There's something pretty funny about the way the advertising industry has embraced wholeheartedly the AMC show, Mad Men. It's a good show, for certain. But only advertising could see it as a glorification of what we do, when it clearly despises the industry it depicts.

I mean the star of the show is so much of a liar that he's not even a real person! You don't need to be Karl Jung to figure out that archetype. It's fascinating TV, but it's scathing in it's depiction of advertising being run by whoring, drunk, white men.

And here we thought it was a period drama.

A psychiatrist would have a field day if we could put the entire industry on a couch for an afternoon for some much needed analysis. Just consider the vast self-loathing we must feel to identify so richly with characters like Peggy Olson, the increasingly bitter and hypertensive writer edging toward her own inevitable nervous breakdown. Or the future holding company chairman, Pete Campbell, who knows no boundaries in his quest to compensate for his diminutive stature and the wife who won't let him keep his firearm at home.

For godsakes, Ad Age does a friggin' recap of the show every Monday! What's up with that, people?

Now I neither suggest we stop watching, nor stop capitalizing on the program. But we may want to take a look at this love/hate thing we've got going on with our jobs. Because this is just getting embarrassing. We've become the abused spouses of the business world, finding escape in our own version of the romance novel. It ain't pretty, folks.