Posted on 04/11/2006 7:39:19 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
The founder of Playboy magazine, Hugh Hefner, is worried about his legacy. In preparation for his eightieth birthday, which he celebrated yesterday, he’s been busily filling leather-bound scrapbooks—1,500 of them—about his life and work. He’s arranged to be entombed next to Marilyn Monroe, the actress who posed nude in the first edition of Playboy in 1953.
According to a Wall Street Journal article by Matthew Scully, Hefner wants to be remembered as a philanthropist, social philosopher, cultural revolutionary. In fact, Hefner wants to be remembered as anything but what he was: a smut peddler, and the exploiter of women.
As Scully puts it with biting sarcasm, “There was a dark and joyless time in America when one could actually go about daily life without ever encountering pornographic images.” And without Hefner’s pioneering vision, “American males could not avail themselves of hundreds of millions of obscene films every year—as they do now.”
The fact is Hugh Hefner did more than anyone else to turn America into a great pornographic wasteland. Kids can now download porn on cell phones and iPods. While riding in their cars, children are treated to the sight of X-rated films on the DVD screens of cars in the next lane.
There’s no longer any doubt that the pornification of America has led to a huge increase in crime against women and children, crime committed by those who consume porn that teaches that women want to be raped and degraded.
And not just women. Hugh Hefner, sitting in his mansion in his bathrobe, thinking over his life, ought to consider the effect of his life’s work on kids like Justin Berry. Berry testified before Congress last week about how he was molested by a predator he met online. Justin spent most of his teen years posing naked online for people who paid to see him perform on camera. And he is far from alone: “There are hundreds of kids in the United States who are right now wrapped up in this horror,” he told Congress.
If Hefner wants to be remembered for his good deeds, he ought to start right now funding programs to help people damaged by his twisted view of sex—programs that help men who are enslaved to sexual addiction. Instead of funding Planned Parenthood, he ought to fund crisis pregnancy centers, which help women who bought into the lie that they were “liberated” only when they became reusable sex objects. Hefner should also help women who were lured into the sex industry and exploited—including those “Playboy Bunnies” he made famous, so many of whose lives ended tragically.
And then, Hefner might fund research into cures for the dozens of sexual diseases, including AIDS, that affect millions who believed his warped worldview—that sexual repression is bad, and that sexual promiscuity is, therefore, liberation and redemption.
The picture of Hefner on his eightieth birthday sitting in his mansion in his bathrobe, in the company of “girlfriends” paid to be there, and his jars of Viagra tablets, is a pathetic, tragic one, and it exposes his true legacy. The lesson: The life lived in pursuit of pleasure and self-gratification leads to nothing less than self-destruction.
"There’s no longer any doubt that the pornification of America has led to a huge increase in crime against women and children, crime committed by those who consume porn that teaches that women want to be raped and degraded. "
Ummmm--can you point to any statistics that back this up???
Violent crime, including rape, has decreased over the prior 20 years. Teen pregnancy rates are down over the past 20 years.
Statistics actually refute your main argument, that porn has led to increased violence against women. One could very persuasively argue that porn (or some other factor) has lessened crime against women. Not that I think porn is great or whatever---but one must look at reality, and the reality of present day America is that crime has been declining.
"And Rock n Roll existed before the Beatles.
"
And it continues to exist long after the Beatles are gone. Yes, there was rock before the Beatles. I remember the very beginnings of rock. The Beatles just carried on the already hugely successful tradition.
Check out... old vintage French post cards at
http://ly.lygo.com/ly/wired/news/images/full/rr-1920to1939_f.jpg
from an article at
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68790,00.html
Photos taken between 1920 and 1939. WAY BEFORE PLAYBOY MAGAZINE.
I disagree. He was pivotal in creating an environment where women could get paid for taking their clothes off and exposing themselves to horny men. Once that door was open culturally it just steamrolled into who could top who with more "erotic" poses and other things.
Hefner helped create an environment where women would let themselves be exploited.
It sure isn't Hustler...is it?
Honeslty, in reading this article, if one doesn't know that women should "not" be raped or degraded as just one of life's givens....whether or not that individual watches porn, they have problems.
IMHO, porn isn't the cause of a violent condition, merely a symptom of an already existing condition.
Let's all raise a glass to Mr. Hugh Hefner.
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| I don't even think that you can call Playboy 'pornography'. I have to agree with you on that statement. If 1950's Playboy was pornography what the hell do we call the statue of David? |
It's happened. There was an article about this new phenomenon on FR at least a year ago.
I don't often agree with his politics, but Playboy is a good magazine. I read my father's collection when I was a kid and now I have a subscription myself. I have read it every month for the last 10 years. Its great.
Actually photographic porn exists clear back to the middle of the 19th century...to the very beginnings of photography. Before that, there were paintings, engravings, etchings and other depictions of erotic images.
There's even pornography at Pompeii, and that dates back a long, long way.
Whatever medium is available will have its pornographic subjects. Thus has it always been, and thus it will always be.
Pornography drove the internet to success by being one of the first money-making ventures on the web. No sooner does a new technology appear than the demand for porn using that technology appears.
Hefner published a magazine that contained photos of nude women, airbrushed to remove every blemish. Before that, you had to go into some greasy room in an auto shop to look at images of naked women on the calendars hung there.
Men like naked women, and that's a good thing. Without that attraction, none of us would be here.
Care to enumerate this 'better' ... would you like to explain how the explosion of porn and sexual degeneracy, followed closely by the 44 million abortions (the yearly average prior to the sixties was near 500,000, but in the past thirty-three years we've 'accomplished' more than 44, 000,000) has actually improved society? Do you even understand what the assault on moral behavior (yes, Hefner encourages a 'new morality') does to the family as a societal unit, to the concept of personal responsibility? Do you understand that porn does in the brain what addictive drugs do in the brain? ... Oh why am I wasting time with this fruitless invitation to introspection?
Geez, who wants to look at Hefner? :-)
He provided a pay check...and the "air" of legitmacy.
Remember, Hef doesnt look at his work as porn...he looks at it as art.
If his mag was still done in Black & White, HQ pics in foreign locations, of semi nude to nude women...and he didnt have seven girlfriends nor sponsor orgies...sure, maybe it would be art...but, nah, he's just a pornographer.
That's funny. The French postcard you linked to shows two women. I guess the whole girl on girl thing is nothing new. [grin]
Hugh Hefner may enjoy the next ten or twenty years of his life, but his life will end tragically, as he almost certainly is damned. ("What profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul in the bargain?")
I'd say that Chuck has it pretty well covered as far as Hefner's impact on the world.
Hefner wants to be loved by people and I guess he seduces enough of us for sex, conversation, or adulation. He gives big parties as we all know.
But lets face it he's left a lot of wreckage behind in the last 50 or so years that's not pretty and not as hyped up as he is.
These films must be extremely short if one can avail oneself of "hundreds of millions" of them each year.
I thought that recently while watching a story on Hef done on the E channel. I could only imagine what the girls who were hanging on that 80 year old man were really thinking.
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