Romney attacked from the Sixties

Mad Men may not be jumping the sharks quite yet, but the latest series is showing signs of collapsing under the weight of its own hype. The carefully built ambiguity of the first few seasons is being lost, replaced by cheesy self-awareness and standard-issue liberal correctness.

In this week’s episode, which was broadcast in America last night and will be shown here tomorrow, there was even a little political swipe at Republican candidate Mitt Romney. In the scene above, the character Henry Francis, a political operator for New York mayor John Lindsay, says he doesn’t want his boss to attend an event in Michigan ‘because Romney’s a clown and I don’t want him standing next to him’.

The direct reference is not to Mitt, obviously, but his father George Romney, who was Michigan governor. As Vanity Fair’s Juli Weiner explains:

‘Romney, a Republican with relatively progressive views on civil rights, became something of a political pariah following his public opposition to G.O.P. presidential nominee Barry Goldwater in 1964. That might explain the “clown” comment. We know Francis meant the Romney the elder because in the summer of 1966—the year Season Five Mad Men takes place—Romney the younger was on a Mormon mission in France and would not have had an opportunity to be photographed with John Lindsay.’

Thanks for that Juli. Clearly, however, the line is also a dig at Mitt, who will in all likelihood oppose President Obama in this year’s election. We can hazard a guess as to which politician the people who bring us Mad Men will be supporting. No doubt Romney junior is a clown, but we don’t need a TV drama to tell us that with a faux-historical wink. There’s a certain aren’t-we-cleverness to the joke that grates. Don’t you think?