I really appreciate everything Carl has said about the decline and fall of The New Republic. When I think about what Chris Hughes has wrought, my personal narrative focuses on the Silicon Valley takeover of everything. It’s not that I don’t think it’s illegal or un-American for a Facebook guy to buy a cherished American literary/political institution and disrupt it anyway he wants in the interest of economic sustainability or whatever. I pity the fools, however, who really believed that The New Republic would somehow be redeemed to its past or even pretty recent glory by this guy. I could go on and talk about the more complicated example of Peter Thiel, but you might think I’m obsessed with Thielism. I could also talk about Jeff Bezos, or go a bit more in the industrial (or somewhat-out-of-touch) direction of the Koch brothers. That would make me sound much more moralistic than I actually am. I’m open to a personal bailout by any of these creative and disruptive gentlemen. I am concerned about the effects these guys — bringing in Bill Gates and others — are having on American education and especially higher education.

When thinking about what’s happening now, I find refuge, as I’ve said before, in selective nostalgia — and today I’m not talking polis envy (Straussians and Arendtians) or “it takes a medieval village” (Alasdair MacIntyreans), but a quick visit to 1959.

As an aid to being nostalgic and being selective, I went back to the beginning in my study of the AMC instant classic Mad Men. That’s to the first show of the first season, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” I’m going to brainstorm with myself about the show’s indictment of what went on in top ad agencies in Manhattan in 1959.

1. Everyone smoked. Thanks to Reader’s Digest, it was generally known that cigarettes were “poisonous.” So it’s the job of the ad agency to market the product with that inconvenient fact in mind. One arc of progress since 1959: the war on smoking fought by all our major institutions. Manhattan bars and offices would now be smoke-free — and everyone’s eyes (and other parts) would benefit. (Following the lead of other colleges, we just banned smoke from all of Berry’s 26,000 acres. And we’re offering various forms of cessation therapy for anyone who’s having trouble kicking the habit.) The astounding thing about the show is that the sophisticated guys know the score about smoking, but it doesn’t scare them into stopping. It is true that Don Draper rejects as stupidly counterproductive an ad campaign that explicitly appeals to the American spirit of risk-taking or the “death wish” Freud tells us we all share. That sort of thing has to remain subliminal.

2. There was a culture of drinking hard liquor — even at work. Sometimes the result might be being freed from personal inhibitions and an inspired, off-the-cuff sales pitch. But, overall, there were obvious costs in personal productivity, as well a dramatic increase in non-connsensual personal behavior. Liquor was deployed by ad men to induce women and clients to do what they wouldn’t do in their right minds. Being drunk was also an excuse for doing what you aren’t supposed to do in order to have fun, speak candidly, or gain advantage.

3. Women employees are secretaries and such. They’re called “the girls.” They joke about the sexual favors they perform to keep or enhance their jobs. The less-classy ad men abuse their “girls” with degrading conversation. Women tell each other to “dress for success” or uncover their legs and to be rigorously honest in assessing their physical assets. Not only that, an innocent young woman who comes to work at the agency is sent by her highly experienced female mentor to the doctor for birth control. The uncaring male physician harasses her for her personal choice and warns her he will cut her off if she abuses it. Men don’t have to be sexually available to keep their jobs, but women do. No one blames men for their promiscuity, but women are viciously labelled for doing what they’re stuck with doing. The poor women are denied the right to enjoy sexual pleasure for what it is.

4. Even Don Draper himself can’t stand it when his authority is threatened by a smart woman. Even Don assumes that a smart and pretty woman would be happier as a stay-at-home mom than as an executive.

5. In general, successful men don’t take marital fidelity seriously. Women, meanwhile, don’t fool around after marriage. Men can have it all – wives, kids, girlfriends, hookups, jobs, freedom generally — but women can’t

6. Gay employees are fearfully in the closet and lie about their heterosexual conquests.

7. Jews have their own ad agencies, and the others don’t hire Jews. The most sophisticated and classy ad men joke about how ridiculous all that is, but they don’t do anything about it.

There are others, but I always like to stop at 7. The history of the show is largely progress, through the Sixties, away from the unjust and unhealthy madness. Next exercise: What are some downsides of what is, to a point, all this undeniable progress? One example: Studies show that technological progress has slowed to a crawl in our time in areas detached from the safe space of the screen because we’ve become too obsessively risk-averse.

One more point: The first episode of MM was much more over-the-top or unsubtly polemical than almost all the others.