One of the running jokes on Mad Men is how many moments in history they keep getting wrong, as the events of their times unfold around them.
But don’t expect the people who create the show to have any more clairvoyance about the times that they inhabit. Which is why it’s not at all surprising to see ObamaCare supporter Jon Hamm tells Bill Maher:
And presumably AMC or Hamm’s producers aren’t going to lose much sleep over his remarks, even though Mad Men’s already cultish ratings have contracted significantly this year. But Hamm’s ham-handed remarks are a reminder that as always, Bill Whittle’s Lou Grant Rule is inviolable:
The talented Ed Asner, the actor who played Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, is politically to the left of Mao. Put Ed Asner and Lou Grant in a steel cage, let them talk politics for five minutes, and Lou Grant would kick Ed Asner’s ass. Even Murray Slaughter would be handing up folding chairs: ‘Hit the bastard again Lou, he’s still talking about income redistribution!’ Dana Scully is a brilliant, courageous, skeptical physician who is handy with an automatic; Gillian Anderson is deep into crystals and has trouble with her shoelaces. Jack Ryan crawls through the bowels of a stolen Russian submarine fighting a dirty shadow war to keep America free, and Alec Baldwin doesn’t. He seems to find the whole idea of a Jack Ryan deeply embarrassing. This list, sadly, goes on too.
And that was written almost eight years ago. The list has grown infinitely since.
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