Riding Update

SO. As I mentioned on FB, one of the riding centres wrote back to me, offering me a ride on Thanksgiving Day at 1 pm, and asking my height and weight (so they can assign me an appropriate horse). I wrote back, giving them the information and saying I needed a smallish horse but they needn't worry about a tame one, I am well-used to angsty, drama queen horses that overreact to everything. But eeeeeeeehhhh! I get to ride in IRELAND!

I am also checking out some B&Bs--I was thinking about staying two nights at that really cool-looking hostel, Jacob's Inn, and then two nights at a B&B. Decisions, decisions...

Mad Men, "The Sword and the Chrysanthemum"

Last night I went over to Tesse's for our weekly Mad Men date. Okay, Matthew Weiner? You need to stop writing Betty as misogyny-bait. I get tired of Betty doing something to her kids that is going to provoke a torrid flood of shitty comments about how horrible she is. I know, I know--the only good female characters in MM are Peggy and Joan. The quotient has been filled and all the others are: narcissistic bitches (Betty) (that's a direct quotation, BTW); stalkers (Suzanne Farrell), boring, superior and anachronistic (Dr. Faye Miller), stupid whores who should've known better than to expect the slightest consideration after getting boinked by the boss (Allison)...I know I should just accept the conventional fan wisdom but I don't. All of these characters are real and dimensional--there are perhaps one or two unredeemably bad characters in my opinion on the show--Lee garner, Jr. (God, what a great villain, "puddid awn, Roguh!") and Duck, and even Duck has redeeming qualities, they're just not enough in my eyes. (I loathe--LOATHE--Duck because of what he did to Chauncey. I hate Duck more than I hate Joan's husband.) Betty is not a narcissistic bitch--she's a woman emerging from an extremely damaged and damaging marriage where her husband undermined her every chance he got. (And not because he's a horrible person but because Don is also damaged.)

And as I keep pointing out, things were different back then. Parents disciplined differently. Other people's parents even disciplined differently (season 1, when the neighbor smacks the kid who's not his who's running through the house at Sally's birthday party). Getting smacked in the face WAS a severe punishment but yes, it was done. As I posted on Facebook, I was smacked in the face by an aunt at a much younger age than Sally (I was about 5-6), and harder, and no one did anything about it--and that was in the '70s. (And my aunt was MUCH more physically imposing than Betty, she was at least three times my size, a very tall, athletic woman.) It may also be a WASP thing--as a cultural generalization, they're not particularly touchy-feely and they do discipline physically. I was also spanked, as were my brothers, and not just with the hand, I got the paddle. We also had our mouths washed out with soap. I have mixed feelings about all of this: for one thing, I gave my aunt a very wide berth after that and never forgot what she did. And I don't think parents should spank with objects (like a paddle or a belt). But I do think spanking on the butt, with a hand, is fine. (It goes without saying I obviously don't think other parents should have the right to physically discipline a child who's not theirs. On the other hand, feel free to step in and scold the child, if they need it--it takes a village.) Honestly I do not see the harm in that--the butt has a lot of fat which is why it's painful but doesn't do any damage. And I don't think I was scarred for life by having my mouth washed out either. I remember my parents (by that I mean my dad and stepmother) asking me after I became an adult about being spanked--I said of course I hated it. "So...?" "So I tried not to misbehave after that!" They both laughed.

ANYWAY. My point is that I really do see Don as being just as bad a parent in his own way--yes, he is more easy-going but he can be, because he is there less. Obviously he's there less now because of the divorce, but even before, during the marriage, he was:

*working all the time and skipping Thanksgiving (season 1)
*skipping out on his daughter's birthday party to go get drunk
*leaving family events to go hook up with Bobbie Barrett (the country club event)
*drunk-driving with Bobbie Barrett in the middle of the night
*flitting off to California for a month
*leaving the house so he can spend the night with his DAUGHTER'S TEACHER.

Even in this episode he had a date when the kids were there, and later on he admitted he had mixed feelings about being around them. Betty even tried to point this out to him in Season 2, how much more time she spends with them than he does, when she was getting frustrated with Bobby's behavior and said "you're not with them all day like I am." No, you're not, Don. And apparently you don't want to be any more than Betty does. Maybe if you were, you'd have as short a fuse as she does. It's very easy to be the Good Parent when you're never there--you have less time in which to make a mistake. And it's to Betty's credit that even after her horrible experiences with a psychiatrist in Season 1, she was able to listen to Henry's advice and see about getting one for Sally.

But can I ask, why was everyone SO upset about Sally's Adventures in Hair-Styling? Kids do that. Not only did I cut my little brother's hair (he had big fat blond curls all over his head, like Freddie Bobbsey and hated them. So I obligingly cut them off for him.) I also did the same thing to myself when I was in the 8th grade, cut my own bangs. (This is one time where my urgency to ACT did not pay off--huge mistake.) Either time, nobody punished me. Kids do this sort of thing.

Tesse and I were shocked at Roger's behavior toward the Honda executives but then I started thinking about it--if Roger really did fight in the Pacific theater during WWII, I think his hatred is more understandable. Yes, what Joan said is absolutely right--you fought to make the world a better place and now it is. Absolutely. But sometimes you can't let go of things so quickly. The Pacific theater was brutal. Read about the Bataan Death March sometime, it was horrible. Really, just heart-breaking, they would just behead weak prisoners, or any kind of prisoner, for no reason. Incredibly depressing. There's other stuff as well, like the Rape of Nanking.. It's absolutely to Japan's credit that they rejected their brutal militarism after the war (even to the point that the Japanese Constitution now prohibits war) but someone like Roger may not be able to let go of those feelings so easily. Anyway, I think he's entitled to them.