Lessons From the True Mad Men

Back in high school, I and most of my friends favored the same philosophical journal. We read it fervently, quoted it regularly, and were amazed at how often its simple messages skewered society’s foibles and cut through the overstuffed palaver that we were too often force-fed in class. One exception was an English teacher, Mr. Rothenberg, who, to our awe and glee, actually wrote for this journal.

It was, of course, Mad magazine.

Mad imparted any number of life lessons that have stayed with me these many decades, but one in particular stands out. It was in an entry called “The Lighter Side of Restaurants.” In one of the panels, a man walks into a very fancy restaurant and is escorted to a table for one by a snooty maître d’. An equally snooty waiter with a towel draped over one forearm approaches and asks the man what he would like to order. The man leans forward a bit and notices a diner at another table eating an appetizing looking dish with apparent satisfaction, and says to the waiter (long predating When Harry Met Sally), “I’ll have what he’s having.”

The waiter nods haughtily, leaves, then returns with a plate he places in front of the man before walking away. The man delicately cuts into whatever the dish happens to be and takes a small bite.

“Bllleeechhh!!!”

The man’s eyes bug out and he makes a face similar to what one would expect if he had just found out he had taken a bite of the fricasseed family dog. The man at the other table turns and says casually, without a trace of emotion, “I didn’t like it either.”

Which brings us to social media.

Never before have idealized images of ordinary people’s lives been transmitted so quickly and so pervasively to a huge audience, most of whom neither requested nor were particularly interested in seeing them. Some of these images are congruent with The Lighter Side of Restaurants. How many of us have not been bombarded with high-definition color photographs of what a friend, relative, or total stranger cooked or ate? Even when the food looks good—which is definitely not always the case—who’s to say it didn’t taste like gruel or cardboard? But, unlike with the man in Mad who finds out to his chagrin that taste actually matters, those who post food pics simply want viewers to see how sumptuous their food looks and favorably extrapolate from there.

But low-end culinary scams are the least of it. As we are all aware, children and teenagers have been inundated with posts on social media, especially TikTok, which have caused eating disorders, other psychological damage, the extent of which may be far greater than has yet been acknowledged, and even suicide.

The message is exploitive, cruel, and all too clear. Your peers are contemptuous of you. They are more attractive than you. They are laughing at you. But even worse, they are happier than you. They live better than you and you are a loser. Young people, especially young girls, being especially vulnerable to this sort of attack, often internalize their pain with disastrous results. Boys, however, have in no way been immune.

Many conservatives have blamed China for fostering this climate of self-hatred in young Americans, but purely domestic outlets, such as Instagram, have been right in there, trying to grab up market share while children descend into despair or worse. Mark Zuckerberg may be an utterly detestable human being, but at last check he was not Chinese.

Publicized far less, however, are similar stimuli aimed at adults, which provoke a similar reaction, except that with adults that reaction tends to be outward, not inward. Many of these posts, like food pics, are innocent and stupid, adults showing other adults how joyful and well-off they are, but a good bit of the content is calculated, aimed at provoking a political response.

That message is also clear. People who see the world differently than you are contemptuous of you. They are more attractive than you. They are laughing at you. But, again, even worse, they are happier than you. They live better than you and you are a loser. Not surprisingly, conservatives have been both more willing and more effective in promoting this sort of class hatred, the same set of beliefs that propelled the French Revolution.

An inescapable aspect of class hatred is envy and envy leads to anger and anger makes people act irrationally. And who better to exploit that angry irrationality that the quintessence of the angry man himself, Donald Trump. So, for those who ask whether those angry folks can be persuaded that pronouns on emails or the rare trans girl who competes in girls’ sports is more important, a greater threat, than concerns about their health care, or even their jobs, the answer is a resounding yes.

I’m a qualitative kind of guy so, to the irritation of more quantitative friends, I often focus more on intangibles than what passes for hard data or statistics. It has often held me in good stead, although sometimes not. My two greatest misfires were underestimating Donald Trump in the elections he won. I could be forgiven for 2016, because it did not come out until later how Hillary Clinton ignored many of her more savvy advisors and, for example, campaigned in Texas rather than Michigan. In this past election, however, I just blew it. I could not believe—and it is still difficult to accept—that our county had become so ignorant, so greedy, so lacking in both feeling and judgment, to again elect Donald Trump.

In retrospect, however, I should have given more credence to the brilliant insights that I acquired from Mad magazine when I was in high school.