Mad Men: those were the days
Thursday, February 12, 2009 The US TV drama Mad Men returned to BBC Four this week. A cult hit, journalists and broadcasters have been queuing up to pay tribute. "A true guilty pleasure," suggested the Independent. "Its lack of political correctness is what makes it great."
The BBC website has this to say about it, including a quote from Forest's Neil Rafferty:
Much comment has been passed on the smoking and drinking in the series. The characters get up, they smoke, they finish breakfast, they smoke, they have a meeting, they smoke, they smoke in between mouthfuls of lunch. They smoke a lot ...
The portrayal comes at a time when anti-smoking activists are starting to take a dim view of characters smoking in mainstream television drama. But the realism is welcomed by Neil Rafferty, of smoking rights campaign group Forest.
"It looks really authentic - they have captured the look and the feel very well. Obviously, smoking, whether you like it or not, was an absolutely integral part of life in the 1960s. They smoked in offices, they smoked pretty much all day. Television and film-makers shouldn't have to pretend life was different."
Full feature HERE.
Reader Comments (7)
No doubt some anti will suggest that the screenwriters have the entire cast dying of smoking related diseases in the final episode.
Antis don't suggest Anna, they order.
In order to be a good liar you need a good memory. You need to recall the stories you told yesterday so that you can make todays stories work. The trouble with the anti-smoking extremists is not that they don't have good memories, it is that they have no memories at all. Forget yesterdays lies, todays will be bigger and better. Along with no memory they have no historical perspective, no real perspective of any kind, in fact precious little sense of reality. These are people, in short,who are happy to re-write the past, why not, they have no trouble re-writing the present. Film makers will not have to pretend that things were different, the antis will tell them things were different and it will be true because they say so.
Change of subject slightly..The latest! Second hand smoke increases risk of dementia 'researchers' have found.
I sick to the back teeth of this utter garbage, trash and utter dog rot eminating from so called universtities whom obviously have nothing better to do.
If that rubbish was true why has'nt half the population suffered from dementia in the last 500 years? Research that o mighty intelligent ones.
Sorry rant over. By blood boiled.
Dear Peter James, Thankyou for the rant it saved me the trouble. I am a research scientist, have been for thirty years. I don't understand how these charlatans get things published in peer review journals. I don't understand science by press release and I don't understand how surveys and bean counting got to be science. I am thinking of taking up landscape gardening except that as an experienced gardner I know it cannot be done without using the dreaded chemicals occasionally so the greenies will be after me right along with the antis. What a life.
MCO you have put it in a nutshell, all the antis are lying sychopaths.
And to quote an old saying 'you can save yourself from anything but a liar'.
I was delighted to hear a listener phoning a radio show this moring, that the failed ex irish health minister that brought in the smoking ban to ireland, was on, informing him that the smokers in ireland were the only ones that were keeping the economy going. And the creeping jesus just made half a laugh and mumbled some comment about being welcomed everywhere (in his dreams) before being cut off.
I disagree with you strongly, Ann, when you say that "all the antis are lying psychopaths".
Most antis are just very gullible, and usually, uneducated, people, who have been brainwashed and taken in, by the propaganda dished out by this government.
You have to try looking at these people and what they are saying, doing, and believing in, in a completely different manner.
I know that most people who smoke are naturally very angry with these people, these "antis", who spout such ridiculous "facts", in the face of common sense, and scientific evidence, but getting angry with the person who waves his hand in front of your face or tells you that your clothes and hair stink, is getting angry with the wrong person.
On Question time last week, the editor of The Sun (or ex editor, I am not sure), spoke about "ghastly, problem children", and was quickly, and rightfully, in my opinion, put in his place by a Muslim member of the panel (Sorry, I don't know her name). She told him that there are no such thing as "ghastly, problem children", just "ghastly, problem parents", which I believe is 100% correct.
And this, is what we have here with those who oppose smoking. It is not the "ghastly, problem antis", it is our "ghastly, problem government".
Education, starts at the top, children do not educate themselves, and "antis" did not educate themselves either. These groups have been brainwashed, and kept from learning how to distinguish right from wrong, and how to think and ask questions for themselves.
Think back a few years, to before the smoking ban came in, and ask yourself, how many people did you come across then, who would wave their hands in front of your face and tell you that you stink, and are murdering babies, with your filthy habit?
Personally, I cannot remember one single person, who acted and said such things, which obviously proves my point. These people really believe all the nonsense they are being fed with, just as centuries ago, people believed the earth was flat, because they had been told it was.
Can you imagine travelling back in time, to the 1700s, and telling people there, that one day they would be able to watch live images in a box, called a television, or talk to someone the other side of the world with a tiny box, called a telephone, or fly in the air, in a massive metal machine, called a plane? You would have been burnt at the stake for even mentioning such blasphemy.
The people, I am talking about, were not lying psychopaths, either, they were, just like today's "antis", poor people, who know no better. It is our job to tell these people the truth, and try to educate them, we will not do this by calling them silly names, like they call us.