Definitely worth a read. Good stuff.
Yet, for all of its strengths, Mad Men wouldn't be nearly so appealing if not for the fact that it is set during a time when America was neatly divided between the hip and the square. It's important to point out, though, that during the early '60s, the time period that Mad Men is set, people like Don Draper and his colleagues would most certainly have been regarded as undeniably square.
Cats like Draper represented the very meaning of the establishment. There is a scene in the first season when Draper makes an impromptu visit to see one of his many mistresses, only to find her and her friends “getting high and listening to Miles" as she plays “Sketches of Spain" on the turntable; an earlier episode in the first season used Miles' “Blue in Green" from Kind of Blue. In the scene with “Sketches" playing, it is quite obvious that Draper is a first-class square. In addition to supporting Richard Nixon in his 1960 presidential bid against JFK, something else they did in the first season, ad agencies like the fictional Sterling Cooper helped to shape a nation of gullible consumers, who eagerly drank the poisoned Kool-Aid of consumption.
via the Root.com.
