Thanks, Artsy. I was working in NYC at the time and although I don't remember the incident, nothing about it surprises me, nor, for that matter, have more than a couple of scenes in Mad Men done so. The show is so accurate that it is sometimes hard to watch---showing, as it does, the bad, the ugly, and the not so bad and ugly. My life flashes in front of me with every episode.

The issue about whether the closer, "And they call us savages", was good writing is interesting---whether it tells the viewer how to feel, or not. I thought the sentence rang true when I heard it. If anything the entire lobby scene might have looked over the top, but not any qualities about the closer. 

I gather that the criticism of the ending line morphed to one of writing technique following the revelation that it was a true incident and true dialog. (What didn't ring true was Draper's later scene with his wife.)

In any event, as a fan of the show I don't particularly like the change in photography technique. And I just assume that Draper is going to screw up this new relationship. Oh my, much too much projection on my part. 

Don't know where to put this, I think it's a keeper, a superb short essay on which Etch-A-Sketch picture might be the real Mitt, by "M.S." at The Economist. Since he uses Don Draper, along with Gatsby, in his summary paragraph, I thought to plop it here. Here's the last graph for a taste:

This model is probably the one that comes closest to the core issue: the instability in the American equation of freedom with the possibility of reinventing oneself. These big, chiselled men with their blue suits, asserting their right to invent themselves as exactly whoever the public wants them to be right now: where have we seen them before? They've been with us since the birth of the modern American moment. Jay Gatsby. Roger O. Thornhill. (Eva Marie-Saint: "What's the O stand for?" Cary Grant: "Nothing. I made it up.") Most recently, of course, Don Draper. Are these men of character? In one sense, absolutely: they deliver on time, they fulfill contracts, they take responsibility for the organisations they manage. In another sense...who are they, exactly? Who are we, self-reinventing Americans? We forget about what happened yesterday; memory is indulgence. We become whoever the moment demands. It works. It achieves great things. Does it make us free? Or does it make us an empty suit, a switched dog tag, a wrong name heard across the hotel lobby? Are we free, westward bound across the corn fields, or off on a marvellous jaunt across old Europe; or are we running for our lives, dodging the machine-gun fire, clambering desperately up George Washington's giant stone effigy, pursued by unknown enemies for reasons we don't understand? He's running, he's ahead, he's winning, they're not going to catch him, he's going to make it. But who is running, and what for?

Update:

Equal opportunity is obviously going to be a continuing theme as all of a sudden Don has an Afro-American secretary. (Her name happens to be Dawn, we know because the writers make it plain by playing up confusion about Don and Dawn sounding the same--this name thing drives Roger nuts--Don replies to him that  "she was the most qualified.")

And they hire a Jewish copywriter who so far seems purposefully presented like a caricature of a young Jewish New Yorker of the era, and play it up.

Also as the counterculture revolution is heating up, it's clear Don is running into the problem of all of sudden being seen as an old fuddy duddy.

Which makes me wonder: by the end of the series will we see him wearing things like Nehru jackets and brightly colored wide ties and jackets or won't we? If my greatest generation father could make that transition--forced on him by his wife who dressed him--my mom who was only a few years younger than him--my bet is Don is going to, too. Especially if he's still with Megan. But even if not, because ad agencies were sort of a center of such faux hipdom, ala Sonny and Cher and Peter Max style.