That Don Draper is a singular talent—perhaps even a genius—is central to the premise of AMC’s Mad Men, the penultimate season of which commences this Sunday. Though at times the series has chipped away at Don’s (Jon Hamm) seeming professional invincibility, viewers still believe fundamentally in his exceptional abilities. Yet, at the very moment when Don seems to deploy his formidable skill less frequently, viewers are introduced to a new but equally striking talent in young copywriter Michael Ginsberg (Ben Feldman). Don’s changing role in the firm—and evolving sense of self—was an important theme of the series’ fifth season. Central to that theme’s exploration is Ginsberg—the smart-alecky, frenetic savant who just might be the evolutionary Don Draper.

We are introduced to Ginsberg in his comically awful interview with Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) in the season’s third episode. He makes perfectly clear to Peggy that he is only interested in meeting Don, and anything else is a chore. Here Ginsberg scans as a Woody Allen caricature, twitchy with a darkly off kilter sense of humor. (“You know, your book really does have a voice.” “That’s what they said about Mein Kampf.”) Despite the terrible first round interview, Peggy reluctantly brings him back in to meet Don—with whom he’s equal parts gregarious, clever, and charming—and Don gives him the job.

So begins the fascinating relationship/rivalry/pissing contest between Don and Michael. It takes all of one episode for Mad Men to insinuate that Ginsberg may be uncommonly skilled in his own right. After selling a campaign to Butler Shoes, Ginsberg goes off the rails, telling Mr. Butler about an idea the creative team rejected. But he does so in such beautiful, vivid detail that Butler asks, “Why don’t we do that?” Don is livid. “In your heart you knew it was good!” Ginsberg offers. “In my heart, I’m on the verge of throwing you in front of a cab,” Don retorts. Their repartee is in part a diversion. As a businessman, Don is incensed Ginsberg did not stop when the client said, “sold.” But mixed with his disgust is fear. Don is threatened that Ginsberg demonstrates, in his own way, the ability to sell creative work at a level previously accessed solely by Don himself.

It is Ginsberg’s skill making the pitch—the very skill that made Don a legend—that puts him in Don’s crosshairs. Even after the first accepted pitch, Mr. Butler called Ginsberg a genius. Don coughs demonstratively. We are watching the rise of a new advertising star at the very moment Don transitions to a more heavily managerial role. For the first time, viewers are asked to entertain the possibility that Don is not peerless—something Don seems keenly aware of as well. For a show that emphasizes the exceptional talents and personal shortcomings of one central character, the role played by Michael Ginsberg is deeply jarring.

Don’s professional brilliance always seemed tied—even obliquely—to his back-story. He was a man without a firm identity, a hobo—drifting and alone. In a startling scene with Peggy and Michael late at night in the office, we learn that Michael is the most unusual of Holocaust survivors: a child born in a concentration camp. “Are there others like you?” Peggy asks. “I don’t know,” Michael replies heavily, his back to the camera and reflection lit up in the window. “I haven’t been able to find any.” Here, too, we are supposed to connect Michael and Don. As with Don, there is a clear, if inexplicable, connection between Michael’s creative brilliance and personal history. Mad Men intends for us to link Don and Michael as singular individuals and talents.

Late in the season, Mad Men dispenses with the connection’s subtlety. Sterling Cooper Draper Price is working on a campaign for the drink Snoball. Working late at the office, Don happens upon Michael’s work in the writers’ bullpen. Michael wrote the tagline “Get hit in the face with a Snoball!” across a doodle of Hitler. We see Don’s competitive juices flowing. He pulls out the Dictaphone, and throws out, “A Snoball’s chance in hell.” At the next morning’s meeting, Michael’s idea resonates deeply, while Don’s “Yeeees. Even Me.” tagline with a picture of the devil draws polite support.

“Wow. That’s actually good,” Ginsberg says. “I’m glad I could surprise you,” Don sneers. Ginsberg backtracks, but makes it worse. “No, it’s just damn impressive you could not write for so long and come back with that.” Michael cannot help himself from highlighting Don’s aging, rusty approach. Michael could not have known it was his own work that inspired Don to get back in the game. He certainly understands, though, that his comments were openly baiting his boss.

Though the creative and accounts teams agreed to lead with Michael’s “Get hit in the face” campaign at the pitch meeting—to Don’s annoyance and Michael’s pleased-with-himself delight—Don leads with his own idea and leaves Ginsberg’s in the cab. When Ginsberg discovers they bought Don’s devil campaign—without even seeing his own—Ginsberg is apoplectic.

The payoff comes as they ride the elevator together. Michael snaps at Don: “what do I care? I got a million of ‘em. A million.” “Good,” Don counters, without so much as looking at Michael, “I guess I’m lucky you work for me.” Ginsberg tries again: “I feel bad for you.” Don, with a dash of the old swagger, retorts icily, “I don’t think about you at all,” and walks away.

Michael’s frustration is understandable: he outperformed the best, but Don retains creative control and buries Michael’s work. Don’s studiously dispassionate cruelty reveals the extent to which he feels threatened. Michael might eventually render Don obsolete, but not as long as Don can fight it.

“Look at all the great work you’ve done as creative director. Look at all these voices. All this talent.” So says Joan (Christina Hendricks) to Don, as he reviews the campaigns SCDP had created in recent months. But is it true? Don pitilessly crushed the enthusiasm of his talented employee for an ego boost—a cheap trick to convince himself he still “has it.” Not to mention Don finally pushes Peggy a step too far—and out the door, to the agency of a hated rival.

There is a brief moment, late in the season, which suggests Michael’s relationship with Don may evolve quite differently. With the creative team working exhaustively—and unproductively—on the Jaguar pitch, Michael is struck with an idea. He knocks on Don’s door, and the tension is palpable, as they disagree over whether the team works better with Don present or absent. But Michael proceeds. Jaguar isn’t a sexy, temperamental mistress—an idea that got the team nowhere; it’s better than that. “Jaguar,” Ginsberg says, knowing he has nailed it, “At last. Something beautiful you can truly own.” Don’s face goes blank—he realizes it’s perfect. Then he sighs, and smiles knowingly. Ginsberg slaps his hands, pumps a fist, and smiles contentedly. Perhaps it’s the beginning of a productive relationship for two brilliant ad men.

Mad Men watchers have always wondered how things will end up for Don Draper; the fifth season strongly suggests that answer may be delivered through Michael Ginsberg. Will Michael—and Peggy, if she wends her way back to SCDP—team with Don to propel the firm to the heights of the industry? Or have the two young talents been developed as foils for an industry legend’s precipitous decline to irrelevance?

As viewers, we have suspected it must end in one of those two ways. Only with the arrival of Michael Ginsberg, though, can we see the agent of change. Mad Men makes clear that Michael’s future success is not in question. The only uncertainly remains with Don: will he recognize the firm’s potential and capitalize on it? Or will his vices—pride, jealousy, and continuing uncertainty about who he is—prevent him from doing so? Showrunner Matthew Weiner has two seasons remaining to reveal what Don’s future holds, the first of which begins Sunday night.

Previously on Network Jews:

Dr. James Wilson on Fox’s Dark Medical Procedural House

Ari Gold, the Jewish Hollywood Agent on HBO’s Entourage

Police Detective John Munch on Law & Order: SVU

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• True story: Visa applications to Kazakhstan have increased since Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 Borat film.

• Sarah Silverman talks about prepping for her nude scene with Michelle Williams in their new film Take This Waltz.

• Jewish food festivals in the South are growing in popularity, and drawing a lot of visitors after church.

• Watch the Mile End team eat (and drink) their way through Russ & Daughters and Sammy’s Roumanian—though we could have done without the music.

The post Daily Jewce: ‘Mein Kampf’ to be Published Again in Germany, Sarah Silverman’s Nude Scene Prep, and more appeared first on Jewcy.

Here is a quick rundown of my initial thoughts upon hearing that somebody went on a shooting rampage in Arizona; killing a 9-year-old girl, a federal judge, and critically injuring Representative Gabrielle Giffords.  Even now, at the time of this writing, this is an incident with little to define it aside from its senselessness.

In no particular order, I thought to myself:

• This might be a terrorist attack.

• The congresswoman is Jewish. Maybe it was a hate crime?

• Is this a 2nd Amendment obsessive out to prove a point?

I’ll admit that each notion has me pigeonholing the shooter; when, in fact, I had no real picture of his motives.  The killer could have been mentally disturbed and firing without reason or the whole ordeal could have been a robbery gone wrong.  But in the culture of fear we live in, and given the location of the shooting, was I really wrong to think any of those things?

Answers surfaced in less than a few hours, and people tried to piece together what had happened in that Arizona grocery store.  With some knowledge of the shooter, the questions people were asking weren’t that different from my own.

Was Jared Lee Loughner taking Sarah Palin’s target map seriously?  Was he a fringe Tea Party supporter?  Was he a left-wing anti-government nut making a statement?  Nothing was too clear, except for a few hard to decipher ramblings in the form of YouTube videos, and a Myspace profile that was quickly taken down.

Loughner’s Myspace profile was short-lived, and I have to assume the site was rightfully trying to distance itself from the tragedy.   Minutes before the profile disappeared, somebody thought fast enough to grab a screenshot, which quickly spread to every single newspaper and website in the country.   The profile listed Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as a favorite book.   Along with Hitler’s book were novels that sit on many of our bookshelves and are required reading in high schools across the country, from Orwell’s Animal Farm to Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

Some folks could play armchair criminologist and piece together a profile of the suspect just through his reading tastes, but the very mention of Hitler’s book, along with the fact that Loughner actually went on a shooting spree, gives me no reason to think the guy is anything but a crazy idiot – not some complex monster fueled by intense political conviction.

Who really thinks Mein Kampf is a ‘good’ book?  Go to a Nazi rally and I’m sure you can find fans; maybe if you’re a fictional character from a Don DeLillo novel, or a real life person who studies the Holocaust for a living, you might have reason to care about the book.  But nobody likes Mein Kampf. It’s a hateful book written by a hateful man, and it holds only historical significance.   Even Hitler’s buddy, Benito Mussolini, said the book was “a boring tome that I have never been able to read.” Who else gets enjoyment out of Mein Kampf?  People like Matthew Swift, a student accused of a plotting a Columbine-style massacre at a Manchester school a few years ago.  His other favorite books were on homemade firearms and survival guides.

At the risk of getting too personal, when I was in high school I had a friend who we will call Bob.  Bob liked Dungeons and Dragons and began to develop a liking for the anarcho-punk band Crass around the same time I did.  While my enjoyment of the band was more superficial, Bob tried to genuinely incorporate the politics of the bands into his very young life.  Bob’s interest in anarchy gave way to an interest in other political systems and ideologies.  Before I knew it, and without warning, Bob began carrying around a copy of Mein Kampf, defending murderous dictators and saying things like “Fascism isn’t necessarily Nazism” or “Hitler had an artist’s point of view”  — statements I found both incredibly bothersome and strange, considering Bob’s father was a Jew.  Bob’s newfound view caused the dissolution of our friendship until several years later, when we’d found ourselves studying at the same 24-hour diner located in-between our respective universities.   We struck up a conversation, and I felt it needed to be asked: why had Bob embraced people like Hitler, even if it was for a such a short time?  His answer was hardly shocking: he told me that he was young and angry at things he didn’t understand.  He was looking for an identity of his own, and that seemed to be a good way to find one.   Did he regret it?  “Absolutely,” he told me,  “nobody really liked Mein Kampf, except idiots.”

As I write this, I know little to nothing about Jared Lee Loughner, and about his motivations or thoughts, and for all I know, it might be weeks before the entire puzzle is put together.  I still shouldn’t make any accusations before then, but I do know he ‘liked’ Mein Kampf.

I feel pretty safe saying that if you, like Loughner, actually derive pleasure from Hitler’s book, please stay really far away from me.   You’re an idiot.

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