After watching this week’s Mad Men episode “Wee Small Hours,” an hour of television full of bigotry and its many forms, I feel the need to address something that’s been bugging me all season. It occurs to me that it’s a little cozy of us, from our smug 21st century perch, to find ourselves offended by the bigotry of the Man Meners.

When Henry shows up at the Draper’s house unannounced and Betty, alarmed, tells him: “my girl will be back any minute,” I admit that I thought she was talking about her daughter. When I realized she meant the African American housekeeper Carla, a full-grown woman, I was horrified. And later, when Don says “you people” to Sal, meaning “you promiscuous homosexual people,” it’s also very offensive. Especially when you consider Don’s own slutty ways.

But I disagree with people who criticize Mad Men for inspiring superiority in its 2009 audience. I think it intends to do the opposite. When Betty and Carla discuss the death of the young girls in the church in Birmingham, Alabama, and Betty says that maybe it’s too early for civil rights, the show isn’t implying that all white women were racist back these. She’s behaving out of fear and shortsightedness, the way people without the benefit of hindsight mostly do. It’s very unpleasant to think that in many small ways each day we are probably committing sins of bigotry at which future generations will tisk, but we probably are. Just the way the characters in Mad Men do.

Now back to our program. The major things that happened in this episode are:

1. Sal gets fired after he rejects a chest rub from the son of the Lucky Strike tycoon.

2. Betty and Henry’s affair heats up briefly with love letters and a locked-office snog, but in the end Mrs Draper finds herself unable to engage in “tawdry” sex on the PR Man’s desk, and bids him goodbye.

3. Conrad Hilton and Don have a “wee small hours” heart-to-heart, but when Don delivers an ad campaign that doesn’t involve the moon—which Hilton did ask for, but in what seemed like a nonliteral sense—Hilton leaves the Sterling Cooper office angry, saying that Don didn’t listen to his instructions. It’s becoming increasingly likely that Hilton is batshit crazy.

4. Don begins an affair with Sally’s former teacher after stalking her in his car while she attempts to jog through the neighborhood. And by “the neighborhood,” I mean Don’s own neighborhood. They live just two miles from each other. (Remember that old SNL skit Bad Idea Jeans? Yeah.)

In the background of all this drama is the mounting fury of the civil rights movement. We hear Don absentmindedly listening to MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the car radio, and Betty walks in on Carla in tears during a report about the Sixteenth Street church bombing (which happened on September 15, 1963). But it is a quieter sort of bigotry that drives events among our characters. In one of the episode’s most compelling scenes, we watch as Sal pleads his case to Don about the Lucky Strike fiasco. We know that Don knows that Sal is gay, of course, and that he indulges in one-off sexual encounters with other men. So when Sal says he rebuffed Mr Lucky, and Don claims he doesn’t believe him, at first it seems true. “You people,” he says to Sal with disgust.

But while he may appear to be repulsed by Sal’s sexuality, the only thing that really, truly seems to disgust Don Draper is professional incompetence. I don’t think he is angry at Sal for being gay, but rather for not finding a way to save the account no matter what—even if that meant having an unenticing quickie with the rich cigarette boy in an editing suite. Don’s personal brand of bigotry is aimed at anyone who can’t take care of business—whether it’s Roger going publicly gaga over his secretary instead of just having a discreet affair, or Sal rejecting the client and causing an office-wide crisis.

But now that Don’s having a tryst with a woman who shops at the same grocery store as his wife, things could get interesting for him. There’s a crisis coming people. (I say that just in case the incessant references to Rome are too subtle for you.)

But enough about all that. What are we drinking?

I have to admit that I have no idea what sort of something Hilton offered Don when they are having their late night bond. We are told it’s from prohibition and it’s not “moonshine” (meaning it’s not unaged whiskey made from corn mash. Technically, moonshine refers to any spirit that is distilled without a license and sold sans taxes, so they are drinking moonshine. Technically.) We know that it tastes bad, and Hilton offers it to Don to honor their bond over a past poverty, over appreciating what they have now because they didn’t always have it. The rotgut helps them remember.

And here in fall 2009, we’ve got the bad-times bug too. With the proliferation of “speakeasy-style” bars now annoying nightlife reporters all over the country, it was only a matter of time before the nostalgia extended to the hooch…and commercial distillers caught on. It’s illegal to make moonshine, in fact it’s a felony. So if you want to get in on the underground home-distilling scene (and there is a scene in Seattle) you’ll have to ask around without giving off the impression that you’re some kind of NARC.

Or, you could just buy commercial products made in the DIY style: Corsair makes a white dog (unaged) rye whiskey (find Paul Clarke’s recipe for a white dog cocktail here) and a pumpkin spice “moonshine.” Portland’s House Spirits has dispatched some of its white dog to the Urban Farmer restaurant (also in Portland), where you can try it.

Now I know you’d never dream of making your own spirits, which is why I’d never direct you to the informative homedistiller.org.

Happy drinking, and remember to keep an open mind. Future generations may be watching.

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