November 3, 2009
But first: A few thoughts on last night's Mad Men
For a few weeks, I’ve been compiling some Mad Men-iana for the blog — notes and sources and photos, with an eye toward exploring the first few years of the ’60s as they played out in Detroit. Because the perfectly constructed, jewel-like ’60s of Mad Men is the ’60s of Manhattan white-collar professionals and WASPy suburban New York, and its not-WASPy characters and elements — the Jewess Rachel Mencken, the Draper’s maid Carla, even the specter of Dust Bowl Dick Whitman — are there to remind us of the worlds outside of Mad Men’s own orbit. It’s not a fault of the show. But in so many places, like Big Labor, blue collar, black middle class Detroit, the ’60s were experienced differently.
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