not about don draper

So, the current season of Mad Men, season 7, takes place in 1969. When a character in the second episode turns out to be racist, people (present day viewers, I mean) are surprised, plastering exclamation points all over twitter. Really? I wonder if today’s smartypants have forgotten that racism may include actual face-to-face discrimination in the workplace. I also wonder if they think the Civil Rights Movement was some abstract thing, that naturally just made sense to everybody. Of course it didn’t. Both Dr. King and Robert Kennedy were shot in 1968, just a year before the events of season 7.

kyle&noel, and trayvon martin

I have a lot I could write about: being seated on the jury for a civil trial, traveling to Ohio to attend a same-sex wedding where one of the grooms wore his army officer dress blues, spending the night at LAX after the accident at SFO… but everything gets overshadowed by the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. I’ll collect myself and write in a little while. For now, here is one of the best accounts of the meaning of the acquittal of George Zimmerman that I have read (and I’ve read many): by Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post, Black boys denied the right to be young.