Mad Men

The second season of Mad Men starts on Sunday on AMC at 10:00. I didn't mention it in my year-end best-of 2007 post but I should have - it's one of the best things going on television. AMC played all 13 season one episodes back-to-back last Sunday so I recorded them all and have been re-watching a couple of episodes per evening over the past week. I've got two more to go and I'll be ready for season two.

Mad Men is set in the world of Madison Avenue advertising circa 1960. Season one ends with the election of JFK and the Thanksgiving that followed so I expect season two will pick up from there. While they aren't explicit about it, one of the aims of the makers of Mad Men is to contrast that world with our own PC-drenched, so-called enlightened era. The attitudes then in place - towards women, marriage, divorce, drinking, smoking, psychiatry, and more - are presented here with little editorializing; things are simply portrayed as they were without comment or judgement. When one of the advertising executives calls a secretary "honey" or "sweetheart", or comments on the way she walks, there are no pauses in the action. The camera doesn't stop to show the woman's reaction. We only notice the moment because it contrasts so sharply with our current attitudes. The same is true when Roger Sterling, one of the firms partners, gets into his car to drive home blind drunk. Don Draper, the advertising whiz who is the show's main focus, doesn't try to stop Sterling, or take his keys, or call him a cab; he simply closes his front door. During another episode, one of the other ad men buys a rifle and playfully aims it at people in the office. In virtually every episode, the men sit in meetings, each with a drink and cigarette in hand. Draper keeps cleaned and pressed shirts in the bottom drawer of his desk so he can change into a fresh one before going home to his wife; he doesn't want her to smell the scent of his lover. Inter-office affairs are conducted, sometime in the office behind closed doors. Never does the show stop to announce, "See how bad things were back then? See how much we've progressed?" Nor does it take the other side, claiming things were better in the old days. Mad Men simply portrays the world as it was, a world in which women married young, had babies, raised a family, and had dinner waiting in the evening when their husbands arrived home; if they were ambitious they became secretaries. Men worked, smoked, drank, and had affairs.

And boy did they smoke. The screens becomes almost claustrophobic with cigarette smoke at times. Everyone smoked back in those days, or nearly everyone. My buddy who first told me about the show was from a military background and apparently his parents were non-smokers. He told me he found the amount of cigarette smoking done on the show to be off-putting - it was simply too much. It doesn't bother me because I come from a world in which everyone smoked. I grew up in that world. My mother didn't smoke but she was the only one - I remember my mother's uncle (Uncle Fred, long gone now, and one of my favorite people) once telling me that she was the only person in the entire extended family who didn't smoke. Same on my father's side. We all smoked. So the world of Mad Men does not seem far-fetched or exaggerated to me in that aspect whatsoever. Smoking was cool; it was glamorous. Take the cigarettes out of Mad Men and it loses that glamour.

Mad Men is much more than an anthropology lesson though - I hope I haven't given that impression. The acting is marvelous, the story lines are quirky and surprising, and it has lots of excellent characters. Don Draper is clearly the most interesting; the man with a past he's trying to escape. I think of The Great Gatsby when I think of Draper - the American story of escaping the world you were born into, remaking yourself into what you want to be, limited only by your own ability and imagination. And Draper is a man of immense ability and large imagination. As portrayed by Jon Hamm, he's a riveting presence on the screen, the kind of man other men want to be like, and women want to be with. I'm looking forward to season two of this excellent series with great anticipation.

Dial M for Murder

I was just about to hit the hay last night when I flipped through the channels and stumbled upon Dial M for Murder, which had just started. I've seen lots of Hitchcock but somehow this one had eluded me. I prefer his early stuff - the films he made in England before he came to Hollywood. I find The 39 Steps,The Lady Vanishes, or Foreign Correspondent much more fun than say, Psycho, or Spellbound. Still, he did a number of excellent Hollywood movies; Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, and North by Northwest.

Dial M doesn't measure up to the best of Hitch but it will do. I was intrigued by (spoiler alert!) the plot the Ray Milland character devises to kill his unfaithful wife, Grace Kelly, and even more intrigued by how, after she kills the intruder who is supposed to kill her, he sets her up to make it seem like premeditated murder. And, of course, the Milland character almost get away with it. You know all along he won't, just as you know Grace Kelly won't end up in the gas chamber. What you don't know is what will trip him up in the end. It's fun - not hugely entertaining like the best of Hitchcock, but well worth staying up late for.

The question that kept nagging me the whole way through was this: why would Grace Kelly cheat on Ray Milland with so bland a fellow as Robert Cummings? Milland was suave, debonair, witty, charming. A bit of a cad perhaps, but a lot of woman like cads, just as, as a moviegoer, a lot of us like woman who like cads. Anyhow, Robert Cummings is such a zero that it is hard to believe she'd find something appealing about this guy. We lose respect for her. The movie would have worked much better if Cummings were the cuckolded husband and Milland were the lover. We could understand Grace Kelly making a mistake of marriage to a nonentity, and as a result we could much better understand an affair with the sophisticated Milland. Furthermore, the smallness, the nothingness, of Cummings would have made his getting caught in the end much more satisfying; we would feel he got what was coming to him and the two people who belonged together - the ravishingly beautiful Grace Kelly and the charmer Milland - were now free to do so. Instead, we're almost sorry Milland doesn't get away with it.

Grace Kelly is beautiful here but the script doesn't allow her to show off her full sensuality. She is dressed in a lovely nightgown during the murder scene and immediately afterwards; we're aware of her beauty. But the character she plays and the plot direction don't allow for anything more than this. We don't get the playful flirtations from her as in To Catch a Thief, nor the more overtly sexual longings of an adult woman as in Rear Window. This is another reason why the movie could have been better with the male roles switched. As it is, Grace Kelly is an adulteress but one without guilt or shame. If the male roles had been switched and she were shown enjoying her sensuality during a tryst with Milland, she'd be more of a fallen woman, and more interesting. As it always is in the movies, the bad girls are much more interesting than the good ones. Grace Kelly is too good here.

The Open

Wow. Greg Norman? David Duval? And we thought this British Open would be a dud due to the absence of Tiger. This is really the best possible scenario for a Tiger-less Open, even better than if Phil, or Sergio, or Vijay, or Ernie, or any of the games other top guns were vying for the lead. If either Norman or Duval win, this tournament will enter golfing lore immediately and be forever remembered by lovers of the game. For Norman it will be equivalent to Nicklaus at the Masters in 1986. For Duval, well, I can't come up with any scenario off the top of my head to compare it to. It would be simply stunning, and deeply satisfying, if either of them win. Everyone in golf is hoping that on Sunday afternoon one of them will be walking up towards the 18th green with the tournament in hand, surrounded by exultant British fans, emerging from the tumult and chaos, transformed from tragic figure into inspirational hero. The tears that will flow around golf could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. And a few of them might be mine.

The Wonder of Me, by Barack Obama

Charles Krauthammer's column this morning is an instant classic. The past few weeks have not been good ones for Barack Obama and one of the reasons is due to the undeniability of the man's self-regard. I've seen dozens of comments alluding to Obama's outsized ego lately and it appears to be seeping into the public mind. Jonah Goldberg also had something to say about this last week. The two columns together make for a devastating indictment. Read them both.

I swing back and forth on Obama's chances for the presidency. Some days it appears inevitable. Other days he seems to have insurmountable obstacles. I will say this: if Obama is to lose, Krauthammer - who to my mind is the finest political columnist now working in America - will be one of the first people we should thank. Nightly on Brit Hume's Special Report panel and week in and week out in his column, he has become a one-man wrecking crew aimed at Obama and his presidential aspirations.

Shorts

Akin to speculators are the short sellers - people who short the market, i.e. bet that the price of a stock or a commodity will go down. The normal way it works, in a nutshell, is this: a trader who believes the price of a financial instrument will go down will borrow shares from his broker and sell them on the open market with a promise to repay the broker those shares within a certain period. If the price does indeed go down, he then buys back the shares at the current price and returns the shares to his broker. The difference between what he sold them for and what he repurchased them for is his profit. To put numbers to this, say I borrow 100 shares of ABC corporation and sell them for $100 per share. I now have $10,000. Two weeks later the price of ABC has dropped to $92.50. I repurchase all 100 shares at that price for $9,250 and return the shares to my broker. I've made a profit of $750.

Of course, if I'm wrong I'll get burned. Say the price of ABC stock goes up to $110 per share. I must still cover and return the shares to my broker. In this case I've lost $1000 ($10,000 I received when I borrowed and sold vs. the $11,000 I had to pay to cover, i.e. repurchase the shares to return to my broker.)

The SEC moved to limit naked shorting against the financial sector the other day. Naked shorting is the practice of selling shares without borrowing them first. I don't really have a problem with this, though I don't know enough about it to be sure. In what is probably a first for this blog, I'll state that on this issue I may change my mind once I've learned more about the practice.

But my real concern in this post is normal shorting, and with this I have no problem whatsoever and neither should anyone else. Shorters get a bad rap but they perform an important function in money and commodity markets. As Jerry Bowyer pointed out the other day on Kudlow's show, short sellers are (I paraphrase) the market disciplinarians, the ones who say, "no, I don't believe this story." They are the market pessimists, often the market realists, and they keep stocks and commodity prices from exploding irrationally to the upside. They have been blamed for the crash of the financial stocks but they've been correct in their analysis - the balance sheets of many financial companies, even in good times, are baroque works of fiction that are not understood even by company insiders. So complex are the assets these firms hold that putting a value on them is akin to throwing a dart blindfolded. It is natural for executives to be, shall we say, optimistic when assigning those values. When the subprime crisis arrived last fall, the shorts were the ones who understood this first. They made money of the trade because they were right. More power to them.

Anyhow, the Wall Street Journal has a nice column this morning on the recent SEC decision. It's well worth reading in full. The point is, people who speculate on oil are not evil, nor are people who short the market. They both perform important functions. Blaming all our current woes on them is an prerogative only for politicians and other ignorant people.

Last Word on Speculation

Is oil starting to crack? It's gone from $147 a barrel to under $130 in three days. What happened to those evil speculators? Well, the short-term longs got burned. The shorts made some money. If oil continues to go down, which I think it will in the short-term (long-term we will see prices in the $150 range, and higher, again), how will Obama and the Dems explain it to us commoners?

George Bush on occasion gets something right and on this issue he can take a well-deserved bow - a partial one anyway. The three day sell off in oil came immediately after he lifted the executive order banning off-shore drilling. The move clearly had a psychological effect on the market as traders came to the conclusion that public opinion on drilling has finally reached the political class and perhaps future sources of supply are on the horizon. Add to this the news of shrinking demand here in the U.S. along with evidence of a global slowdown and it all adds up to a quick correction in oil prices. As I've argued from the beginning, supply and demand forces seem to be in control, not speculators.

T. Boone Pickens, America's leading oilman, agrees. From a recent Reuters article:

Pickens downplayed the role that speculative trading and institutional investors -- forces some see behind the high oil prices -- have had in the price trend. Asked about the role of institutional investors, Pickens told reporters he does not "agree that that has anything to do with oil prices ... It's a global market. It doesn't have anything to do with traders on Wall Street or any place else."

Jim Rogers, one of the world's most famous and successful commodity traders, said this the other day:

"Some people blame speculation for oil price rise. If it is speculation, when the oil price is too high, the people with oil will drown the speculators. It is just a stupid accusation that speculators are behind the oil rally,"

Ben Bernanke, Fed Chief, said this to the geniuses on Capital Hill during his congressional testimony the other day:

Another concern that has been raised is that financial speculation has added markedly to upward pressures on oil prices. Certainly, investor interest in oil and other commodities has increased substantially of late. However, if financial speculation were pushing oil prices above the levels consistent with the fundamentals of supply and demand, we would expect inventories of crude oil and petroleum products to increase as supply rose and demand fell. But in fact, available data on oil inventories show notable declines over the past year. This is not to say that useful steps could not be taken to improve the transparency and functioning of futures markets, only that such steps are unlikely to substantially affect the prices of oil or other commodities in the longer term."

I hope people take note of what these experts have to say and ignore the demagoguery of Obama and the left. We need more oil, period. Better we produce as much as we can here and keep the profits in house, so to speak. Let's get moving.

Empty Suit, Empty Words

Regular readers of this blog probably get the feeling that I don't like Barack Obama one bit. Guilty, your honor. Not only don't I like his policies, as I've said before, I think this man who presents himself as something new, as an agent of change, is nothing more than your typical politician, only more so. Since securing the nomination, he has changed his position on virtually every issue that got him the nomination. Now, politicians always move to the center for a general election but the head-spinning speed with which Obama has moved is pretty impressive. Then he tries to shade everything in grays to make it seem like he hasn't changed at all, and anyone who points out that he has is engaging in the politics of destruction. You see, we're not suppose to talk about things like that, and, so far, the mainstream media has not called him on it. Most of his supporters, I suspect, don't really care if he changes his position; except for the netroot radicals, it's the man, not the policies, they're so attracted to.

Well, as with Boss Clinton, I just don't get it. I could never understand the fascination with Bill Clinton - I thought it was pretty clear from the start that he was a snake-oil salesman. But a lot of Americans obviously disagreed. Now, there is a fascination with Obama that is even more intense that the Clinton phenomenon; as I've mentioned before, it borders on the Führerprinzip. And again I'm in the dark. Even many people on the right say they can see the attraction of the man but I apparently am lacking in some vital inner sensibility; all I see is an arrogant gasbag, spewing gusts of hot air. Now, hot air is the norm for politicians, but what separates Obama from the usual crown is his vast abundance of it; he never talks about the substance of his policies, such that they are; he never gives a straight answer; he always talks in shades of gray; he almost always averts attention from what was actually asked to some talking point that has nothing to do with the real issue. And he expects us to fall for it (reasonably so, since so many people are falling for it.) Again, this is the man who claims he is a new type of politician, post-racial, post-partisan.

But how about the condescending arrogance of the man? Have you noticed how he likes to lecture us? When he made the Philadelphia speech in which he was supposed to explain his twenty year relationship with the racist Reverend Wright, he turned it into an opportunity to lecture us about race. Later, he scolded us for driving SUVs, eating what we want, and keeping our homes at a comfortable temperature, apparently because the Europeans might frown upon these behaviors. Last week, he answered the question of whether newly-arrived immigrants should learn English thusly:

Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English—they'll learn English—you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. We should have every child speaking more than one language. It's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup.

My goodness, we've embarrassed Barack Obama in front of all his European friends again. Here is just one more example of the university lounge mentality of Obama. He'd fit right in with all the sophisticated professors having a good laugh at all us plebians.

I wrote the above portion of this post over the weekend but didn't have time to finish it. I rarely post during the week but decided to pick it up here tonight when I saw that they had a discussion about this very aspect of Obama's personality today over on The Corner. Peter Kirsanow's post mentions something I hadn't thought of: the lectures are being delivered by a man who's life experience is rather thin:

The bully pulpit can be a good thing, especially when the speaker addresses something universal (e.g. the need for fathers) or with which he has unique or considerable experience. Nonetheless, while most of us might listen to someone whose judgment is tempered by experience, even paternalistic lectures from wise men can grate after awhile. I often resented lectures from my father who fought in WWII, survived a German POW camp, was tortured by and escaped from the NKVD, labored for 20 years next to the blast furnaces of Cleveland, Ohio and started a small business; but at least he had something to say. Obama's lectures grate in no small part because there's little evidence that he's had any life experiences more grueling or tempering than, say, casting a vote in the senate.

Derb picked up on this a little later:"we have interns round the office with deeper life experience than Obama." How true! Obama loves to lecture but he has done little to earn the right. How many of us would dare scold others for not being able to speak a second language if we didn't speak one ourselves? The audacity indeed.