The Draper-Ginsberg Theory, Revisited
Or, how Don Draper, Michael Ginsberg, and LeBron James taught me about compassion, empathy, and values. Eventually.
This essay contains mild Mad Men spoilers. If you haven’t seen it by now, I don’t think this would change much upon the first viewing but just an FYI. Also, it came out a decade ago, so get it together.
I was in a tough spot for the Super Bowl.
I despise the Cincinnati Bengals. For one, they are basically a fake team that was created to imitate the Cleveland Browns after former Browns owner/snake Art Modell forced Paul Brown out of Cleveland. Second, the Bengals are the Browns’ in-state rival. Third, when I was at Ohio University, I had to hear Bengals fans chant “Who dey” until my ears bled. Joe Burrow, however, is awesome and perfect in every way thus far…aside from losing the Super Bowl.
I also don’t like the Los Angeles Rams1. After Modell moved the Browns, I simply cannot root for any franchise that was ripped away from another fanbase2. It kills me that people in St. Louis had to watch Rams owner Stan Kroenke move the team, then win a Super Bowl just a few years later.
The Rams also had Odell Beckham Jr. OBJ began the season on the Browns, but was released after a bizarre incident in which his dad posted a video implying that Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield was ruining his son’s career by not throwing him the ball. OBJ’s time in Cleveland was mostly forgettable, but the team did him a solid and reworked his contract so he could sign wherever he wanted. That was L.A.
So I really didn’t want to root for anyone. Even though Burrow went to Athens High School and I went to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, I could not root for the Bengals. I also could not root for the Rams. But who did I want to lose more?
Ah, now here’s where it gets dicey. I couldn’t root against anyone, either. I think rooting against teams or individuals is a behavior generally reserved for, at worst, losers, and at best, the bitter and disgruntled. Why is this, you ask?
Being from Cleveland, I also had the pleasure of watching “The Decision,” when LeBron James decided to leave his hometown team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, for the Miami Heat. In fact, I was living in Florida at that time, which made it particularly rich.
I moved to New York City in June of 2011. LeBron’s Miami Heat were up against the Dallas Mavericks. I got word that people in Cleveland were making, selling, and wearing merchandise that said “CAVS FOR MAVS.” I wanted LeBron to lose, no doubt, but this felt kind of…pathetic, to me. When LeBron left, I fired off angry tweets, of course, but I wasn’t a burn-my-jerseys guy3. The Mavericks won the NBA Finals. Life went on.
Fast forward to June 2012. I’m firmly entrenched in Brooklyn. LeBron has just won the title with the Heat. I didn’t really watch much of the Finals because to be honest, I’m not a big basketball guy. I’ll watch when the Cavs are good (like when they had LeBron, or now), but that’s about it. It’s more about Cleveland than basketball. So the Finals are over, and I see this video of LeBron in some nightclub in Miami, and he just looks so goddamn happy4, and I had a kind of epiphany.
If there was some independent observer who could witness both LeBron being THAT happy, and me watching LeBron and feeling upset at how happy he is, this independent observer would probably think I was a big fucking loser. Some of you reading this may not like LeBron for any number of reasons, and that’s fine. But in 2012, he was winning his first NBA Finals. He had absolutely no major scandals, even though he’d been under public scrutiny since he was like 16, maybe younger. The worst thing he had done was decide to leave Cleveland on national TV. It wasn’t that he left, it was how he left.
Anyways, I felt like a loser. I thought about how if the New York Yankees don’t make the World Series, but the Cleveland Indians Guardians do, the Yankees don’t care. The Yankees have 27 World Series titles, Cleveland has two. The Yankees only care about the Yankees winning, not other teams losing. Winners focus on getting better so they can win, losers want other people to lose so they can’t win. That was my view.
You may be thinking, “Joe, this is sports. Chill out.” Well, yes, it is, and no, I won’t. As I’ve written before, I thoroughly reject the idea that leisure activities are unimportant. Claiming sports are less important culturally than art or economics or some other such discipline overlooks the way societal and cultural values are molded. We inherit them, viewing daily life through a set of prisms. The idea that we should be working all the time, for example, is just a current cultural belief. There was a time when working was viewed with disdain. Some day in the future, “work” as we know it may be viewed as some concept from the long past.
However, sports are a unique institution in which competition is the point. The rivalries, the identity associated with one’s favorite team—these are real things. For example, it’s fun that I am a Browns fan and my wife is a fan of the rival Pittsburgh Steelers. She pities the Browns because we suck constantly. When the Browns win, I don’t gloat5 because—well, like I said, we suck constantly, so I don’t feel I’ve earned it. A radio host I listen to a lot always catches himself when he says he “hates” the Steelers or some such team, and says “sports hate.” It’s a key difference lost on many.
But sometimes rooting against people and “teams” moves into the real world and out of the sports world.
When I watched LeBron, I was reminded of a scene in Mad Men that I hope is familiar to many. Don Draper and Michael Ginsberg are in an elevator after a pitch meeting. Ginsberg (the young, cocksure, beatnik ad guy) is upset that Draper (the iconic-yet-acerbic creative genius ad guy) didn’t pitch his idea to the client. Draper responds laconically that he doesn’t like going into a meeting with two ideas, and they bought his idea. Ginsberg says he’s lucky he’s got a million ideas. Draper says he’s lucky Ginsberg works for him. And then this exchange happens:
Ginsberg: “I feel sorry for you.”
Draper: “I don’t think about you at all.”
So I wrote a journal entry about how I don’t want to ever be like Ginsberg, wasting my time thinking about people who don’t think about me. I want to be like Draper. (I regret that desire, but we’ll get to that soon). I titled the entry “The Draper-Ginsberg Theory.” The theory went something like this: If you are rooting for the demise of someone successful, you are probably the one who needs to re-examine their life. Rooting against others to fail—rather than for someone to succeed—is a sign of some kind of psychological6 rot.
As I reflect back on that journal entry 10 years later, I think I am right about some things and wrong about others. When I think about it from the context of psychological needs, comparing oneself to others is a dangerous path that often leads to anxiety and depression. A real-world example of this is house size. According to a 2019 study by Daniel Kuhlmann at Iowa State University, people care not just about the absolute size of their home but how it compares to others:
“Kuhlmann's model shows that those living in the smallest house in their neighborhood are on average 5% more likely to report that they are dissatisfied with their unit than are those living in the largest house.”
It’s difficult to escape this kind of thinking in a material, consumer world. Wealth and status are valued highly and this is reinforced in popular culture. Wealth and status don’t correlate to wellness, but personal growth does. Acquiring new skills and getting better at things does. Supporting others and fostering a sense of community and mutual flourishing does.
On the flip side, Don Draper is an asshole7. We all want to feel like we are a valued member of the groups and organizations of which we are a part. But Draper doesn’t give a shit if Ginsberg feels valued. He doesn’t give a shit if anyone “feels” anything. He makes this perfectly clear when his colleague Peggy says she’d like to feel validated now and again, and he says, “That’s what the money's for.” Sadly, I used to think Draper was right. It embarrasses me, but I did think employment was more or less transactional.
I also think Ginsberg’s message was less that he wants Draper to lose, and more that he knows Draper is a profoundly unhappy person. In some sense, the entire point of Mad Men is the relationship between fulfillment, happiness, and work. Ginsberg was annoyed, and he was mad, but he was correct to pity Draper. And Draper not thinking about Ginsberg “at all” is simply his icy narcissism.
So I think I got to the right place but for the wrong reasons. I do think it’s a loser move to root against people, but Ginsberg wasn’t the loser in that scene—Draper was. I thought at the time his logic was sound; that focusing on oneself is best. While it’s absolutely true that focusing on self-improvement rather than hoping others fail is desirable, that wasn’t what Draper was doing. Self-improvement isn’t antithetical to having compassion and empathy. In fact, I think it’s impossible without those things. Draper didn’t understand that.
At a more macro level, projecting feelings of ill will on others is often a reflection of societal maladies. In the United States, there’s massive inequality of opportunity. Focusing on extrinsic values such as wealth and status generally don’t lead to happiness. But one can focus on intrinsic values and still be deeply unhappy if they perceive their efforts to be in vain. This is really the doomsday scenario for a society: when it inevitably produces apathy, distrust, and misery. That’s when the system is broken. To me, every election when millions of people say, “It’s less that I want A to win and more that I want B to lose” signals a broken society.
I’m reminded of John Paul Getty’s aphorism: “If you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s their problem.”
On an individual level, focusing on the wrong values and rooting for the demise of others is your problem. Through self-reflection, it can be changed. But if millions of people are driven to hate others because of a selfish few at the top and an unfair system, well, that’s all of our problems.
Anyways, I ended up not rooting for anyone on Sunday, which is harder than it sounds. But I do feel for the Bengals fans. It’s gotta suck to lose the Super Bowl. I have no idea, because the Browns have never played in one.
The Rams were also formerly a Cleveland team. They were the Cleveland Rams until 1945. The Cleveland Browns, a completely different organization, began play in 1946.
Yes, they were the LA Rams first, but they’d been in St. Louis since 1995. Stop playing games with fanbases and stay in one city.
In a cruel twist of fate, three of my LeBron jerseys were destroyed when my parents' house flooded. (Everyone was OK.)
EDITOR’S NOTE: He does gloat.
Veteran Mad Men watchers are aware Ginsberg has actual psychological challenges later in the series. I wrote my original journal entry before any of that was apparent, and this doesn’t have much to do with that—although there’s definitely a discussion we could have about how Draper contributed to Ginsberg’s challenges. For an assessment of Ginsberg by an actual psychiatrist, check this out.
There is a whole other essay to be written about how and why Draper is an asshole. This is not that essay, so please don’t @ me with Dick Whitman takes.