It’s become accepted Mad Men fan wisdom that Betty Draper is a horrible mother, an ice queen, one of those wire-frame monkeys from the Harlow experiment. Up till this week, I only half-bought it. Betty, I always thought, was just supposed to be a chilly WASP archetype, not much worse than the other moms on …
Author Archives: Christopher
¿Como Se Dice “Pretentious”?
Look, I understand white liberal guilt. You want to be an enlightened Eat Pray Love multicultural creature, but you lead an unadventurous life—work, home, Thai takeout, sleep—and it means you mostly deal with people roughly like yourself. You would like your children to do better, to be citizens of the world, able to leap the …
Don’t Wait Up, Dada
I worked late tonight, and left the office at 8, dragging myself home and feeling a little like Don Draper (without the promiscuity, alcoholism, or secret past). My wife called me as I was headed for the elevator, and noted that my son was still awake, but that he’d be asleep by the time I …
Heavy Weekend Rotation, or: Finding the Zone
I love spending the weekend with my boy. I do. He’s sweet and funny and not especially demanding, as 17-month-olds go. And at the end of it, I feel like I’ve just run the Ironman. My wife and I are, as a couple, not compromisers—we probably are trying to hold ourselves to a standard that’s …
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