Mad Men #6: What Does Glenn Beck Know That Don Draper Doesn't?
Hands down, this was the best-written episode of the season -- possibly in as long as I can remember, and not because I've been on any blackout benders lately. Sweet and fitting that this is true of an episode (a) anchored by a tedious yet bacchanalian awards ceremony and (b) aired during the Emmys. (PJTV's Owen Brennan has the line of the night: "I feel duped. My wife let me think these were the "60-second" Emmy Awards.")
This episode was about alcoholism. Alcoholism is a disease that still makes people turn to God for a cure. Only, cure isn't the right word; it's a lifetime of coping. "The important thing is not to be cured," said Abbe Galiani to Madame D'Epinay, "but to live with one's ailments." That is a Christian judgment but it is also, in different hands, an anti-Christian, anti-sacred, therapeutic one. Some people are troubled by this mirroring. But therapy, like the prescription drugs that have increasingly replaced it as the expert weapon of medical choice, cannot forgive you. Only God and other people can do that. And the alcoholic, or any other terminally selfish human being, knows that the forgiveness of mere other people -- wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, children, coworkers, lovers, strangers -- can be broken and denied by their sickness and by themselves.
Therapy and medication alike can save us from everything but patienthood. Patients cannot be judged. They cannot even judge themselves. How can such a person be a witness, in the deep sense? How can their testimony be trusted, in the deep sense -- as in, who would ever bother staking their lives on such testimony? In a culture where the kind of coping afforded by faith is obsolete, there will never be such witnesses, there will never be such testimony, and there will never be real revelations, real moments of conversion. There will be no 'moments of clarity.'
Fortunately, we're still very far away from such a culture. There are a lot of prescription drugs and a lot of lost souls and still a lot of alcoholics, too. But the power of faith to forgive, and the reality of rebirth contained in that forgiveness, draws us like a great magnet again and again. Just ask Glenn Beck.
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: Mad Men #6: What Does Glenn Beck Know That Don Draper Doesn't?
Whoa, whoa, whoa!
It's a television show.
I can get pretty rapturous watching Christina Jenkins, too.
But let's not go overboard.
Aug '10
Re: Mad Men #6: What Does Glenn Beck Know That Don Draper Doesn't?
James Poulos, Ed.: Patients cannot be judged. They cannot even judge themselves.
I'm not sure I get this.
Because patients can be judged. They're judged all the time. And they judge themselves, too. This holds true for patients with chronic physical illness, patients recovering from injury, even patients recovering from attempted suicide. They may avoid judgment for whatever got them into their predicament (though even this isn't likely), but they certainly are judged for how cooperatively they participate in their recovery.
Is it that alcoholics are somehow different on this score?
Jul '10
Re: Mad Men #6: What Does Glenn Beck Know That Don Draper Doesn't?
CSpan has the whole Rally on its site. And Glenn Beck and the rest are so impressive. I am Canadian. This is such an "American" event. And Beck is correct. True change, one that will drag America out of its despond will start in the heart of each American... and it will be defined by each American's relationship with God.
Amazing. No other country will ever see such an event!
Jul '10
Re: Mad Men #6: What Does Glenn Beck Know That Don Draper Doesn't?
The therapeutic culture and fine medications tweak the edges of human chemistry. Creating the sort of change that can positively address problems like alcoholism cannot happen by "tweaking". It requires a re-ordering of the soul. I see this in my own life with a son who is challenged by similar issues yet stubbornly insists on staying married to the secular materialist worldview. I pray he at some point allows himself to listen to God.
Jul '10
Re: Mad Men #6: What Does Glenn Beck Know That Don Draper Doesn't?
Actually, there are parallels between the therapeutic medicinal culture and the entire liberal enterprise. And that is why it ends up being so empty. Beck is calling our attention to that emptiness. At some level it takes an alkie to truly get that.