"The catastrophe of my personality"

Not only does Mad Men showcase some of the finest television writing ever to air, it quotes utterly beautiful poetry:

"Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again."

- Excerpt from Frank O'Hara's poem Mayakovsky.

And, for good measure, another O'Hara poem not featured on the show, but just as succulent:

Animals

"Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

It's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

The whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days."

Simply mad about it

"The idea of advertising is you will become successful, whether it's smoking a cigarette, having a cocktail, wearing the right suit, going to the right restaurant, voting for the right political candidate.
You will achieve happiness."
— Jon Hamm, a.k.a., Don Draper

Oh, no, they didn't

I'm only an occasional reader of The New Yorker and rarely find their trademark cartoons funny anymore. Especially unfunny to me, though, is the hotly discussed "Obamas in the Oval Office" cover. Seeing it made me want to order a subscription of the magazine just so I could turn around and immediately cancel it. I was that angry.

While some call the image offensive, I find it journalistically irresponsible and conceptually flawed.

Typically, satirical illustrations lampoon the subject's behavior or situation—say, a drawing of Dubya as Pinocchio with Cheney and Rove pulling the puppet strings. In this case, the illustrator has ventured into the murky land of exaggerating the opposition's conjured-up criticisms of the subject, so the target of the ridiculous claims ends up getting tarred and feathered twice. A lose-lose situation.

Those deriding the illustration tend to cite the fact that it may confuse Obama opposers or on-the-fencers who won't get the joke. But, in actuality, those Obama opposers or on-the-fencers (more specifically, anyone who promotes or buys into the slanderous B.S. portrayed in the artwork) are the butt of the joke in the first place. It's holding up a mirror to them saying, "Look how ridiculous your fears appear when represented in a full-color line drawing." But the people meant to see their own reflection in that mirror of mockery don't read that magazine, so the lesson stays unlearned.

Someone in the media called this perfect poster propaganda for the right-wing. Sounds a little melodramatic, but on some level I agree. It's a neatly done "My Worst Fears About Obama" visual checklist that could burn a little "See, I told you so" image in a paranoid voter's mind.

It's scary but true that something this seemingly insignificant could change an election. Just remember the infamous shot of Dukakis wearing a helmet in a military tank. Or Howard Dean's fatal howl. My mom didn't vote for Gore because she feared "what a tree-hugger would do in the White House." It only took a colloquial hyphenate to decide her vote: Tree-hugger. And, the election before that, another: Flip-flopper. Now she knows a neo-con Bush is capable of far worse than any tree-hugger or flip-flopper, but much, much too late.

This is one of the most important elections in world history (yeah, I said "world") and for a national publication, no matter how boutique (outside of MAD magazine maybe), to use their cover to treat the one Presidential candidate offering some hope as the fall guy to fuel a PR stunt and misfired joke—compelling articles in his favor on the inside aside—is simply reckless.