Yes, they are. An entire culture can get infatuated with itself and leave average citizens in intoxicated stupors for decades. Anyone who doesn't go along is, therefore, "un-American". It usually takes a new generation of wide-eyed children to finally see through the "group think" and say, "Bullshit."

I'm so glad that the TV series "Mad Men" exists now as a permanent sociological document. It shows so clearly why the "paradise" of the 1950's was actually a nightmare to those of us who were "conscious" (including children like me) and could see past the hypocrisy, the superficiality, the selfishness, the dishonesty and the cowardice passing as "normalcy". The exploitation of young women, the distrust of queers and the benign neglect of negroes fitted hand-in-glove with the overriding pretense that "Everything is the way God intended it to be" — a conceit certified by smug and sanctimonious religious professionals.

Every executive in every scene has a lit cigarette in his hand and an open bottle of liquor in his office. Most of the men compensate for loveless marriages by relentlessly "chasing skirts". Nor were the women, queers and negroes innocent either, for to be rewarded they had to join in the hypocrisy and at least pretend to believe in the system. And went along they did, like the good sheep Christianity had taught them to be. Contrary to what the "class warfare" hold-ons might have told you, there was a great effort at this time to welcome everyone, successes and failures, into the big tent of politeness and civility. It would take another decade before the women, queers and negroes would realize that only "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" and start pointing out that no amount of politeness could heal the intransigent unfairness of this system.

So anytime some cynic tells you that hippies were just drug-crazed commies who hated America, tell them to watch "Mad Men". And anytime some cynic tells you that society never progresses, ask them how middle-class life slowly became so very different from this brightly-packaged horror.

Why do dramas like "Mad Men" speak to us so much more powerfully than sociology textbooks do? Enlightenment philosophers always knew that the new form of literature called "the novel" (which is simply French for "new") might be a better teaching tool for the masses than dry and lifeless philosophical treaties that only a handful of overly educated philosophes could cope with. Since English peasants could never afford to visit France, for example, they might at least dive into an entertaining piece of fiction that takes place in France. A credible background helped suspend disbelief, even if the plot was entirely made up from wholecloth — giving the reader the vicarious experience of a world they never otherwise could have glimpsed. Making reality as important as ideality to the average man was the final lynch pin in the Enlightenment's conspiracy to free man from the magical thinking in theological dogma.

For centuries most people have gotten their sense of the human side of history by watching the plays of Shakespeare, ignoring the gossip columns of our so-called historians. And the reason is simple. Playrights Right about now the sociologists are saying, "Throw away all those musty old sociology textbooks. Just watch Mad Men!" understand audiences, historians understand ivory towers. All of us understand best whatever it is we're forced to deal with on a daily basis. Even in the Twenty-First Century, exculpations of reality are entrusted to those grubby poets and story-tellers who have tasted life, while the eggheads content themselves with what Will Durant used to call "more and more about less and less". In their exclusive club, whoever publishes more footnotes before he dies, wins. These days most novels are trash, but I think the aliens that are watching us will benefit from cozying up with the sleaziest romance novels — or grinning at the flimsiest cartoons of Norman Rockwell — if they communicate even the slightest insight about the nature of us ickies.

I remember as a teenager devouring Victorian erotic memoirs, from which I learned not only how the son of the master of the house could so easily have his way with pretty little maids, but also about the social order of the time. Yes, it was mostly fun but in the final analysis not entirely devoid of benefit to my burgeoning curiosity about the larger worlds beyond my experience.

Unfortunately, they got the ending wrong. Here's what it should have been.

After hanging out with California dreamers for a few months, we find Donald Draper in a consciousness-raising group. He feels sorry for a man like him whose life has fallen apart. The group ends with a song prayer and a group hug. Afterwards, Don says, "Here, let me buy you a coke." They go off and Don drapes his arm across the shoulders of the weeping divorcé. He starts rocking him back and forth and then starts mumbling to himself. Without warning he whispers his new-found idealism aloud, "I'd like to teach the world to sing"

The man looks up and smiles. Don continues his reverie, but this time in song of his own:

"... in perfect harmony ..."

Both of them are cheered up by this. Don whips out his cell phone and calls the director of his ad agency in New York.

"Ted, I've got an idea for a commercial."

Cut to the "Buy the World a Coke" jingle. THE END.