The Mad Men of the Ivy League
Remember a time when all you had to do to get a job was be a white male Ivy League graduate and show up? Not since 2004 have such impressive qualifications given you a shot at even the presidency, let alone any other job. In today's tough climate for the white male it's up to the AMC show Mad Men to remind us of how good things used to be. And man, do caucasians love this show.
The third season of the award-winning show premiered last Sunday, and every week for the next three months we will be transported back to the 1960s. It was a time when everyone smoked, "diversity" meant hiring Italians, getting drunk at 10 a.m. was a good day, and cheating on your wife and mistress with a prostitute was the rule. In honor of the third season of this ode to status and excess, we've put together a list to help readers put a face to an alma mater. Hopefully, it'll reinforce some stereotypes as well. Go to red spoiler alert!
On Mad Men the characters don't blatantly announce where they went to school. Usually oblique references are made to towns or by friends, because its probably safe to assume no one at Sterling Cooper went to Westminster Choir College or University of New Haven. Since it is the 1960s, none of the female characters could have gone to any Ivy. And before you get your hopes up, no one went to Colonel or Penn--not even Don Draper (who really isn't Don Draper but a farm boy named Dick Whitman). Nobody went to Brown either--except possibly Sal, the "artistic" one.
Peter Campbell - Dartmouth
Campbell is a douche. Not only does he cheat on his fiancée the night before his wedding--knocking up secretary Peggy I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant style--but he hounds Don Draper about his secret past. Pete is from old NYC money, went to Deerfield, acts like a 9 year old, and only drinks when happy or sad. Cooper states Pete is the firm's connection to Dartmouth College in Season 1, Episode 4. He was also a DKE. Surprised?
Paul Kinsey - Princeton
In the second episode of Season 2, Eugene, a friend of Paul's, tells everyone the Orson Wells-lookalike used to wear a dress at Princeton. That plus the fact he is an aspiring writer indicates Kinsey was a member of Triangle there. Clinging to New Jersey, Paul lives in a Bohemian flat in Montclair and attempts to seem open-minded by dating a black woman for a short time. Much to his chagrin, Kinsey's play remains unpublished, but it was performed at the office. My money is that Paul was in Princeton Tower Club, home to Triangle members and psuedo-liberals.
Ken Cosgrove - Columbia
The lovable, homophobic Vermonter went to Columbia. There's not much to say about Kenny other than he's an overpaid empty suit who got published in The Atlantic, wherein his alma mater is revealed. Oh, and his mother is fat.
Arthur Case - Yale
Arthur is the persistent soft-spoken guy who can't ride horses and tries to kiss Don's wife Betty. His wife went to Wellesley and must be a lesbian the way he goes after other women at the stables. All of this comes out in Season 2, Episode 3.
Tune in to AMC Sundays at 10 p.m. ET to learn more. We all certainly will be. Well, except for Max, who needs at least three hours to cool down after episodes of The Amazing Race once it starts.
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August 19th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Unless the women on the show are really, really old, they could’ve gone to Cornell since it admitted women in the late 1800s.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Columbia’s engineering school let women in sometime in the 40’s I believe. I very much doubt any of the wives went to Columbia Engineering though.
August 19th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
This post is one of the worst I’ve seen. As if there isn’t enough Ivy League action on mainstream television (The Office, 30 Rock, etc.), IvyGate has to go grasping for straws about a 2-years-old show that only obliquely mentions anything remotely League-oriented in its two seasons.
Why don’t you guys do a football pre-season post or something. Harvard’s ranked first despite losing one of their coaches to assault charges on his ex, The Citadel bringing the fight to New Jersey–there’s plenty of good material there.
August 19th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Mad Men was created by a Wesleyan alum… no wonder no one went to Brown
August 19th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Penn had a College for Women before it went formally co-ed. Also a nursing school.
And while the eight schools have been around for hundreds of years, there wasn’t an Ivy League until the late fifties when the Ivy League football conference was created.
At the time, by the way, I don’t think these eight colleges were necessarily all among the top in the country.
August 21st, 2009 at 9:16 am
You’re right- penn was probably still ranked 50 or so.
August 21st, 2009 at 11:47 am
The hot, Jewish, department store owning client/love interest mentioned “When I was at Barnard…” during her chat with Don about why Jews love Israel.
August 21st, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Check out this article about Mad Men and some of it’s not so fair, recent criticisms about the show.
http://ivyhorsemen.blogspot.com/2009/08/mad-men-doesnt-have-to-care-about-black.html
August 24th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Betty went to Bryn Mawr – it’s been mentioned several times.
August 29th, 2009 at 3:17 am
Good one — an actually funny read. The commenters hen-picking over the same narcissistic ivy factoids need to get a sense of humor.
Also, P’09, no one gives a flip about football.
August 31st, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Well, I believe this weeks episode gave us the best glimpse into Mad Men and the Ivy. We find the honest truth that every Princeton alumni is either a self-reverential douchebag or a drug peddler.
For my money though, the only show ever worth writing an article like this for is The Simpsons, as I still identify Yale with Mr. Burns and Sideshow Bob more than anything else…
September 11th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
The bitterness clearly remains, so long after the rejection letters.
Meanwhile, America is forever convinced that what the CronyFest on the Potomac really needs is just one more Ivy Leager, to finally get it right. Yes, DC was in real danger of not having enough Ivy Leagers.
Michelle and Barrack; that was change, all right. The hidden irony is, these folks laugh at the inbreeding in Appalachia…
Unfortunately, in response to narcissistic paternalistic megalomania, we don’t hold telethons; we have elections.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
I doubt that Paul Kinsey was in Tower Club. Considering that he was a scholarship student at Princeton and that he has liberal political views, he was more likely in Court Club or Key & Seal, two now-defunct clubs at the far end of Prospect Avenue. Compared to the other eating clubs, in the 1950s these two had much less affluent and much more diverse memberships.
To a Princeton alumnus, the “wearing a dress” line definitely sounds like a reference to Triangle, but Tower Club wasn’t the Triangle club of choice in earlier decades.