Hanna, maybe what we're witnessing is a bit of media overkill—no surprise there—which is certainly irksome considering the many more important issues that should be getting comprehensive news coverage. Still, you make “your average blinkered Southern nostalgist” sound so quaint and harmless. If you, like Rep. Jim Clyburn, were a son or daughter of the South and were black and of a certain age, you might be forgiven for thinking that those who pine for a return to the way things were are really wishing for the days of white supremacy, when black people stayed in their place and never had the temerity to run for high national office, let alone the presidency. You might understand that the nostalgia goes beyond the Confederate flag and to the very heart of the comfort that white men like Joe Wilson took from knowing that there was order and safety in their world because they had black people in check and under control.

What you’re casually overlooking is the very deep and very legitimate pain and anger that people of color feel when they recall, without a shred of rose colored nostalgia, the terror that was visited upon them daily by white southern segregationists who shared Strom Thurmond’s mentality and Joe Wilson's admiration of that mentality.

What makes you so willing to take what Wilson’s says at face value? You believed his “You lie!” outburst was spontaneous—and granted it may have been—and you also believe that the only thing Wilson said about Thurmond’s secret black love child was that she was “unseemly” to claim Thurmond was her father. Somehow I find this hard to believe. And what’s so unseemly, by the way, about saying someone is your father when that someone had an affair with your mother, the house servant, secretly acknowledged he was your father, and regularly gave you financial support? That some powerless black women would have the nerve to sully Thurmond’s good name by even implying that he would sleep with a black woman? Clearly that’s much more indecorous than lynching black men who so much as shot sideways glances at white women in the good ol’ days. And it’s much more ill-mannered than a member of Congress trying to shout the president down while he’s addressing the nation.

Joe Wilson is a big boy, who knows how to throw his punches and, by all appearances, seems wholly capable of taking a few good punches, too. He is not being “hunted down,” he is suffering the consequences of throwing the first punch. Just a few days ago you were sounding a bit nostalgic yourself for the sort of verbal fisticuffs that take place in the British parliament during Prime Minister’s Questions, during which “spirited and sometimes nasty debate might take place instead of the tedious "civility" that governs these phony American sessions.” Now you want Maureen Dowd and Rahm Emmanuel to show civility to Joe Wilson? Trying to draw some sort of moral equivalence between Joe Wilson's actions and the speaking style of a potty-mouthed chief of staff and the writing style of wicked-tongued columnist is a bit of stretch. Neither Emmanuel (who politely accepted Wilson’s appology to President Obama, no?) nor Dowd, are elected officials, nor have they ever shouted down a president down during a speech to a joint session of Congress. Even Joe Wilson’s biggest appologists and defenders recognize this.

Calling someone a racist, if in the past he has said racist things, behaved in a racist manner, supported racist legislation or legislators, and championed a flag that is viewed as an emblem of racism, is not some easy way to shut someone up, as you contend. It's an easy way to point out the truth. Last I checked, Joe Wilson was not going quietly into the good night because he's been called out or forced to shut up.

Tags: Joe Wilson Obama's health care reform speech

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Wow, Emily. And I thought we were friends. Here I am, minding my own business, trying to have a high-toned conversation about cannibalism, and you lunge for the sexual jugular by essentially suggesting that the reason Mad Men appeals to American males is that collectively, they are repressed Roger Sterlings (I paraphrase). Well, I can't let that stand. The last time I checked—in the shower, this morning—I was an American male. So I will take up their burden and speak on their behalf.

First, I should say strictly on my own behalf, in the interest of staying married, that I have never wanted to have sex with my secretary. Partly this is because, while I love women, I regard all of them—even the ones I'd secretly like to have sex with—as nightlights that flicker dimly next to the blinding luminosity of the aurora borealis that is my wife. (I love you, baby!) Partly it's because I don't have a secretary. But if I ever get one, and we have inappropriate relations, you can be sure I won't take Mad Men-like liberties. In fact, she will likely be the aggressor when I slather myself in Axe Body Spray and she loses all control. (I've seen the commercials, and know how that story ends).

But now that I've acquitted myself at home, let's honestly address your Sterling/Wolfman fantasy theory. Does Roger's licentiousness appeal to men? Sure, to some of them. Because all men, even the ones who are spoken for, love to look at beautiful women, and a lot of men like to touch after they look, even if they shouldn't. But I don't think that's the true power of Roger's appeal, or Draper's, or the appeal of the entire ethos they exude. Vivid characters like them and their male minions provide funhouse-mirror catharsis. But modern civilized man doesn't truly pine for a time when he could make bets on the color of his secretary's panties, then chase her down and flip up her skirt to see if he should collect. (I can't speak for Plotz here, Hanna.)

Not to go all Robert Bly on you (I can't stand him, as the last thing most men want is to sit around in a circle-jerk playing drums with each other), but what men really miss from the Mad Men era is the freedom to be men. To not be civilized and sensitized and effeminized to within an inch of their lives. To not be written up by some meter-maid-like HR poindexter putting a protractor up to their eyebrows to make sure they didn't flex five more degrees than the employee handbook deems platonically allowable in a workplace filled with women. And the dirty secret is, most women I know pretty much feel the same way. Even good neoliberal, feminist women such as yourselves. Women might have (badly) wanted men to change how they operated during that time. And rightly so. But they didn't want them to stop being men. And the reason modern women find Draper and Sterling so dangerous, which often translates to finding them appealing, is because those characters don't really give a toss what women want. They are a true relic: men undefined by women. That's why the Drapers and Sterlings of this world ended up getting the crap kicked out of them from the '60s onward. But compared to the poor humpbacked, henpecked, khaki-panted 2009 version of civilized man, I'm sure many women think that Roger Sterling almost looks like an attractive alternative.

Many of the correctives that make Mad Men a period piece were completely necessary, don't get me wrong. But Madison Avenue circa 1961 wasn't the most libertine time in our modern sexual history by a long shot. Just wait a few years (or a season, at the rate Mad Men is lurching forward), and you'll be reminded that people were no longer playing grab-ass around the water cooler, they were rutting full-on in Max Yasgur's mud-caked cow pastures. So the real danger of Mad Men isn't that Draper screws everything that isn't nailed down (okay, that's some of the danger). It's that he doesn't apologize for being what he is. Which is imperfect and amoral and badly in need of a woman who runs a tighter ship than Betty does, a woman who can actually civilize him. And I fully concede that he would benefit from such civilizing.

But to take the simple, eternal, and inevitable music of man/woman relations and to codify it and make it nearly transgressive—aside from the equal-pay suits and sexual harrassment law that you mention—I think this is why even liberal women are willing and even eager to plug into Mad Men, a show that is half written by women, need I remind you? Remember the episode from Season 1, in which Roger rides one of those redheaded twins around his office like a pony? Horrifying, right? You almost had to avert your gaze. But maybe good, God-fearing, liberal feminist third-wavers are making Sunday nights on AMC appointment television for a reason that is much more elementary than can be provided by all the over-analysis of the show. Maybe they're sick of gender wars. Maybe they're sick of having their emotions governed by the courts and turgid, abstract theory. Maybe they just want something simple and primal and gratifying. Maybe they want a pony ride.

Photo from Mad Men of character Roger Sterling by Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC. All rights reserved.

Tags: DOn Draper, mad men, roger sterling

Amanda,

It’s certainly tempting to believe the Stanford and University of Chicago researchers who concluded that women make better legislators because we have to work harder and overcome more obstacles to attain such heights, and so only the best of us sneak through.

But I tend to be skeptical of research like this. And so I took a closer look at the study, and I’m not convinced. For one, the researchers use quantitative measures—how much money? How many bills?—to make a qualitative judgment. It’s like saying the best doctor is the one who sees the most patients, or the valedictorian is the student who does the most homework.

I’m also troubled by the assumption that bringing more money to one’s district or sponsoring more legislation necessarily makes one a good legislator. Perhaps if the Capitol building sat at the end of a rainbow, right next to a bottomless pot of gold, that would be all fine and good. But all that money that legislators bring back to their districts has to come from somewhere. From taxpayers, actually. Where’s the congresswoman who’s working to put my tax dollars back in my wallet, not in my district? And I might have missed something, but the study doesn’t seem to factor in whether women are sponsoring health care reform legislation or No Child Left Behind or TARP, or rather if it’s the Belated Thank You to the Merchant Mariners of World War II Act of 2009. Wouldn’t it be easier to get more co-sponors, as the bill credits female pols for doing, if you’re sponsoring run-of-the-mill legislation?

I do agree with you that we need more female politicans out there to make a better comparison. In both parties. I just don’t think there’s much takeaway from this particular study.

Tags: female politicians, politics, sexism

Remind me again why one people between the ages of 18 and 25 don’t have health insurance? Oh, right, because “they are going to live forever and therefore have no use for doctors.” Or so says Tim Noah in this Slate piece griping about how young people might actually catch a break under Sen. Max Baucus’ newly-revealed reform plan.

Noah joins a chorus of other distinguished voices (Mark Steyn, anyone?) who have claimed—always without evidence, as far as I can tell—that 20-somethings believe they are immortal. Apparently there is middle ground on the subject of health care reform, and it consists of deriding young people for being such careless fools.

Does it not occur to these wise old gentlemen that some uninsured youngsters would very much like to be covered, but the unfortunate realities of our economy make buying coverage practically impossible? Despite Ben Bernanke’s cheery assessment of the recession, job markets are still tight, and graduates are grabbing whatever jobs they can, be they part-time, freelance, or with small companies that don’t offer benefits. Individual coverage is prohibitively expensive for a lot of young people who, when they are booted from their parents’ insurance, often have little in the way of savings and a lot in the way of debt.

Noah complains that Baucus gave a gift to insurance companies by creating an option for a cheap catastrophic-injury plan for young people only. Insurance companies “will see this as a fantastically profitable opportunity to sell health insurance to people who almost never get sick.” But if this sort of plan is a gift to insurance companies, it’s an absolute godsend to young people, who will be able to insure themselves against freak accidents but won’t have to spend a quarter of the rent every month to pay for services they don’t need.

Noah’s right that exempting young people from full coverage will make health insurance more expensive for people over the age of 25. But no one stays under 25. At some point, we’ll all have to start kicking in for full coverage. Then, our own costs will be higher than if the current crop of under-25-year-olds were forced to buy complete coverage. Baucus' plan doesn't insure me forever at the expense of Noah and Steyn. It creates a brief window during which young people can get their financial feet under them and find a full-time gig, without having to worry about getting hit by a $40,000 bill if they get hit by a bus.

Tags: health care, young invincibles

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We know, that sounds like a headline pop-up blockers were made for. But we’re serious. This week, DoubleX is launching a new blog called The Desire Lab: Exploring Sex and Passion. The blog is designed to be one part confession, one part research, and we need your help. It will be moderated by Daniel Bergner, who wrote this fabulous New York Times Magazine story, “What Do Women Want?” Learning from the experiences of individual women and the experiments of scientists, he is now turning the article into a book.

Daniel, the author of three award-winning books of journalism, will regularly ask a question inspired by the current explorations of sex researchers and by your contributions. We invite you to send him candid, thorough answers to desirelab@slate.com. It may feel strange to type out things you’ve never shared with anyone. But try it. This is an ambitious project. Consider the blog a place to safely explore passions and lusts, longings and ideas. Our hope is to create a community moderated by Daniel, who will continue to pose questions and move the conversation along.

The identities of everyone who writes in will be kept secret. We will publish many of the answers on the blog, and Daniel may e-mail you back to learn more for his book.

Here is his first question:

What role does sexual fantasy play in your life? Some researchers say that erotic fantasy does not play a major role in women’s lives. Little is truly known. How often—and when—do you fantasize about sex? What are the fantasies? How long do they last? We at DoubleX hope you will get deeply into the details. Understanding lies in such depth.

Photograph of woman with handcuffs on homepage by Digital Vision.

Tags: Daniel Bergner, DoubleX desire blog

Matt, I've been going all introspective in response to your analysis of my Peggy fandom, thinking about how, yes, it's true that the frank frat-boy act at Sterling Cooper is a relic rather than my workday, but on the other hand, subtler effects of sexism seep into work and affect a lot of women, so don't think for a minute that we're all set on this score. But you know what, I'm going to spare you and me both the rest. Because in Peggy's spirit, why let you take the lead in writing copy? Instead, let me put you on the couch (or the hard-backed chair that's actually in my office). I think you pine for Roger Sterling because of his license to be wolfish. I don't mean that you want to sleep with the Joanie in your life (she probably doesn't exist, anyway) or marry Jane. One of the things I count on you for (and David too!) is your solid and secure marriage. But to foreclose all possibility of such transgression? Ah, that's a loss as keen as the banished daytime whiskey. Yet to be a civilized man in our world is to take not even a step down that path. You—as in the collective you—can look, you can flirt, but you can't have. And that changes the meaning of looking and flirting. No wonder you're not eager for the future, which will soon go from equal-pay suits to sexual harrassment law, to arrive.

Tags: mad men, roger sterling, sexual harrassment law

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Hanna, I see what you're saying about how Joe Wilson is in the mainstream of South Carolina white culture, but that doesn't strike me as a reason to shy away from drawing the conclusion that he's a racist. If anything, that just seems to be more evidence that he is a racist. We are talking about the people who gleefully elected Strom Thurmond to office repeatedly. Whether we like to admit this about our fellow Americans or not, there are large parts of the country where the mainstream white culture is overtly racist. As a white person living in a red state, I'm sick of pretending that this doesn't create plenty of occasions where conservatives will say the most hair-curling racist things when they think they're out of the earshot of anyone that will confront them on it.

And why would we doubt it? The white reaction to the civil rights movement didn't happen in some other place and time. The violently angry white reaction happened within Joe Wilson's memory, around the time of his adolescence in South Carolina. In fact, according to his biography, he immersed himself in the Republican party at just the point in time that pro-segregation Southern Democrats were switching parties. With Google searching, all the information I could find on when exactly Wilson worked for Strom Thurmond was unsurprisingly and conveniently hazy, but it seems that it had to have been in the mid-'60s, right after Thurmond switched party affliations as a protest against racial equality, and just a few years after Thurmond held the longest filibuster in history to halt civil rights legislation.

It's not impossible that political views reverse within a person's lifetime, but despite our highest hopes for ourselves, it's rare. It's believeable that Robert Byrd turned around on race, because he actually made an effort to fix the damage done by racism. But for most racists, what's happened is they've decided they're victimized by the "P.C." culture that shames them for overt bigotry, and so they get a lot of pleasure out of constructing a set of code words and signals to demonstrate allegiance under oppression, fancying themselves something closer to the anti-Nazi Resistance than to the hose-turning, screaming segregationists they were just a generation ago. It's an absurd fantasy, but one that Wilson is feeding by showing one face to a national audience and another to his base.

The only real reason to quit hammering Wilson is that it's a distraction from policy issues, and it feeds the white racist victim complex. But there's a real danger in setting the bar so high on what we call "racism" that associations, symbols, and behavior aren't enough proof to at least suggest that's the most likely explanation. That functionally erases racism as something that it's polite to acknowledge, and the people who bear the burden of that silencing are the actual victims of racism, the non-white people who have to suffer the abuses and obstacles that racist attitudes cause. It shouldn't be worse to call someone a racist—especially if the evidence has piled high and deep—than to be a racist.

Photograph of Joe Wilson by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.

Tags: health care reform, joe wilson, Obama, racism, south carolina

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David Brooks alerts us to the fact that a congressman said something rude at a presidential speech, and a musician interrupted an awards show. “This isn’t the death of the West,” he reassures us. Good to know! But what is it? Why, it’s the death of all that is good and humble in this world, and the subsequent rise of “expressive individualism.” At some point between 1945 and today, we have crossed “a sort of narcissism line.”

I’d like to know more about this line. Did we all walk across it together? Were we too self-obsessed to notice? Poor Ta-Nehisi Coates is so far over the line that he can’t even see it. “It's virtually impossible to be a black person,” he contends, “and believe that Americans were somehow more humble in the past.”

This may be the product of blinkered, post-1945 reasoning, but it seems to me that West’s sideshow and Wilson’s outburst together signify… nothing. There is nothing telling, interesting, or indicative about two men acting out at a couple of awkwardly staged performances. The way millions of people react to them, on the other hand, matters very much. And if you’re like David Brooks, you’ll see the attacks on West and Wilson as a collective outcry against the vulgar monstrosity that is our culture. If you’re like me, you’ll see this reaction as a collective insistence on deference to authority, a pathetic inability to tolerate the meekest of incivilities. Either way, whatever it might mean when 270 representatives spend valuable time excoriating a single man for a two-word declarative statement, it probably doesn’t have much to do with the triumph of individualism over conformity.

Photograph of Kanye West and Taylor Swift by Christopher Polk/Getty Images.

Tags: David Brooks, joe wilson, kanye west

We wake up this morning to a newly school–marmish Maureen Dowd scolding Joe Wilson (again) and praising yesterday’s congressional reprimand of him as a “rare triumph of civility.” So now we have, as our new public faces of politeness and good manners, Rahm Emanuel, the prince of potty mouth, and Maureen Dowd, queen of the wicked insult. Maybe they can tour the elementary school circuit together.

Actually, what this whole affair reminds me of is freshman year of college, which for me happened during the height of the P.C. era. The way the left has decided to skewer Joe Wilson is by calling him a racist. Now, there’s no doubt that Wilson is playing this both ways, apologizing in public and then egging on his scary rabid fans on Twitter. And there’s no doubt that some of his fans are nutbag racists who spend the rest of their time fomenting the “birther” movement.

Yes, Joe Wilson supports flying the Confederate flag. You’d be hard pressed to find a Republican from South Carolina who doesn’t. The big revelations in the Dowd column today come from Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking black Congressman. Clyburn mentions Wilson’s membership in a shady pro-Confederate organization. This is a group that in its early days had some links to the KKK. Again, pretty common in South Carolina. Then Clyburn mentions some “real nasty things” he said about the black woman claiming to be Strom Thurmond’s daughter. At the time Wilson took Thurmond’s side because he had worked for him. He said the charges were “unseemly.” That’s not all that nasty.

We could back and forth on these charges for a while. I don’t want to cheerlead Joe Wilson, he’s not my kind of guy. He’s your average blinkered Southern nostalgist. But is that racist? “Racist” is something we say to get someone to shut up. “Students are looking to us, and they ought not to be able to ever feel that such bad behavior would be condoned,” said Clyburn. Honestly, I’d rather they learn that in America, anyone can call the president a liar and not be hunted down.

Tags: congressional reprimand, joe wilson

Another interesting tidbit from that unpublished Stanford study, a draft of which is available here, is that there is a category of female members of Congress who do not make superior legislators to men: political widows. The researchers posit that this is because widows, unlike other female candidates, don't face higher hurdles for entry—on the contrary, they often benefit from the sympathy factor, as well as name recognition. The typical political widow also tends to have more confidence in her ability to win, perhaps because she figures that if her late husband could do it, so could she. So she is more likely than most women to run for office. You could quibble, I'm sure, with the criteria to measure success, but it's a provocative notion since this has traditionally been a pretty common path to legislative office, for women. Also provocative: Their research suggests that the most effective female legislators are from conservative districts, because they face the highest barriers of entry. Survival of the super-fittest.

Tags: conservative women, stanford study, widows, women legislators