5931: Marian Salzman Has A Dream.

Marian Salzman is back, presenting another peculiar perspective for Adweek. Inspired by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Salzman typed the drivel below.

Prior to this election season, I often wondered whether our America is just the chauvinistic, white-man’s world of Mad Men with less smoking and more overweight people. But now, I think America can evolve enough to present a blended, multicultural face. Take Biden’s middle-class upbringing, blond grandchildren, schoolteacher wife and son Beau, who ships out next month, and combine them with Obama’s biracial heritage, hardworking single mother, Ivy League loans and hypoallergenic puppy. By choosing these candidates, we are finally putting the best of reality forward. No excuses, no dreams, but lots of promises. The imperfections are encouraging -- no denials about inhaling, no pretensions of perfect fathers, no excuses about skeletons that may rattle out of closets. Together, the Obamas and Bidens hold out the American Promise for the rest of the world: We’re real, and we’re ready to join with you, not as a with-us-or-against-us superior force but as a powerful inclusive world leader, ready to bring our strength to the table to address problems near and far.

As for Mad Men, is it just a coincidence that it’s set 45 years ago, when Dr. King shared his vision and Madison Avenue was selling advertising dreams? I can’t help wondering whether some of my generation, and some in the advertising industry, emotionally hark back to that era. Fortunately, Obama’s historic American Promise speech is a wake-up call and a measure of huge progress since that era. We’re moving on from those fashions, those rules of engagement and those arrogant assumptions.

Um, that’s nice. Except Salzman has spent most of her adult life on Madison Avenue, where Obama’s vision for change has hardly been realized. In fact, Salzman is currently employed at Porter Novelli of the Omnicom network, home to homophobic and diversity-adverse Mad Men and Women. The self-labeled—and self-absorbed—futurist needs to join the rest of us in the 21st century.