I emailed the writer of an editorial on the series "Mad Men" and David Letterman in Sunday's Globe entitled "Letterman demonstrates 'Mad Men' isn't history." Link to her article below and my short response below that.

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2009/10/11/why_david_letterman_is_just_another_one_of_the_mad_men/


Dear Ms. Weiss: I loved your editorial on the series "Mad Men" and the realities of the David Lettermen sexual saga. There are so many sagas involving the rich and famous much too numerous to mention. I have been immersed in "Mad Men" since I am a lover of the 1960's -- pre 1963 and post. I experienced both those tumultuous and contradicting eras. The late 60's was the happiest time of my life bar none but I have politically changed and re-changed and changed again since that controversial period. A discussion, however, I once had at that time with my seventyish aunt (long since deceased), who loved talking about current events with me, lingers. When we talked about the "sexual revolution" of the late 60's which loosened up sexual morality so dramatically she said: "Ah, we had the same thing going on in my day but we just did not talk about it."

I am riveted by "Mad Men" because I think about the early sixties and am thankful for the changes which ensued later. My aunt was perhaps right though. It seems often things have not changed all that much because in 2009 we are STILL talking about it and talking about it and talking and talking .... which brings a reminder of another conversation I had with a rather radical student friend of mine in the LATE 1960's. The discussion was entitled: "Do your gonads rule your head or does your head rule your gonads?" I took the position that your head rules your gonads and that we had control over our biological impulses. He said I was consummately wrong and that gonads trump all. I suspect he was correct. We are STILL talking about it and, in fact, are doing it whether by societal proscription or not. I suspect it has been so since the symbolic Adam shared his tent with Eve and I think we always will. Both my aunt and my friend were right. Our gonads do rule and it is nothing new.