Ken Honeywell's Open Salon Blog

Pence Compares Dental Hygiene With Nazi Death Camps

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 06:06:28 -0400

Congressman Mike Pence (R, Indiana) has issued a public apology for a comment in a closed door meeting that compared the American Dental Association's twice-a-day teeth-brushing recommendation with Nazi genocide that killed an estimated 5.7 million European Jews between 1933 and 1945.

"I am sorry if my remarks offended anyone," Pence said Thursday. "Although they were taken entirely out of context, I can see how some Dentist-Americans might take offense."

Earlier in the day, Pence apologized for comparing the U.S. Supreme Court's upholding of the Affordable Care Act--often referred to as "Obamacare"--to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"I admit, that one didn't make a lot of sense," said Pence, who is the Republican nominee in the race for Indiana Governor. "When you think about it, a plan to protect the poor and sick from catastrophic health care costs isn't very much like a terrorist attack at all.

"At least the dentist/Nazi thing has some basis in reality. I mean, they're all sadists, am I right? And there was that movie with Dustin Hoffman. You know the one I mean."

Sources speculate that Pence's remarks were prompted by fear of stricter suggestions from the ADA. Indiana has a low teeth requirement for residents.

Also in the closed-door meeting, Pence allegedly compared soccer with the "Trail of Tears" forced evacuation of American Indians from southeastern parts of the U.S. following the Indian Removal Act of 1830; and recent efforts to reduce the size of sugary soft drinks to the deaths of 21% of the Cambodian population during Pol Pot's three-year rule.

"I was really on a roll there, wasn't I?" said Pence, who refused a breathalyzer test. "But, come on. The soccer thing makes sense. That game is definitely as un-American as those Indians were."

Come see all the fun we're having at Punchnel's.

Mad Men: The Saroyan Plan

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 07:06:33 -0400

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. Not a writer of advertising, but rather of great novels or great entertainments or great, lucid explanations of scientific wonders for laypeople. Serious fiction, plays, journalism--I'm not sure what specifically I wanted. It was all interesting to me. I wasn't passionate or single-minded enough to focus on any of it.

And so I ended up in advertising. Which seems like such a compromise until you realize that, in advertising, I get to do a little bit of all of the above. I get to make up stories, imagine whole worlds about people who want things. I get to make little movies in thirty or sixty seconds. I get to report on the frontiers of medicine and technology. And I get to do it every day, for pay.

Which is the answer to the dilemma Megan's mother Marie presents to Don Draper in "The Phantom," the Season 5 finale of Mad Men. She tells Don that Megan has "an artistic temperament," but she's not an artist. What are you supposed to do when you feel like an artist, but you're not one?

You go into advertising.

That's what everyone else is doing. Three months have passed since Lane Pryce took his own life, and things are looking up around Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Business is great. The office is filled to bursting with new staff and freelancers.

So why is everyone so miserable? Why is everyone feeling so alone?

Because that, my friends, is the human condition. In spite of our best efforts to connect with other people on this Earth, we are profoundly alone. We can imagine what's going on in other people's heads, but we're just fooling ourselves. We can't really know.

So we try to control it--as Howard does with his wife Rory Gilmore, also known as"Beth." Pete is surprised to see Beth accompanying Howard on the train into the city, and finds out she's there for electroshock therapy to cure her "blueness." It isn't the first time. She seduces Pete, who's been pining for her and suffering for the better part of a year, for a moment of happiness before the shock treatment wipes it all away. Sure enough, when Pete visits her later at the hospital, Beth doesn't know him. It's awful: in some ways, the cure for her depression makes Beth less human. Take away our memories, and what do we have left? Pete tells her he's at the hospital to visit a friend whose home and family are "a temporary bandage on a permanent wound." That permanent wound is your life, Pete Campbell. Would you rather smooth over all of it?

No worries for Don: his memories haunt him, literally, as he hallucinates images of his dead brother Adam, who hanged himself after Don rebuffed him in the first season of Mad Men. Don has a bad tooth, but Adam, hovering over Don in the dentist's chair, lets him know that it's not his tooth that's rotten.

And it's true. There is something rotten at the core of Don Draper's life, and it's likely that what's rotten is the Don Draperness of it. All of Don's compassion comes from his inner Dick Whitman. He knows what it's like to try to escape from your life. No one has done a better job of recreating himself as a new character in a different drama. Yet, the past is always right there to put you in your place. You can run, but you can't hide.

And so where does that leave all of our favorite Mad Men characters? We find out in the closing montage, set beautifully and perfectly to "You Only Live Twice." Don realizes that Megan will probably never be the artist she wants to be and casts her in the agency's Butler Shoes "Beauty and the Beast" commercial. Megan is thrilled--temporarily, because happiness is fleeting. Peggy is holed up in a motel in Virginia, happy (temporarily) to be working on a big cigarette account. Roger is happy (temporarily), embracing the world stark naked. Pete is miserable (permanently?), drowning the world with headphones on, eyes closed. Lane Pryce is still dead.

And Don Draper, his tooth pulled (permanently), walks away from the fantasy of the television sound stage and sits at the bar. He orders an Old Fashioned. A beautiful young woman approaches him and asks if he's alone. He doesn't answer.

Because he knows the answer. You only live twice: once for yourself, and once for your dreams. But your dreams aren't really your life: they have a life of their own, and it may or may not include you.

On his deathbed, the author William Saroyan said, “Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.” But nobody's on the Saroyan Plan. It's going to end badly for all of us.

Saroyan was no fool. He also said, “Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”

That's the plan I wish for Don Draper, and I plan I wish for you: may you make of your life something worth dying for.

Mad Men: Suicide Is Painful

Mon, 4 Jun 2012 07:06:20 -0400

How do you feel about suicide?

Can you imagine the pain, the despair, the utter helplessness a person about to take his own life must feel? Can you imagine that the only way out of your problems is to cease to exist? That you've done something so shameful, so embarrassing, that your only option is to kill yourself? Have you been there?

Probably not. You're still here, aren't you?

I don't mean to make light of suicide. I don't know you. Perhaps you have been there. Perhaps you've tried to take your own life. Perhaps you were saved by someone who found you before you slipped into the hereafter.

I imagine you've thought about suicide--about what it would be like. About how you'd do it, and why. To put an end to your misery. To show someone how much she's hurt you. Because you're tired--so goddamn tired that living seems like too much unpleasant work. Because you're desperate, and that light of happiness you've been chasing your whole life has ceased to even flicker.

Of course, we've been waiting all of Season 5 of Mad Men for a violent, probably self-inflicted death, and we got it in Episode 12, "Commissions And Fees." It's been reasonably clear for a few episodes that our perpetrator and victim was going to be Lane Pryce.

And yet, when it happens, it's so awful that it casts a pall over the entire season, if not the entire series. We didn't need to see this.

In particular, we didn't need to see Lane hanging by his tie from the ceiling of his office at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. The camera lingers on the horrific sight of Lane hanging inert against his office door while Don and Roger and Pete figure out how to cut him down.

But it happened. What's the camera supposed to do? How's the camera supposed to make sense of anything?

Lane's suicide makes sense from a story standpoint: if you've been paying attention, you've seen it coming. All the signs were there, as they usually are when it happens to someone you know.

So let's dispense with all the other stuff that happened in Episode 12. Glen ditches school to visit Sally in the city. Sally has her first period. Don wants the Dow Chemical account. Various characters make pronouncements about the fleetingness of happiness. Peggy is still gone. Stay tuned for scenes from next week's Mad Men.

And let's talk for a moment about appropriate responses to suicide:

Shock. That's the first one, isn't it? Even with all the signs. It's difficult to imagine someone you know actually following through and killing himself. It's paralyzing.

Confusion. Why would anyone believe that the only way out of his problems is to die? Other than the fact that it's true? We'll always have problems--that's life--but most of us eventually see that today's problems will seem minor and distant as early as tomorrow. Despair is as fleeting as happiness: when you've hit bottom, there's nowhere to go but up.

Anger. Suicide is a cowardly, selfish act. It's total abandonment of responsibility. No one is better off if you're dead: every suicide I've ever known has scarred people for the rest of their lives. If you imagine the world is somehow better off without you, you're wrong. If you think somehow you're saving people from the shame of your scandal, you are one stupid motherfucker. Also: remember that suicide is murder.

Compassion. We can only imagine the pain--or, perhaps, the numbness--the suicide victim must feel (or not feel). Not to mention the pain he's left for his family. How will Lane's wife ever recover? His son? What of Don Draper, whose request for Lane's resignation after he finds out Lane is embezzling from the firm is the straw that breaks his partner's neck? How can you not feel for the people who are hurting--and the one who was hurting so badly that life didn't seem worth living anymore?

Acceptance. Because what else is there to do? The awful thing has happened, and life goes on.

And Mad Men goes on. But it's difficult to appreciate the show's dark humor in the face of such a grisly development. (Difficult, but not impossible. The fact that Lane's new Jaguar was so undependable that he couldn't kill himself in it was pretty funny.) I for one am glad there's only one episode left in Season 5. It's been the best of Mad Men and the worst of Mad Men, and I need a break.

Not a permanent break. It'll get better, right?

Mad Men: Dickering Over Price

Mon, 28 May 2012 09:05:20 -0400

A old man walks up to a woman in a bar. "I'm sorry to bother you, but my doctors have given me only two weeks to live," the man says. "I'm very wealthy, and I was wondering if you would sleep with me for a million dollars."

"Well," says the woman, "I suppose I would."

The old man smiles. "Would you sleep with me for ten dollars?"

The woman is aghast. "Of course not! What kind of woman do you think I am?"

"We've established what kind of woman you are," the man says. "Now we're dickering over price."

Lots of people in business joke about prostituting themselves for their clients, but we in advertising are particularly aware of the parallels. Some of us have been asked to shill for products we don't believe in. Nearly all of us have, at one time or another, smiled and agreed to do work for our clients that made us feel dirty.

More than anything, it's because ad agencies are loaded with smart, thoughtful people. We understand reality: you work, you get paid, you leave your idealism at the door. We make excuses: sure, we're trying to influence people to buy things, but people don't load their shopping carts with stuff they don't want. We're whores, but so is everyone else. We're just more aware of our status.

But most of us--god help us--have never actually slept with a client to win an account. Which is exactly what Joanie is asked to do in "The Other Woman," Episode 11 of Season 5 of Mad Men. Herb Rennet, head of the Jaguar dealer group, makes it clear to Pete and Ken that he'd like to sleep with that gorgeous redhead he met at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce--and that SCDP doesn't have a prayer of winning the account unless they can make that happen.

We like to think we'd be above that behavior. Fortunately for the sake of the story, Pete Campbell is not. He presents Rennet's proposal to Joan, who makes the mistake of not refusing outright, instead telling Pete, "I don't think you can't afford it."

Pete thinks otherwise. He suggests the partners offer Joan $50,000 to sleep with Rennet. Don storms out, Roger wants nothing to do with it, Bert Cooper wants to make sure Joan knows she doesn't have to do it.

And Lane Pryce is in a pickle. Remember, in the last episode, Lane embezzled $7,500 to pay his back taxes. Also remember, Lane is a least a little bit in love with Joan. So it's with a combination of self-interest, altruism, and self-loathing that Lane suggests to Joan that she not take a chunk of money; rather, she should parlay the proposition into a partnership at SCDP. Joan is that kind of woman; Lane is the pimp who's helping her dicker.

Meanwhile, Peggy's doing some dickering of her own. Fed up with being treated like shit by Don and the other men at SCDP, Peggy decides it's time to test the waters elsewhere. She has lunch with Freddy Rumsen--he of the pissed pants and unceremonious exit from SCDP--who convinces her she should leave. So she meets with Don Draper's arch rival Ted Chaough, who offers to pay her more than she asks--and make her copy chief. How can a woman say no to an offer like that?

Megan's got offers, too--well, almost. She's up for a part in Little Murders that's going to start rehearsals in Boston. Don is furious, telling her she can't just leave for three months. As if he owns her. As if anyone could own a beautiful woman--which, of course, is the whole idea behind SCDP's pitch to Jaguar. "Jaguar: At last, something beautiful you can truly own," is Ginsberg's idea, and it's perfect.

And so SCDP gets Jaguar. Joanie gets her partnership. Megan, who is treated like a piece of meat at her audition, does not get the part. Peggy takes the job--and walks out of the agency in the middle of the Jaguar celebration. The contrast in the looks on the faces of Joan and Peggy at the end of the episode tell the tale: Joan is a kept woman, Peggy is free--sad to leave, but determined. In the end, it doesn't matter how much money Don throws at Peggy, literally or figuratively. She's not whoring for him anymore.

That doesn't mean she won't be whoring. We're all in it for the money. Some of us--I include myself--are lucky enough to work for clients we love and believe in. But we all have business propositions that test our moral judgment. Would you work for a cigarette company? A huge defense contractor? A political candidate whose views you don't share? A product whose manufacture pollutes the environment? A perfectly legal business that charges poor people usurious rates for furniture or payday loans? For a million dollars? For enough money to live the rest of your life comfortably? Are you sure you're ready to answer?

Are you sure?

Mad Men: A Christmas Bonus In Reverse

Mon, 21 May 2012 07:05:58 -0400

As I write this, I'm sitting on a third-floor deck of a house on St. George Island, Florida, looking out at the Gulf of Mexico as the sun rises. The sea is calm, almost glassy. There's no chill breeze, no sound except for the gentle lapping of the waves. The horizon stretches from pink to blue, a hard edge to the cloudless sky. It is just about perfect.

Mad Men has been just about perfect, too. No show since Seinfeld has given us so many episodes of perfectly crafted, beautifully self-contained television. It's not that the larger storylines don't matter--just that they're so often immaterial to one's enjoyment of the show when each individual episode is such a gem.

Which "Christmas Waltz," Episode 10 of Season 5 of Mad Men, is decidedly not. For the most part, each of this year's episodes has been a solid short story. "Christmas Waltz" seems more of a plot-advancer--except that only one significant plot point gets advanced. The rest of episode just treads water.

The big issue: Lane Pryce's financial woes. As the episode opens, Lane gets a call from his attorney in London. He owes a bunch of money in back taxes, and he doesn't have it. So he convinces Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce's banker to increase the agency's credit line so they can pay bonuses.

But Don Draper has other ideas. He suggests waiting for the Christmas party to award bonuses, and the other partners agree. So Lane sneaks into the office late one night and forges Don's name on a $7,500 check. (Since he's British, perhaps it's a cheque.) Certainly, it will be only a few days before they'll be writing checks to the other partners, anyway--

--except that Mohawk Airlines has suspended its advertising due to a mechanic's strike. The partners decide to forgo their bonuses, and the episode ends with Lane in a perfectly proper British wince. Add Lane to the characters whose lives we fear for; there's been so much death imagery in this season's shows that it will seem almost a cheat if someone doesn't commit suicide by season's end.

In other developments, Edwin Baker has been fired and SCDP is back in the running forJaguar. Meanwhile, Joanie's been served with divorce papers. In an act of chivalry, Don whisks her out of the office to the Jaguar dealer, where they pose as a couple. Don writes a $6,000 check as a deposit on a test drive, proving he's no Lane Pryce, and he and Joanie go to a bar and get smashed. They chat about why he never made a move on her, blah blah blah. Chivalrous Don Draper's not that interesting.

And in the episode's most amusing and disposable storyline, we find out that our old pal Paul Kinsey has joined the Hare Krishnas. He contacts Harry and brings him to a chant-off, but not to recruit him. Paul's not happy--a sure sign of which is that he's been writing bad Star Trek episodes in his spare time. He want to leave the movement, although he's in love with Lakshmi, a dedicated Krishna who's a little too affectionate with Harry.

Make that a lot too affectionate. Lakshmi boinks Harry at the office and informs him that he needs to stay away from Paul, who's the Hare Krishnas' best recruiter. Appalled, Harry hands Paul $500 and a ticket to Los Angeles, telling him that his business contacts loved the script but can't buy it. Paul thanks Harry profusely. "All these people said they'd do something for me and you're the first one who did," he says.

Okay, so it was fun to see Paul in saffron robes, his head shaved, talking about Star Trek. It was fun to see Don Draper acting the gentleman. But overall, "The Christmas Waltz" was as flat as the Gulf of Mexico on a calm morning in May, and not in a good way. It had all the trappings of a great episode of Mad Men, and none of the substance.

And I may be forgetting something, but I don't remember a single hilarious line from Roger Sterling. That is like a Christmas bonus in reverse.

Alas, nothing is without flaws. Those cool sea breezes that would have made it too chilly to sit out on the deck this morning also would have kept away the gnats, which nipped at my bare legs until I had to take my coffee inside. Even paradise is not perfect.