Pete Campbell: American Sniper by James Reich was first published as one of a series of Mad Men ‘eulogies’ by The Weeklings, and was subsequently picked up by Salon.com and The Good Men Project. “It took me a while to like Pete Campbell. Campbell, as anonymous as a soup can, was also Sterling Cooper’s boyish friendly ghost, an alabaster wimp, regularly cuckolded by the agency. His ambition was shrill, his gestures desperate and hard to respect. He was an unsympathetic Pinocchio, striving even to be a real boy in a real man’s world. Today, I regard Pete Campbell — so subtly, selflessly and brilliantly played by Vincent Kartheiser — as the product of genius. Campbell embodies compelling anxieties. I want to describe two related episodes, linked by the disembodied John F. Kennedy, that transformed Pete Campbell into an all-American anti-hero.” – Read more at any of the links above.
