Did you catch the brief, hard-to-hear audio of Kennedy addressing the nation in the last Mad Men episode? (It plays over the L-cut from Peggy’s mother’s home to the Drapers’ house, where young Sally is in front of a TV set.)
The audio in question was a section from this televised address to the nation, June 11, 1963:“This is one country. It has become one country because all of us and all the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents. We cannot say to ten percent of the population that you can’t have that right; that your children cannot have the chance to develop whatever talents they have; that the only way that they are going to get their rights is to go in the street and demonstrate.”
And the kicker to the speech’s inclusion in the episode is that it was simulcast on all the networks—precisely the kind of profile that trust-funder wants for his idiotic sports league earlier in the show (all three networks covering the gala, etc.). This kind of structural brilliance happens approximately once per episode, and you can’t do a thing but doff your vintage-looking cap to the show’s writers.• footnote - by Seth Colter Walls.
