as most people have. Besides her being extremely hot, I mean.

She's always been smug and condescending to everyone that she considers "lower" than her, be it the secretaries in the old office (including Peggy at the time) to the copy writers/art directors (who have been assholes, but still). She has a long-established history of lording her status over everyone else, and stating her inherent superiority because she 1) had the ear of/was fucking the higher-ups or 2) was about to marry a doctor who was going to sweep her off her feet so that she'd never again have to deal with all the Lilliputians. What makes her a dinosaur is that she's still essentially pining away to be a kept-woman and have the men oof the office ride in on a white horse and solve her problems for her. And then she berates Peggy for not buying into her increasingly antiquated worldview.

>But I don't
>believe for a minute that Peggy did this for Joan. I mean, she
>wasn't even going to fire dude at first. A simple apology
>would have smoothed it all over. It's only when Joey
>disrespected *her* that she decided to truly flex her
>authority.

The initial action, calling him to the carpet, was indeed for Joan. The firing might have been for his actions afterwards, but that's kind of not the point. Her initial actions were on Joan's behalf, and Joan was an obnoxious bitch about it. She didn't have to say, "Gee golly! Thank you so much Peggy for protecting my honor! You're my BFF!" But chewing her out was completely wrong. I hope her rapist husband ends up in the Hanoi Hilton for a decade.