiling in her lint-roller bangs. You watch with intense interest precisely because she is oppressed. The clubby frat-boy barbarism that you would never tolerate in real life is actually what fascinates you on some visceral level. If David Plotz, say, acted similarly on the Slate Political Gabfest (knowing Plotz, I can’t swear that he wouldn’t), he’d be frog-marched out by an HR rep in about a half a second and put in a stockade, where the women of Slate would jeer him and poke him with sticks. Which would make a swell podcast on Slate V, come to think of it. In other words, it’s behavior that’s become completely foreign to you, because the men in your life presumably don’t behave that way, and therefore, it’s more interesting to watch. The same as if you’d watch a documentary on some exotic, lip-plated tribe of cannibals. The anachronistic and unfamiliar holds interest because their ways are not yours. Hell, Mad Men’s ways are not my ways—except for the daytime drinking, which I’ve always held is a pretty useful model for living. (Note from Emily: More from us on DoubleX about drinking like Mad Men, soon.)

The genius of Mad Men, particularly Season One, is that it was as proud and unapologetic a period piece as I’ve ever seen, in that it did not condescend to its unenlightened characters. They merely were what they were. They behaved as they behaved—as they would’ve behaved at the time. If you wanted to pass judgment, that was your business. But the writers felt no need to club us over the head with what the sit-commers call the M.O.S.—the nice, tidy moment-of-shit ending. And so you quietly enjoyed the frisson provided by Draper’s caddishneess or Roger’s piggishness—as much as you enjoy Peggy’s steady build-up to the inevitable bra-burning that I suspect will happen mid-Season Four, shortly before the Woodstock episode, which I’m not looking forward to. Why? Not because I don’t love braless women and Jimi Hendrix. I do. I understand the outside forces the writers are bringing to bear, and can’t fault them for it. But the story they’re heading for has been written a million times in a million different ways. The story they’re telling hasn’t.

I don’t understand why it’s considered impossible to freeze fictional time and milk it until it moos. It’s totally possible. Otherwise, Brenda and Brandon couldn’t have stayed high school students on Beverly Hills 90210 for the better part of 10 years, and MASH couldn’t have lasted four times longer than the Korean War. By taking the leap ahead into the ’60s, the show will become something else. If you’re watching the documentary on lip-plated cannibals, do you really want to see them rescued by missionaries, brought to Passaic, N.J., and enrolled in classes down at the community college? No. You want to see them eat people. It’s what they do. And there’s something dramatically satisfying about watching people fulfill their nature, even if its base and cuts against the accepted norms of today.

Or maybe my doomsday predictions won’t happen. Hell, it’s early. And though I don’t think the show is up to Season One standards (I didn’t think Season Two was up to Season One standards, either—it was a ridiculously high standard), it’s still one of the best two or three shows on television, so its makers should be forgiven much. Weiner and co. have given a gift. I just want to make sure it keeps on giving.

Tags: beverly hills 90210, David Plotz, daytime drinking

One knows all's fair in love and war—unless you toss health care into the mix. Under the prevailing practices of American health insurers, getting punched by a lover makes you a liability. Ryan Grim has the details:

Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you're more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.

In human terms, it's a second punishment for a victim of domestic violence.

In 2006, Democrats tried to end the practice. An amendment introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), now a member of leadership, split the Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee 10-10. The tie meant that the measure failed.

All ten no votes were Republicans, including Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), a member of the "Gang of Six" on the Finance Committee who are hashing out a bipartisan bill.

It's appalling to see any opposition to this common-sense reform—especially the same week as the 15th anniversary of Joe Biden's Violence Against Women Act.

Here, the sexism is obvious, but it also heralds the fundamental unfairness of restricting individuals based on pre-existing conditions—and a big part of why the reform debate is not solely over a "public option" to hold profiteering companies accountable. President Obama has made it a priority to break down the system of repeatedly denying coverage to Americans, based on both trivialities like acne—as with the woman he mentioned in his Congressional address last week—and deadly serious issues such as domestic violence.

Over at TAPPED, Dana Goldstein also adds a crucial bit of info:

[I]t's important to point out that insurance company discrimination against domestic violence victims applies regardless of whether the woman is still married to or living with the abuser. In other words, women who have successfully left an abusive relationship and turned their lives around continue to be punished for a crime that was committed against them.

Right. I'll hold my breath for the news of men denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, like impotence, that actually have something to do with human physiology.

Tags: domestic abuse, health care reform, pre-existing conditions

I'm not as down on this season of Mad Men as Matt, though I agree that Don as well-behaved husband is sadly ho-hum (and therein lies a whole treatise on marriage that I don't want to read). And Matt, you're right that the race/gender messaging is more didactic and less surprising than in sparkly Season One. But I'm finding bits of the messaging moving and real. This week's episode was mostly drifty and even boring (for me, those dream sequences were beyond saving, despite Julia's valiant effort). But Peggy's failed bid to convince Don to pay her what she's worth made me sit up. The Equal Pay Act of 1963, which Peggy referred to (a thrill for the lapsed lawyer in me) absolutely should be her weapon. It prevented an employer from paying employees "at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions." That's Peggy, every bit as good as anyone in her posse of fellow male copywriters and doing as much or more work—that is, when they don't exclude her from their meetings.

But Don didn't get it. Which goes to show: 1) All that we owe our 1960s sisters for such moments of humiliation, and 2) that anti-discrimination laws don't work their magic without lawsuits to enforce them. (Matt, that one's just for you.) So yeah, it was message-y, but I'll take it. On the Mad Men message boards Peggy's devoted followers are terrified that she'll leave Sterling Cooper and the show, but also cheering for her to slam the door behind her if the company won't appreciate her. Would you go for that plot twist?

Photograph of Peggy Carin Baer © 2009 American Movie Classics Company LLC.

Tags: equal pay act, mad men, peggy olson

Although I'll be covering "homeless fashion" in my Schmatta Week dispatches this week—literally, I am interviewing homeless people—I just wanted to briefly comment on Guy Trebay's article, "Aware of the Homeless?" published in Saturday's New York Times. It summarizes the recent series of homeless-themed fashion coverage—most notably, the 28-page spread in September's W in which models are outfitted in paper bag dresses and sleep on benches, as well as a portrait of a "homeless-looking" man that appeared on the popular street fashion blog The Sartorialist.

Besides being tasteless and base, this got me wondering: How well can we judge a person's socioeconomic status from their appearance? I think the "homeless chic" trend is an acknowledgment of a new turbulence in this arena.

The fact is that there are people running around who are rich and try to look dirt poor, and there are millions of people who are incredibly poor who look respectable and dignified. Likewise, the casual nature of fashion today, which is essentially thrown-together, improvised, ill-conceived, and mismatched has the look of slobbish itinerancy.

I'm not a fan of Michael Harrington's The Other America, the Bible of the '60s War on Poverty, but these lines from it are interesting: “It is much easier in the Unites States to be decently dressed than it is to be decently housed, fed, or doctored ... clothes make the poor invisible,” and "Even people with terribly depressed incomes can look prosperous. There are tens of thousands of Americans who are wearing perhaps even a stylishly cut suit or dress, and yet they are hungry.”

Do you think you can tell a person's class by what they wear? How do you judge—and has the recession had any impact?

Tags: homeless chic, homelessness, recession fashion, W magazine

For those of us who missed yesterday's epic Whitney Houston-Oprah Winfrey interview, Jezebel has put together a priceless highlight reel. We learn lots of sordid things about Houston's drug habits—watch her educate Winfrey on the finer points of freebasing here—and there are plenty of sad, sad details about her complicated relationship with Bobby Brown. It's not quite the glorious comeback I and other singing-into-our-hairbrushes devotees of The Voice might have hoped for: Just hearing that ravaged rasp makes me want to cry a little and then go listen to "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." But I'm happy to root for a (formerly?) insanely talented woman who's clawing her way back to some kind of normalcy.

As Alessandra Stanley points out in the New York Times, there was a definite push to frame Houston's fall from grace as that of a woman who "made herself weak to make her less successful husband feel strong." Houston talks a lot about how committed she was to being "Mrs. Bobby Brown," seemingly at the expense of her own identity. From a transcript of the interview:

Oprah: So were you always appearing and making those court appearances [when Bobby Brown was being tried for domestic violence] because you felt you had to stand by your man?

Whitney: I had to. Yeah, I'm his wife.

Oprah: You know what I get now that I didn't get then as just an observer in the world? ... What I now get is that you took those vows seriously.

Whitney: Very, Oprah. To my heart.

In a separate segment, Winfrey says that the interview shows us all that Houston "really is Every Woman," because "every woman has felt so much of what she talks about in this interview." I leave it to you to debate the legitimacy of that assertion.

This afternoon, in the second half of the interview, Houston and Brown's 16-year-old daughter Bobbi Kristina will make an appearance and presumably she will offer her take on the sad spectacle of the disintegration of her parents' marriage. Will it be touching? Devastating? Exploitative? We'll find out at 4 p.m.

Photograph of Whitney Houston by Larry Busacca/Getty Images.

Tags: Oprah Winfrey, Whitney Houston