Be careful what you wish for...
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.
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.
What strikes me about this situation is how many of these women think Playboy will be their big break. They should ask themselves how big Hef's fortune is and how many former Playboy bunnies ride around in limos.
There are links to further information at the source document.
If anyone wants on or off my Chuck Colson/BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!
If anyone wants on or off my Chuck Colson/BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
ProLife Ping!
If anyone wants on or off my ProLife Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
If I'm only half as sad as he is at 80, I'll be happy.
Like Ringo Starr, right place at the right time.
It has been shown that porn addiction shows up very similarly in the brain as drug addiction. Hefner is merely a pusher being lionized as a progressive, a true (degenerate) leader for the disease of liberalism.
Hefner creeps me out. He always has. Yuck.
There are some good points in the article but the above statement is way over the top. Theoretically possible but highly unlikely.
I have witnessed this but it is such a very rare occurance and you have to be actively looking for it, but it is out there.
I know the porn heads will be here shortly to attack Chuck, you and everyone else who does not share their view of their patron saint.
But, America would not be awash in porn were it not for the overwhelming demand.
Hefner is an American icon. He changed the world forever, I think for the better.
There is no army so powerful as an idea whose time has come. Like it or not, in the 1950's pornography's time had come.
I have a better statistic - apparently the pornographic film industry now makes more money than Hollywood.
That was simply not the case before Hefner came onto the scene.
Regards, Ivan
If any thread should have a picture rule on it...this one should!!!
this is relevant to FR...how?
He was and is nothing more than a morally bankrupt poor excuse for a human being.
If he's an "icon", so is Larry Flynt. Hefner's lurid obsessions fed the sicko sixties. He changed the world, but not for the better IMO.
Be careful what you wish for...
Exactly how did Mr. Heffner change the world for the better?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.