In any event, it involves a public relations firm known as the Rendon Group, which was hired by the Clinton Administration to create the fiction of an organized expatriate Iraqi resistance known as the Iraqi National Congress (“INC”). Whatever Clinton’s reasons were to create this fiction, history shows that he did not use it as a pretext to invade Iraq; in fact, Clinton resisted calls to do just that from the Project for a New American Century, which counted among its illustrious members … Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. But in the hands of a political neophyte like George W. Bush, who was easily controlled by guys like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, the fictitious Iraqi resistance provided the cover needed to sell a willing America on the idea of invading the wrong country.

And so the Rolling Stone story begins on December 17, 2001, with a CIA operative in Pattaya, Thailand, interviewing a Kurdish Iraqi expat named Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, who’s strapped to a polygraph machine telling “an explosive tale” of hidden chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, “just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for.” But the polygraph results proved the story to be a lie, and so the CIA operative returned home, disappointed.

But lo and behold, just three days later, on December 20, 2001, the New York Times ran al-Haideri’s now-debunked story, in an article penned, of course, by Judith Miller:

AN IRAQI DEFECTOR TELLS OF WORK ON AT LEAST 20 HIDDEN WEAPONS SITES, declared the headline. “An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer,” Miller wrote, “said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago.” If verified, she noted, “his allegations would provide ammunition to officials within the Bush administration who have been arguing that Mr. Hussein should be driven from power partly because of his unwillingness to stop making weapons of mass destruction, despite his pledges to do so.”

How did the Times and Miller get this story just three days after a CIA operative determined it wasn’t true? Well, it appears that Miller got it from Ahmad Chalabi, the titular leader of the INC, who helped arrange for al-Haideri to tell his story to the CIA and who might have (ahem) “coached” him and other defectors the CIA was talking to.

So Miller and the New York Times were essentially acting as stenographers for the INC, a fake group used to sell lies about Iraq’s WMD programs, led by one of the great charlatans of the 21st century (as Leslie Gelb explained in this April 2008 piece in the New York Times).

And it wasn’t a minor mistake:

For months, hawks inside and outside the administration had been pressing for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. Now, thanks to Miller’s story, they could point to “proof” of Saddam’s “nuclear threat.” The story, reinforced by [Paul] Moran’s on-camera interview with al-Haideri on the giant Australian Broadcasting Corp., was soon being trumpeted by the White House and repeated by newspapers and television networks around the world. It was the first in a long line of hyped and fraudulent stories that would eventually propel the U.S. into a war with Iraq – the first war based almost entirely on a covert propaganda campaign targeting the media.

Fast-forward to today. The Iraq war is over. Nearly 5,000 American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines died there, along with hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians. Tens of thousands of the men and women who were fortunate enough to return home from Iraq carry with them physical, mental and emotional scars that may take years to heal. If at all. And after all that, Iraq remains one of the most violent places on earth.

There’s no alchemy that can transform Miller’s and the Times’ misrepresentations into the truth. Knowingly or not, they peddled lies, and as a direct and proximate result, untold thousands of people suffered and died.

But now the New York Times wants us to be outraged over Pres. Obama’s actions in relation to the press. “With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible ‘co-conspirator’ in a criminal investigation of a news leak,” says the Times, “the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.” Pres. Obama, according to Times guest columnist Glenn Greenwald, “has waged a sustained and unprecedented war on whistleblowers, press freedoms and the basic mechanisms of the newsgathering process.” Sounds pretty serious, no?

We liberals eat this stuff up. We rally to defend the Times and other media outlets because there are broader issues at stake, important constitutional principles to be vindicated, despite the fact that the Times and the rest of the media repeatedly abuse the rights they have, sometimes with horrifyingly deadly results. It’s almost as if we somehow believe that if we keep defending the media, eventually – maybe, hopefully, someday – they’ll do their damn job.

I get it. What choice do we have? But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that my enthusiasm for protecting the press dies a little more with every lie, every trumped up phony scandal, every “both sides do it” bit of drivel that trickles out of the lowly fourth estate. So, please, New York Times, spare me the spittle-flecked exercise in First Amendment outrage. I’ll defend you, but that doesn’t mean I have to like you.

The post The New York Times and the Left’s Stockholm Syndrome appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

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I thought it best to wait 48 hours before weighing in on the Xbox One. While there are some statistical benefits to being first, there is nothing personally satisfying about bellowing a knee-jerk reaction at the top of my lungs. Microsoft had effectively bought itself the benefit of the doubt. I use my Xbox 360 for such a variety of tasks that my assessment of its sequel must be measured and thoughtful. The Xbox 360 changed the way we use our game consoles forever. I appreciate that.

After much research and consideration. One word stood tall. Hubris.

Beyond the specs and facts there is the tone. A tone that I admittedly ignored for months before the announcement. Speculation about the system demanding an internet connection to work. Ignored. The strangely elitist rhetoric from former Microsoft Executive Adam Orth. I held firm in the belief that after soaking in the massive quantities of goodwill garnered by the Xbox 360 Microsoft would remember exactly how it came to power: options. The Xbox 360 started as a game console. Then became a social media hub. Then a multimedia hub. Then just an outright cable box. Or none of these things. You could use it as you pleased. It could be argued that the success of the Xbox 360 came from numerous ideas being thrown against the wall and, even in the case of failure, consumer appreciation trumped everything. We appreciated the removable hard drive even if it was costly to upgrade. We appreciated the USB computer adaptable controllers even though they broke as they saw fit. We appreciated the digitally downloadable games featured in the Xbox Live Arcade space even as the Xbox Live Indie Games space created awful (and awkward) games right next door. We appreciated the implementation of the Xbox Live service even though the words ‘Xbox Live’ generate an entirely different set of emotions if you are a person of color or a woman. Something about the juxtaposition of Microsoft just ‘doing stuff to see what works’ next to Sony struggling to keep its online service secure from hackers worked for consumers.

So logically Microsoft would ride the wave of momentum right into its next console.

Apparently, not so much. The Xbox One seems to be riddled with strangely rigid choices of implementation. There are small choices that will grow in importance as we approach launch (NO Xbox 360 peripherals are compatible with the Xbox One despite the pile of Xbox 360 junk you acquired over eight years). Then there are choices that will rear their head in a year or so after launch (no one can independently release games for the Xbox One, stifling an indie space that EVERYONE BUT MICROSOFT is embracing to great effect). There are also stupid choices (NO Xbox 360 games will work on the Xbox One, not even digitally purchased games) which undercuts enormous swaths of momentum from your installed user base. And There are odd choices that telegraph a money grab within the year (The Xbox One will launch with a non-removable 500 GB hard drive and games that automatically install to said hard drive when you insert the disc, which means you’ll be out of memory within 18 months).

Then there are monumentally problematic lapses in judgement that have spurred mobs of angry consumers, with pitchforks and torches in hand instead of wallets. For example, the Xbox One, after the aforementioned install, will essentially lock the disc to the active profile on that console. If you’d like to use the disc on another console or profile you will have to acquire a code that allows that disc to be installed elsewhere. The access code will not be free. It will cost you the price of the game in retail, as if you bought it inside the shrink wrap. So if you are a person who buys one game for a household (sharing it between children, or siblings, or roommates, for example) then you would have to pay full price for each time you install it onto a new machine. One disc may cost you the price of three in the right circumstances. I firmly believe Microsoft will iron out the kinks in this plan and shape it into something functional and interesting. But they have unfortunately set the tone and it looks like they are out to turn all of our goodwill into cash.

“Now Aaron isn’t that what Microsoft has ALWAYS done?” – You.

Valid. However, in the decade of the Xbox 360 Microsoft’s willingness to try anything once worked to create a veil (of varying density depending on where you sat) between their immediate goal of vacuuming your wages and the appearance of working for the greater entertainment good. In comparison to Sony (aggressively stagnant until about 3 years ago) Microsoft at least wore a convincing mask, like a good politician.

The Xbox One has torn away the veil. Hubris, in the short term, seems to have won the day. It would be fair to say that Microsoft has effectively forgotten how they originally wormed their way into our hearts. I wish it was also fair to say that public opinion will help Microsoft right the ship. But, according to the writing on the wall, they’d much rather have our dollar than our opinion.

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Mr. Morales, who allegedly greeted them with a gay slur and then told them, “You look like gay wrestlers,” according to court records. In an interview with police, Mr. Carson’s friend said the two walked back to Mr. Morales and asked him what he meant by the remarks, a law-enforcement official said. The friend told police that Mr. Morales asked the two,

“You all want problems?” and then followed them to Eighth Street, where he confronted them again, asking, “Do you want to die right now?” the official said. The friend told police he told Mr. Morales, “Do you want to shoot us in front of all these people?” and had taken his phone out, the official said.

Mr. Morales allegedly then asked, “Are you with him?” court records said. Mr. Carson replied, “Yes,” at which point Mr. Morales allegedly shot him in the head, the court records said. Mr. Carson was taken to Beth Israel Hospital and pronounced dead at around 1:40 a.m., police said.  - The Wall Street Journal

There have been 22 anti-gay incidents of violence in New York City this year according to the Daily News.  Mark Carson’s murder seems to be a tipping point where this violence can no longer be ignored by not just politicians and police but the media as well.

On a special two part #TWiBRadio, we speak to senior political and legal reporter at BuzzFeed and LGBT Blogger Chris Geidner about media coverage of anti-LGBTQ violence. We also talk with writer and trans activist Janet Mock about the intersection of race, homophobia and violence in LGBTQ activism and what it means to be a true ally.

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And this morning on #amTWiB, #TheMorningCrew discuss antibiotic resistant tuberculosis with vitamin C, the super quantum computer it took both Google and NASA to realize, and does stress make us ugly.

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By now, we’re all well aware of the Obama Administration’s recent actions against the Associated Press and Fox News’ James Rosen. The past few days the media has been equally up in arms about both, although in the case of the AP phone records subpoena, there are, in fact, no real First Amendment issues at stake. To his credit, Walter Pincus has a thorough and refreshingly non-hysterical take on the AP matter in Tuesday’s Washington Post. With regard to Fox News’ Rosen, this piece–also from the Washington Post–captures the breathless nature with which most news outlets covered it:

Journalists, First Amendment watchdogs and government transparency advocates reacted with outrage Monday to the revelation that the Justice Department had investigated the newsgathering activities of a Fox News reporter as a potential crime in a probe of classified leaks.

Critics said the government’s suggestion that James Rosen, Fox News’s chief Washington correspondent, was a “co-conspirator” for soliciting classified information threatened to criminalize press freedoms protected by the First Amendment. Others also suggested that the Justice Department’s claim in pursuing an alleged leak from the State Department was little more than pretext to seize his e-mails to build their case against the suspected leaker.

It’s important to understand that Rosen has not been charged with a crime; instead, he was identified as a “co-conspirator” in an affidavit filed in a criminal case against Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a former State Department advisor who’s accused of passing classified information about North Korea to Rosen in 2009. The government claims that Rosen essentially cajoled Kim in an effort to get sensitive information that Kim was not legally permitted to give Rosen.

But again, Rosen has not been charged with a crime. For all the howling emanating from the media over the past few days, you might not know that.

Nonetheless, I can see where media folks might be a little on edge, what with the AP subpoenas and Rosen being named a “co-conspirator” all within a relatively short span.

However, I note by way of comparison that the media’s a lot less worked up about this case (via PoliticusUSA):

While she continues to call for President Obama to be impeached, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is being investigated by the FBI for campaign finance violations.

According to the MinnPost, the FBI has joined the growing list of agencies that are investigating campaign violations associated with Bachmann’s 2012 presidential campaign, “Andy Parrish, former Bachmann chief of staff and one of the directors of Bachmann’s Iowa GOP presidential campaign, will be interviewed by the FBI, according to his attorney, John Gilmore. ‘I can confirm that Andy Parrish has been contacted by the FBI for a scheduled interview next week,” Gilmore said. ‘He will cooperate fully.’”

…

The entry of the FBI signals that the investigation has expanded into a potential criminal probe of Bachmann’s 2012 presidential campaign. It is important to note that being investigated for a crime is not the same thing as being charged or convicted of a crime, but with Bachmann herself being the focus of other investigations, the FBI will likely be taking a look at her role in the campaign’s decision-making process.

Interesting. The FBI is investigating one of Pres. Obama’s chief political rivals–a woman who ran for the opposition party’s presidential nomination, and who remains a member of Congress and is making noise about impeachment. Personally, I don’t believe for a moment that there are any political shenanigans underlying the FBI’s investigation of her campaign, but still. If anyone in the media has so much as raised a question whether the Bachmann investigation is politically motivated, I haven’t seen it.

And this is par for the course. When a politician is the subject of a criminal investigation, the media never ask whether something’s rotten with the investigation itself; instead, they usually assume the politician is guilty until proven innocent. Here in Illinois, U.S. Attorney Pat Fitzgerald, a Bush appointee, prosecuted several prominent Democratic politicians, including former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Chicago City Clerk James Laski. Yet no one in the media ever questioned the propriety of those cases, even though Fitzgerald is a Republican (and even though he may have pulled back the reins when, as Special Prosecutor, he investigated the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame . . . cough–Dick Cheney–cough, cough.)

So, it’s weird, isn’t it, what the media classifies as a scandal and what it doesn’t? In a way, all of these cases–the AP phone records subpoena, identifying Rosen as a “co-conspirator,” investigating a political rival like Bachmann–come down to the same thing: A difference of opinion about the law. In each case, the Administration interprets the law one way, its opponents another. And there’s nothing altogether unusual about presidents taking legal positions to which other people disagree. The Bush Administration did it regularly (“preventative war” with Iraq; denying that the Geneva Conventions applied to detainees; and redefining torture, to name just three). The media may have spilled an awful lot of journalistic ink over those legal disagreements–but they weren’t “scandals.”

No, legal disputes only become “scandals” when media figures are involved, because guess who gets to define the term “scandal”? No conflict of interest there, though. Just ask the media.

The post Who Decides What Is And Isn’t A Scandal appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

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UNITAID is a small but scrappy group based within the World Health Organization that applies 21st century solutions to age-old problems using a one-two punch of innovative financing and futuristic technology. And they’ve had more than one knockout against their foes both tiny (e.g. viruses and bacteria) and gigantic (e.g. corruption, bureaucracy, poverty). I was fortunate enough to travel with them recently to Mozambique to see their work first hand and how UNITAID impacts real people’s lives.

It’s thanks to UNITAID’s work that pediatric HIV drugs even exist. Douste-Blazy’s team used micro-financing from small fees (about 1 euro on economy flights) on air plane tickets to persuade drug manufacturers to create drugs for an underserved yet desperate market. The people who need pediatric HIV/AIDS drugs tend to be mostly poor and African. Within only a few years, UNITAID’s work in partnership with local organizations, governments and NGOs such as the Clinton Health Access Initiative, UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders and the ONE Campaign has created the tantalizing prospect globally of a generation free of children born with HIV. For those children on AIDS treatment, UNITAID covers almost 80% of them.

When asked about America’s Miracle AIDS Baby, the two-and-a-half year old who was treated with drugs and later became free of the HIV virus, UNITAID’s Deputy Executive Director Philippe Duneton said: “What happened in Mississippi is, of course, great news. UNITAID pioneered the concept that even the youngest children can be treated for HIV and AIDS. If the miracle baby’s success is replicable and we think it,is, then we can provide more treatment to more even more children with stronger drugs. We are already developing a new drug. They are “sprinkles” that don’t need fridges, taste better and are easier to give to kids. It’s possible that many more babies like this exist in Africa already but we don’t have the tools distributed widely enough yet to monitor their condition.”

UNITAID’s focus on using its resources to bring cutting-edge solutions to the challenges of healthcare has in part meant mixing high tech and low tech. For example, in Mozambique, where electricity can be unstable or unavailable at times, UNITAID is working with its partners to roll out internet-enabled diagnostics at local clinics and hospitals that reduce the time to get a test result from 2 months to an astounding one hour. The diagnostic printers can operate for several hours without electricity, which is critical given the country’s almost daily rolling power outrages. The machines have been miniaturized so the devices are the size of shoeboxes instead of the size of rooms and run on solar power. This technology can be life-saving — according to Dr. Ilesh Jani of the Mozambique’s National Institute of Health, half of untreated children may die before the age of two due to the delays. The machines deliver diagnosis for infants, CD4 counts and viral load which allows children and adults to better track their conditions and receive more customized treatment. The printers use GPRS, which is similar to SMS but cheaper, and with encrypted data to maintain confidentiality, a contribution from mcel, a Mozambican mobile phone company.

It was advanced diagnostic technology such as this that enabled doctors to detect HIV in the Miracle AIDS Baby. By bringing this same nifty new tech to remote regions in Africa, UNITAID will enable health workers to test more newborns and provide them with life-saving treatment.

State-of-the-art gene therapy machines called GeneXpert are also delivering test results via GPRS giving information to tuberculosis patients so they know within hours not months if they have TB and whether it is multiple drug resistant or not. Lives hinge on receiving this information quickly so that TB patients get the right medicine before it’s too late.

And to treat malaria more effectively in Mozambique, UNITAID partner Malaria Consortium is distributing near-instant plastic malaria testing kits. Someday these might be 3-D printed locally or through a volunteer network. For now, traditional healers refer patients to local trained health care workers. There’s a severe shortage of doctors and equipment — there’s only 400 health care workers available to serve 3 million people in Nampula province. 1 not-very-new microscope that needs electricity serves 180,000 people and so on. What once took weeks or months and cost lives now takes minutes, meaning faster medicine to those who need it. Local health care workers have observed a dramatic decrease in deaths among kids. The Malaria Consortium is also testing a pilot program that sends messages via a special mobile app on Samsung phones to health care workers in the field to help keep their training up-to-date.

Mozambique is about to join a rapidly growing set of South American, European and African nations who have adopted the airline fee to support UNITAID’s efforts so that their citizens become not just recipients of aid but donors to other nations in need. Americans are helping too, via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other NGOs. The Clinton Foundation and the Mozambique government are launching a public-private partnership with the local Coca-Cola bottling franchise to distribute essential medicines in four provinces. The people who brought us Coke Zero are providing empty trucks, fuel and drivers for one week each month with costs split between the Clinton Foundation and Coca-Cola.

That’s a start, but Philippe Douste-Blazy of UNITAID is eager to get Americans like you and me in the game. He’s a believer that one country alone cannot save all the world’s problems. But working together, we can create more miracle babies. Bill Clinton will travel to France this month to be honored by UNITAID yet despite all the U.S.’s contributions, the U.S. is not yet a member on UNITAID’s board and has not applied the airline fee or other innovative financing measures. Yet I think most Americans would happily give a dollar or two for the type of results UNITAID is getting. According to Douste-Blazy

When millions around the world are sick, hungry, homeless and desperate, it’s easy for someone using religion or politics to take advantage. Solutions can be either revolution or we use capitalism creatively to save the world. Americans are leaders and UNITAID offers an opportunity to demonstrate that leadership in using innovation and technology combined with vision to ensure that all people have equal opportunities for their lives. Americans can be Number 1 in showing leadership in a financial and technological revolution that can quickly solves the world’s problems with the world working together.

It’s an outlandish dream, maybe. But Douste-Blazy’s dreams of miracles have a way of coming true. We’ll have to see whether the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Obama Administration is ready to match its hope to this dream and lead the world in creating change for healthcare and beyond at a whole new level. The question is whether the Administration trusts that the American people are ready to jump into the fight.

The post UNITAID and the Revolution Behind the HIV Miracle Baby appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

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On @amTWIB: The Koch Brothers Strike PBS.

The Morning Crew of Blackness discuss PBS appeasing the Koch brothers, shooting vaginas, and 10,000 crickets in the hallway.

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We’re back with our first two hour episode of So You Think You Can Dance. I hope you are tuning in. No? Whyever not?

Fine, here’s what you missed. We’re back in LA, like we were in the début episode, wrapping up what was cut from last Tuesday. So Jessie Tyler is once again our guest judge.

We opened with a contortionist named Slick who got sent to choreography. His routine was neat, but he wasn’t really a dancer as much as he was a double and triple jointed wonder. He was followed by a couple of average auditions that weren’t worth getting excited about. In fact the first dance worth seeing wasn’t until 20 minutes in when we got a Latin couple.

There was only one other audition in LA to see, that was Emilio’s:

That bit with the elbow was sick.

Onward to Austin, where we trade out Jesse Tyler for Minnie Driver. We also meet the youngest auditioner ever. Seriously, he’s pre-auditioning for next decade. Also, he’s not married. Adorable.

Getting serious, it’s auditions like this next one that are what you’re missing by not watching. Forget the tears and the sob story. This boy is dancing as if his life depends on it. The only tragedy is that he’s not as good as his father.

Dannon was good, but his haunted house make up video package overshadowed his actual routine. I preferred Shane, who followed him. (Noted this is the second stutterer on a Nigel show in a row. We won’t hold how Lazaro turned out against him.)

Daniela was ok, but oddly the girls just weren’t moving me tonight. Not surprised she merely went to choero. The one that blew me away this week was Nick. This kid is making the voting rounds. Hands down.

Mary calls him a religious experience. It’s auditions like these that lead to routines down the line that make this entire show worth having on the air.

We closed the episode with a family of dancers. (You might recognize the dad, “The Exorcist” from last season.) Nigel puts all of them through to Vegas, even daughter. Hey! The other kid got to go to Disneyworld, and all this one gets is to go to Vegas? Sometimes life is so unfair.

Next week the show comes to the east coast and Boston. You will be tuning in, yes?

(xposted from IShouldHaveBeenABlogger. For more of anibundel’s SYTYCD posts, click here.)

The post So You Think You Can Dance Season 10 Recap: LA/Austin Auditions appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

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This tornado is in Oklahoma so clearly it has been ordered to only target conservatives.

— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) May 20, 2013

After the depth of the devastation was revealed Winstead immediately apologized for making the tweet, but it didn’t save her twitter timeline which is still currently in shambles. The initial tweet was deleted at the request of  a self identified Oklahoman.

Made a political joke, Twas before devastation revealed. In hindsight, had I understood, I would have refrained. Beyond sorry. #LetMeHaveIt

— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) May 20, 2013

There are few things that raise emotions like a natural disaster and no disaster is complete without the constant rotation of tragedy porn on the 24-hour news channels, Facebooks, Instagrams, and  Tumblrs, and as a result the internet unleashed its full fury on poor Lizz without impunity.  But who should come to Winstead’s defense? None other than … Glenn Beck?

Leave lizz winstead alone.Clearly bad joke.How many of us has made a joke we wished we could take back? She has to feel awful.#castfirststone

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) May 21, 2013

You know the worlds gone nuts when Glenn Beck is the internet’s voice of reason.

On today’s #TWiBRadio, post-tragedy Twitter rage, a New York judge weighs in on the ‘effectiveness’ of stop-and-frisk, and we announce the world premier of the Ten Frisk Commandments Remix video.

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And this morning on #amTWiB, #TheMorningCrew talk about a high school senior banned from graduation for unleashing thousands of crickets in the school, Essence and MSNBC team up to bring live coverage of the Essence Festival, and right-wing radio host Pete Santilli stands by his comments about shooting Hillary Clinton “in the vagina [to] let her suffer.”

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With Imani and Aaron out, L. Joy and Elon debate the need for medical professionals to explain their findings to the public plus what you should know and more.

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Let us all pity Ken and his job. Then let us admire his “It’s My Job” dance:

Update: It is now on youtube (albeit backwards):

Revel in the glory.

This is “SCDPCC.”
This is “SCDPCC” on drugs.
Any questions?

I suppose it was time for us to have another Lost Weekend with Don, but this time without the booze. I mean, seriously, Joan was absent for one episode (and Pete down to a 30 second cameo) and THIS is what happens? Dr. Hecht arrives with serum for everybody! I guess it’s sort of a parallel to Sterling’s LSD doctor that Cutler has a speed freak doctor, but holy hell. “Complex vitamin superdose,” my eye. No complex vitamin superdose would send someone with a weak heart to the hospital with cardiac arrest. (No, it was someone from CGC’s creative team, not Roger. I’m sure you were all concerned too.)

My biggest issue with the episode though was not the drugs, or the funny time-lapsey film work trying to make us all feel disjointedness and on drugs ourselves. My issue was the there was way too much Young Don. I am not big on Young Don and having his miserable 1930s life played out for us. I don’t care that the mommy hooker also sucked his cock. I don’t care that the step-mommy hooker beat him with a wooden spoon. I would be very happy if we magically got to the end of this show without ever having anymore flashbacks to “explain” Don. Mad Men works when things are subtle. Young Don is not subtle. Especially when the show decides to suddenly tie these experiences back to his old campaigns. It’s one thing to infer that all his ads are Don just channeling his messed up life. It is quite another to see the hooker who molested him staring out from a 1950s advertisement for oatmeal with the tag line “She Knows What He Needs” leering at us. Ewww.

Perhaps that tying together in such an obvious way was partly why I was nearly relieved when Don came up with a useless gibbering pitch that had nothing whatsoever to do with Chevy when he called Peggy and Ginsberg into his office. God knows what a real pitch might have included.

Peggy seems especially weary of “This is Your Company on Drugs” experience. (I mean really: “Peggy, do you remember when we had soup?” What kind of question IS that?) One of the very few who does not take the shot (the other we are sure didn’t is Ginsberg), she spends the weekend surrounded by men who are higher than kites. She’s oddly forgiving of this–perhaps a decade of watching them drink themselves to death makes speed seem relatively tame. It just causes them to foot race and throw xacto knives at each other.

In the middle of the insanity, we finally get the Stan and Peggy kiss, but it’s not the right time, place, or circumstances. Peggy’s advice to Stan, on the loss of his cousin in Vietnam, strikes me as a call back to losing her baby so long ago: “I’ve had loss in my life. You have to let yourself feel it. You can’t dampen it with drugs and sex. It won’t get you through.” Her advice falls on deaf ears, and Stan goes and bangs the recently deceased Gleason’s daughter Wendy on the couch. (I did not need to see Cutler perving on that by the way. Double Ewww.) Why don’t people listen to Peggy? I’m afraid that’s just proof that Stan and Peggy will never be, and we might as well cheer her on to Ted.

In “not in the office news” Don is stalking Sylvia outside her apartment and Dr. Rosen is going to put two and two together if he doesn’t stop. The entire weekend of him being high is really him obsessing on her, and the hooker memories are supposed to be tied to her. But I haven’t cared about her since the beginning, and tying her to Young Don isn’t about to change that. Even better, after it’s all over and they are together in the elevator on Monday morning, he doesn’t make any of those pitches he spent all weekend imagining he would. He doesn’t speak to her at all in the elevator. Good. Please let this be the end of Sylvia.

Maybe it can be the beginning of Don getting his head on straight? His obsessing over Sylvia causes him to leave the staff entrance to their flat open, and Sally wakes up to an African American “Grandmother” who is breaking into apartments and robbing them blind. Her whole “Grandma Ida” schtick would have been hilarious if I was not terrified for the kids, home alone and guileless. It finally broke when Bobby’s biggest concern turned out to be “Are we negroes!?” (In America such a discovery could turn one’s whole life upside down.) Sally’s right though–she doesn’t know much about Don’s life–for all she knew this woman was telling the truth. (It’s ok kid, trust us, you don’t want to.)

Speaking of things outside Don’s life, where did fat blackhaired Betty go? We don’t see her for all of two episodes, and she dyed back to blonde and lost all the weight. I love how she drops that Henry is planning on running for office in the middle of the police investigating the crime scene of the Draper Apartment, while calling out Megan for whoring herself on a casting couch, and accusing Don of sleeping around instead of being at the office. Oh Betty, don’t ever change. I wonder who gave Sally that copy of Rosemary’s Baby.

Monday morning, coming down, and Ted demands to know why the Chevy work is gibberish: ”CHEVY IS SPELLED WRONG!” Perhaps you should speak to Cutler and his doctor. I don’t know about CGC, but the SCDP guys do much better on pot and booze than they do on speed.

(xposted from IShouldHaveBeenABlogger. For more of anibundel’s Mad Men posts, including previous recaps, click here.)

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