So long, Dave and Don

Two generational icons in television programming said farewell thoughtfully last week. They provided many of us an opportunity for introspection, thus a better understanding of ourselves.

That assumes it can be useful to know, rather than kid, yourself.


David Letterman took the talk-show genius of Johnny Carson, dropped most of the sketch comedy and much of the one-liners, then added irreverence, absurdity, rudeness and self-loathing. He came to pioneer, reflect and define baby boomer humor and sensibilities.

But a 68-year-old heart surgery survivor should no longer throw his Velcro-ed body against a wall to see if he'll stick. Nor should he drop his Alka Seltzer-adorned self into a tank of water to see if a human will go plop, plop, fizz, fizz.

It became less fun to insult the deserving Madonna or Cher or chase the deserving Richard Simmons with a fire extinguisher. Nobody much cares about, or well remembers, Madonna or Cher or Richard Simmons.

Letterman was a lifelong curmudgeon, thus honest, thus real. Grouchiness is pure honesty. Prevailing human courtesies are, by design, often phony, even usually so.

Letterman's genuineness seemed at the end to adapt, then hold.

In the waning moments of his last show, he dropped his privacy and introduced his wife and young son. He thanked them for being his family, as if he didn't deserve one. He said that, when all is said and done, family is all that really matters.

Not so for Don Draper, the lead character of Mad Men, a moody fictional drama that gave many of us a trip through our defining decade, the 1960s. The show covered an era that began as an extension of the faux-ideal of the 1950s, then turned on a young president's assassination and ended with a failed war and race riots and drugs.

In the end Draper was forever what he was, but never who he said he was.

That is to say he was defined thoroughly by profession. It is to say he was a fraud personally.

That made him an exaggerated metaphor for many if not most of us.

He ended the series alienated from family, but as an avowed and unreconstructed advertising man.

He smiled as he found himself during Zen meditation. What he discovered while droning a mantra was the ad-agency creative director he'd always been. He apparently conceived while in yoga pose the epic Coca-Cola commercial about teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony.

But he never actually was Don Draper. He'd stolen the dog tag and life's identity of a slain and burned-beyond-recognition Korean War lieutenant.

So while Letterman showed us honesty, which could be unpleasant and hurtful, Draper reflected the greater population--masked and self-deluding, also unpleasant and hurtful.

Draper as a crazy mirror's reflection of us: It's something to think about for personal application, if you're moderately brave.

Some say I'm a curmudgeon, which really chaps me. But I will take their word for it.

And maybe there are some Letterman influences--some weak Letterman imitation--in occasional work I've done. I can hope.

But otherwise I'm Don Draper. I am forever what I do, a newspaper writer. If I were to achieve enlightenment during Zen meditation, no doubt I'd want only to write a column about it.

But I'm not actually John Brummett. My fifth-grade teacher took it upon herself to direct that forthwith I would be called that.

She gave me a life's byline.

I'm actually Johnny Ray Brummett, a country kid laden with the fears and insecurities resulting from an upbringing dominated by being poor and submerged in apocalyptic religion.

Newsprint is my mask. Johnny Ray Brummett stole a smart-aleck newspaperman's byline.

I'm wagering that there are others out there who are defined by, and exclusively motivated by, the work they do and the skills they have for that work, but who otherwise present to the world a disguise, a shield, something far different from what really goes on inside them.

Or maybe that goes only for Don Draper and me.

By the way: That life-changing fifth-grade teacher was the late Judy Hankins. This was at Baseline Elementary School in 1962-63, when Mad Men was awash in cigarettes and booze and Cadillacs and male chauvinism, and when JFK had a few months to live.

Judy Hankins had a couple of sons. One was named Randy.

But you know him as Craig O'Neill.

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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 05/26/2015

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