A podcast or two ago, I had to listen to a few minutes of "boys will be boys": Robinson was out sick, and the "conversation" turned to a Family Guy-esque series of jokes about Robert Reich's height.

Are we lowly members expected to behave better than that? Or might Ricochet do better to model the behavior it wants from its members?

Well buddy, you got it anyway. (Sorry, just got back here searching for something else)

Amen, comrade!

In Hitchens's weak defense, he has not had much good to say about Obama once he took office. And Hitch, unfortunately, doesn't get into domestic affairs very much. I wish he could be convinced that movies and television can, and sometimes, do, rise to the level of literature.

Love it love it. Don't forget they also banned books with lead in the ink or whatever the crap that was

http://reason.com/blog/2009/05/07/your-yard-sale-is-illegal

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0212wo.html

So, as for conservatives watching Mad Men, they mostly won't. They may try and, like Rob Long, fall asleep or, like James Lileks, think it a "soap-opera with hats." But most will think it's an attack on conservative America. Which is true, if conservatism is mostly about keeping non-WASPs and non-men in their place.

Don Draper's affairs: They're partly a result of his being an animal, programmed to screw all the females he can to keep his species going, and partly the failure of his ability as an intelligent, evolved animal to control the impulses left over from primitive times.

But that explanation is impossible to a conservative Christian. To that type, the show is simply showing Don giving in to evil and not doing good, without obvious and immediate consequences. So most conservatives will be unable to appreciate the show.

But it's also hard because it is a new type of TV show, that requires a commitment and interest that wasn't needed for shows in the past. Like Lileks etc, I loved the original Star Trek, but you could watch one without having seen the episodes leading up to it.

As for conservatives watching Mad Men - well - the conservative film site Libertas is posting very nice commentaries on Mad Men by Jennifer Baldwin. For Episode 3, she wrote,

"One of the things I love about Mad Men is the tone of the show. It’s dispassionate, restrained, observant. ...Matthew Weiner...doesn’t flinch from showing the faults of these characters and their society, but he also doesn’t preach at us about how horrible these people and their world were. He just lets the world of the show play out, and it’s up to us how we judge things....

"At its most basic, Mad Men is a character study. People who’ve tried just watching one episode here or there find they can’t get into the show, but that’s because it’s hard to jump in midstream when you’re watching the lives of fully developed people unfold before your eyes. It takes time to get to know someone, and the characters of Mad Men...are as multi-faceted and complex as fictional characters get. It takes time to get to know them."

Thank you for continuing to appreciate Mad Men, Mr. Poulos, though I must admit that you usually pick up on something about it that doesn't grab me. (Which I know is not a bad thing.)

I have been job hunting since the beginning of July, so I am in a humor to knock "HR." All I know about HR departments or about people hiring is that I am generally unable to make much impression on them. What they use to determine who to hire - when they're not letting their computers pick resumes for them - I don't know. I could go on (as could the rest of the 10%) but I won't.

Natasha Vargas-Cooper has a brilliant and brief article about Peggy and Don's ideal work relationship. She describes Peggy as a "Promethean woman" who is best served by a father figure who knows to avoid sex and to demand excellence. (Well, something like that; you must read the original! V-C is very intelligent, usually concentrating on the forest and not the trees.)

Sorry, I was watching "Family Guy" on Netflix.

I'm having the problem in Firefox. What's Internet Exporer? Is that anything like VisiCalc or WordStar?

Does everyone else have to sign in three times for it to take?

Any podcast that mentions Frank Nelson I can't wait to hear...but I'll have to, it's my bedtime.

Even though y'all hate the show, I thought your comments about Mad Men were interesting. Perhaps Mr. Steele has some thoughts about the show? (If not, maybe some thoughts about Star Trek?)

And I must say to you regulars: What would make Mad Men "a soap opera with hats" would be for Don and Betty to break up and remarry each season; for Peggy to die in a car accident to be replaced by her evil twin sister; etc etc. The show may be no Gilligan's Island, but at least it's no soap opera!

The DEA has discovered that low-class blacks have a dialect?

Has the CIA started investigating people who want to learn how to take off in an airplane? Or at least started recruiting Russian translators so we can beat those Reds?

I'd like to thank whatever that Federal law is that kept the camera above the young lady's waist while she was "playing with herself." I mean, what the hell was that? If Hitchcock didn't need to show rivers of blood, why do I need to see a little girl bite her lower lip while she watches The (still alive and starring in NCIS) Man from UNCLE.

And where are the Christians on this? Join my atheist self in grouching about this scene - you could cut it and not lose anything. I'd hate to be that actress going to school the next day.

This bites - I can only edit my own posts. I'm already saying the right stuff, it's these other people who need fixing.

I second Ms. Smith's query.