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Playboy to outsource most magazine ops: report Tue Nov 24, 1:40 am ET (Reuters) – Playboy Enterprises Inc will outsource most of the business operations of its namesake magazine in an effort to curb losses, the Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday. Playboy will turn over all magazine operations, except its editorial operations, to Florida-based American Media Inc, according to the paper. The deal reached last week is expected to be funded in part from Playboy's advertising sales, the paper said. Playboy has about 30 full-time employees working in the operations that will be outsourced, and most will be let...

Let me tell you a fairy tale. Once upon a time, a gorgeous blond California girl -- let's call her "Carrie" -- wanted to be a beauty queen. Asked about gay marriage, "Carrie" blurted out her truth: "I believe all Americans should enjoy equal rights to get married whether it is same-sex or opposite marriage. That's the way I was raised, and that's the way I think marriage should be." Afterward, a judge proclaimed her answer so offensive he voted against her and wanted to rip off her tiara. Instead of rebuking the judge, pageant officials said that "Carrie" needs...

How much do lefties dislike Glenn Beck? So much that the vitriol has bled over into low-rent, soon-to-be-obsolete publications like Playboy magazine. In the December 2009 issue of Playboy, Thomas Frank "takes down" the Fox News Channel host by analyzing the conservative movement and how Beck rose to prominence. Frank, with an obvious need to meet a high-word count in mind, attempts to dismantles Beck by attacking his Christmas book, "The Christmas Sweater" and his other books, his admiration for Thomas Paine, his fear the U.S. Constitution is being trampled upon and his activist efforts to curb this intrusion by...

Dannii Minogue has revealed how she was forced to pose nude for Playboy to pay off her crippling debts. The X Factor judge, 38, stripped off for the front page cover shoot in 1995 after the breakdown of her marriage to actor Julian McMahon. She owed more than £150,000 and was too proud to turn to her older sister Kylie for help. 'My parents didn't want me to do it. My dad was saying, "Doing this is forever - you can never, ever change it," she said during an emotional interview with Piers Morgan. 'Kylie knew why I was doing...

LOS ANGELES — Hugh Hefner leaned back on a red loveseat, the saggy one in the study of his infamous mansion here, and interlocked his fingers behind his head. A visitor had asked — more like shouted, since he has trouble hearing — a question about mortality. At 83, does he think about it? In a word, no. Mr. Hefner, the legendarily libidinous founder of Playboy, the prophet of hedonism, does not believe that his denouement is at hand. He doesn’t act like it, either. He still works full days on his magazine, flies to Europe and Las Vegas, pops...

"D'oh!" doesn't even start to cover it. Marge Simpson -- the blue beehived matriarch of America's most loved dysfunctional family - is Playboy magazine's November cover, the magazine said on Friday. Simpson, tastefully concealing her assets behind a signature Playboy Bunny chair, is the first cartoon character ever to front the glossy adult magazine, joining the ranks of sex symbols like Marilyn Monroe and Cindy Crawford. Playboy said the cover celebrates the 20th anniversary of the "The Simpsons." Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie have already been honored this year with a set of U.S. postal stamps. The magazine promises...

Ready for cartoon porn? Marge Simpson has “posed” nude for Playboy’s November issue, appearing on the cover without her trademark green dress and pearls (or anything else for that matter). Two months ago, publisher Hugh Hefner posted a teasing message on Twitter, saying “Marge Simpson has a surprise for her fans in the November issue.”

After more than a decade of separation, Hugh Hefner is seeking an official return to his bachelor status. The Playboy founder filed for divorce on Friday from his wife and former Playmate, Kimberly. Hefner is asking a judge to order him to pay Kimberly Conrad Hefner $20,000 a month in spousal support. That would be half of the $40,000 a month that the Playboy founder has been paying her since they separated in 1998, the records state. He wants the monthly payments to end in two years, or after a trial on the couple's divorce is held, whichever comes...

A British playboy who held a fundraising event for Hillary Clinton is facing life imprisonment for the murder of a caretaker who stood in the way of a $3.2 million property deal. Thanos Papalexis, 37, tortured and killed Charalambos Christodoulides after he refused to move out of a flat in a North London warehouse that the struggling developer was trying to sell. Christodoulides, 55, a shy loner known as Bambi, was hooded, tied to a chair, beaten and strangled. His body was wrapped in a sheet, covered with paint-stripper and hidden. The case against Papalexis was strengthened after a former...

Irina Voronina was once a Playboy Playmate, is a regular on Adult Swim's first ever live action show Saul of the Mole Men on the Cartoon Network and has graced the pages of men’s mag "Perfect 10," but the Russian model said the worst treatment she ever received was from HBO’s "Entourage" boys during a guest role earlier this year.

Here's the spread. Kimberly Conrad married Hef back in 1989. They had a prenup. Approximately 9 years later they split but never divorced. When they separated, they signed an amendment to the prenup which guaranteed Kimberly a ton of money. For 10 years, Kimberly has been living in the house next to the Playboy mansion with their two sons. Everything was going swimmingly, until Hef decided to sell the house this year. According to the lawsuit, filed in L.A. County Superior Court, Hef allegedly announced he was not going to honor the agreement anymore and she had 9 months to...

A lawsuit has been filed against the Gahanna Police Department by a former police officer who says he was 'defamed and harassed' after his wife appeared in Playboy Magazine. According to the lawsuit former Det. Ronald Fithen claimed he was the target of a "invasive, non-criminal investigation" after his wife, Beth, appeared in a 2008 article in Playboy. The Fithen's are naming the City of Gahanna, its police department, its police chief and deputy police chief as defendants in the suit. According to the lawsuit, the chief and deputy chief of police, on numerous occasions, requested autographed copies of the...

Kendra Plans To Be Strict Christian Mother, Reveals Baby Names Now that Kendra Wilkinson and Hank Baskett are officially husband and wife the reality show duo is focusing on the next important phase - parenthood. While Hugh Hefner’s 23-year-old former flame has led a pretty wild life (besides being Hugh Hefner's girlfriend, the number of times she's revealed her assets in public is well into the double digits), and said earlier this year that Baskett was helping her find God for the first time, she is determined to be a strict religious mama.

Baldwin: I have sometimes thought I could move to New Jersey or Connecticut and run. I'd love to run against Joe Lieberman. I have no use for him. But it's all fantasy. I'm a carry-me-out-in-a-box New Yorker. Here, anything can happen. Who thought Eliot Spitzer would go down the way he did? Senator Hillary Clinton left to serve as secretary of state. Two of the biggest forces gone. Maybe Andrew Cuomo will run for one of their old seats. How much longer will Chuck Schumer stay as senator? After 2013 Bloomberg will be gone. What happens then?

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s legacy will live on with a new University of Central Florida study aimed at saving the endangered bunnies named after him. Rosanna Tursi, a master’s student and graduate teaching assistant, is using population genetics to aid in the conservation of the Lower Keys marsh rabbits (Sylvilagus palustris hefneri), which were declared endangered in 1990. It is estimated that less than 300 rabbits remain today. Hefneri, the most recently recognized subspecies of the marsh rabbit, is small with short, dark brown fur and a grayish-white belly. Discovered in 1984, the subspecies was named in honor of Hefner...

Living at the legendary Playboy Mansion in California, becoming big-time models and being the girlfriends of Hugh Hefner has been a blast, even more so than Karissa and Kristina Shannon could have imagined. Yet the 19-year-old twins admit they sometimes get a little homesick. In particular, the onetime Clearwater residents miss Clearwater Beach, Ybor City's nightlife, their favorite radio station (WLLD-FM 98.7), their friends, and of course, their family. "We try as much as we can to visit," Kristina Shannon said in a phone interview this week. Every time they do, they're a little more famous. A year ago, the...

Posted by Oscar De Los Santos and Kelly L. Goodridge on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 1:45:10 PM By Kelly L. Goodridge and Oscar De Los Santos Conservative lives, freedom and property are under assault by a volley of daily liberal attacks. The Left is perpetrating racism, sexism, smears, and falsehoods. Conservatives who counter the Left are met with no-holds-barred assaults. The MEANstream media rarely misses an opportunity to demean the Right. Tragically, six months into Barack Hussein Obama’s presidency, it’s obvious that the war on conservatism is a joint White House / Right Wing venture. The White House and the...

Researchers found that men preferred the shape of ordinary women, equivalent to dress size 14, than so-called super-attractive models, according to a study that compared the body shapes of ordinary women, Playboy centrefolds, models from the 1920s and 1990s and glamour girls. Professor Rob Brooks at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues, asked 100 male students to judge the attractiveness of 201 line drawings of female torsos with different hip, waist and shoulder measurements.

Who is worse? The father molesting the daughter, or the mother who knows and looks the other way? The man raping the girl in the alleyway, or the passive bystander who neither stops the attack nor calls the police? The mother beating her children, or the husband who goes to work and leaves the children with her? Who is worse? The abuser, the attacker is worse. But we are revulsed and disgusted by the people who aid and abet and ignore the perpetrators, and rightly so. Last week, ten women were the subject of a cyber-rape. That is, without their...

The common argument for those traditionally against Playboy and similar magazines is the disproven ‘demeaning and degrading to women’ mantra, usually coming from the far left, the far right, and especially aggressive feminist groups (who seem to contain an unusually high number of women who could NEVER appear in Playboy. I’m just saying…) How odd that it would be an article that would turn me off of the Bunny.

After more than 50 years as a best-selling “men’s” magazine promoting “free love” –– a lifestyle of promiscuity and sexual exploitation of women –– Playboy has been displaced by the easy availability of pornography on the internet. At one time, supposedly over a quarter of college men were buying a monthly copy of Playboy with total sales of over seven million copies an issue in 1972. Now, sales have dwindled to barely three million copies per issue. The corporation is for sale for $300 million though experts claim that it is barely worth $100 million today. They’ve already lost around...

After Playboy put out a list of the top ten conservative females they would like to hate f@##$, in which Megyn Kelly was listed, Megyn Kelly gets a few words in.

Unfortunately, some conservative women know what it's like to be a black Republican. First of all, Playboy thought this would be great to alert the blogs about this insightful piece of commentary... Subject line: So Right It’s WrongHello — I just wanted to pass on the link to “So Right It’s Wrong,” an article on the top 10 conservative women we hate to love. It just went live on our site this morning. http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-forum-the-top-10-women-conservatism/index.htmlBest Regards, Aranya Tomseth Editor | Online Community Manager Playboy.com Of course, after the unexpected condemnations came in, Playboy scrubbed the page from the Internet, or at...

From the Department of Lousy Timing: New Playboy magazine CEO Scott Flanders told the Chicago Tribune, "I don't think Playboy is broken in any respect." His interview was published on the very day that the Playboy empire, which made a fortune exploiting women for decades, finally crossed an ethical line -- and then retreated. It all started when Playboy.com decided to publish a hate piece by rape-fantasist Guy Cimbalo that envisioned sexual attacks on leading conservative women, including Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and bloggers Amanda Carpenter, Pamela Geller, Mary Katharine Ham and Michelle Malkin. The writing and the entire...

Today I came across a tweet by TommyXtopher:Will be off the grid for awhile dealing with the fact that I just got fired by PoliticsDaily.comYes, you read that correctly, an in-the-tank liberal media guy was fired. What is the world coming to?In a recent article entitled "Bad Bunny" Tommy takes on the Playboy's vicious slam on conservative women. In response to the negative feedback generated by the article Playboy pulled the article. However, Caleb Howe captured screen shots - WARNING: NSFW! It is a good illustration of the new era of peace ushered in by the Obama administration. Vile attacks...

I don't know Tommy Christopher personally, just from his regular gig on the Ed Morrissey show, and the fact that I follow his tweets and read some of his columns. I probably disagree with Tommy's politics 95% of the time, he is a liberal but he is not a crazy liberal and he is very funny. One story that Tommy and I agreed on was this week's disgusting piece in Playboy, the one about the ten conservative women they would like to hate f**K. We both wrote pieces on it. Tommy's piece appeared on his regular AOL column and was...

In case you're unaware, Playboy Writer Guy Cimbalo recently published a blog post on the Playboy website which advocated and joked about angrily violating a host of Conservative women. The post has since been taken down with little-to-no fanfare or media coverage, once again proving how utterly worthless, biased and full of crap the MSM really is... http://conservativebrawler.blogspot.com/2009/06/red-eye-shreds-playboys-hateful-hate-fk.html

On Sunday, George Tiller is murdered and Bill O’Reilly is to blame. Then, on Monday, two Army recruiters are shot — one murdered — and the response from the left is close to silence. Winnant cries against tough words and blames someone for inciting violence in the case of the abortion doctor’s death. Would he have been outraged had we found that the Army recruiters’ shooting was a politically motivated assassination? If a left-wing nut had been responding to the Tiller murder, would Winnant blame himself for the murderous incitement? Certainly Winnant could be amenable to the idea that the...

From the time the Warren Commission report cited it for fostering the assassination of JFK up through the recent murder of an abortionist in Kansas, the left loves to writes about and decry what they refer to as a “climate of hate.” Lately little more than code for “conservatives are talking,” the phrase “climate of hate” is ubiquitous, both in traditional media and on the left side of the internet. Each and every time a figure on the left is murdered, threatened, jostled on the subway, slips in the shower and gets a boo boo, or is just feeling a...

I wonder if Janet Napolitano and her unbiased *cough cough* DHS will issue a report on this left wing hatred? (via Hot Air) The Top 10 Conservative Women We’d Like To Filibuster (reminder: Playboy is not safe for work!) Obama promised us the dream of post-partisanship—a cuckoo land where party affiliation and factional animosity were forgotten. Turn on cable news or open any newspaper, however, and you’ll quickly discover that the dream has yet to materialize. But there is a way to reach across the aisle without letting principles fall by the wayside. We speak, naturally, of the hate [f**k]....

OK I will admit it, I never read Playboy for the articles, in fact in the good old days, when I could look at the magazine (before I realized the girls were my daughter's age) I never even knew that Playboy had page numbers. Today, I received a tweet from Allahpundit of Hot Air, alerting me to one of cruelest, most mean-spirited displays I have ever seen in the magazine, or on the net for that matter. In a column called So Right it's Wrong, freelance writer and former blogger Guy Cimbalo writes about "The top ten conservative women we...

The Adult Magazine Is Scaling Back in a Last-Ditch Effort to Keep Publishing Ever wanted to pick your own Playboy centerfold? Now might be your chance. It appears that the iconic magazine is being shopped around, with potential bidders being asked around $300 million for the publication. The market capitalization of the company's stock is hovering around $100 million. Several giant players in the private equity field have been approached, including Apollo Capital Partners and Providence Equity Partners, which both refused to pay such a high premium, unnamed sources told the New York Post. But a bidder might also...

Playboy Enterprises Inc. is considering reducing the circulation of its namesake magazine, cutting its frequency and raising prices as a diminishing print audience and advertising declines weigh on the adult-entertainment company. On Monday Playboy posted a net loss of $13.7 million, or 41 cents per share, for the first quarter, compared with a net loss of $4.2 million, or 13 cents per share, a year earlier. The latest results included $8.7 million in impairment and restructuring charges. Jerome Kern, Playboy's interim chairman and chief executive officer since Christie Hefner stepped down at the end of last year, said in a...

British media regulator Ofcom has fined Playboy TV 22,500 pounds ($32,990) for airing sexually explicit images in breach of broadcasting rules. It said on Thursday the free-to-air channel Playboy One had broadcast unencrypted raunchy, and what the watchdog deemed offensive, material until September 2008. Ofcom had received five complaints relating to seven late night programs broadcast between September and December 2007.

[video] In a battle between a vile hardcore porn publisher and a vile softcore porn publisher, wheelchair-bound Larry Flynt claims he’s had more women than Hugh Hefner. “ To tell the truth, we don’t care about either of these guys. They’re both living in the past. But based on longevity, we’d give the nod to Hefner. As far as we can tell, the guy invented sex and most of the primary positions associated with it. He’s been doing it since dinosaurs roamed the earth. He drew the first centerfolds on the wall of a cave. The first issue of Playboy...

Hugh Hefner and his wife, Kimberley Conrad Hefner, who have lived in adjacent mansions since their 1999 separation, are listing Ms. Hefner's Los Angeles home for $28 million. In Holmby Hills, the house stands next door to the Playboy mansion, Mr. Hefner's massive, Tudor-style party-friendly home since the 1970s. Ms. Hefner, 1989's Playmate of the Year, says she and Mr. Hefner bought the house about 10 years ago so that she could raise their two sons there, who are now college-age. There's a door in the wall between the two properties for easier access back and forth. "You know...

Playboy Magazine got its undies in a bundle over the nation wide Tea Party protests held last Friday that were inspired by CNBC's Rick Santelli's free market rant of February 19. As Noel Sheppard noted on March 1, the skin mag published a piece claiming that Santelli was part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to protest Obama's socialist policies. It turns out, however, that the story has been proven false and in response Playboy has mysteriously removed the piece that first raised the question of the grand conspiracy. Happily, the facts have won over on Playboy forcing it to pull...

The Playboy empire may be on the auction block. If it can’t find a buyer, it has to figure out how to survive massive losses that show no sign of diminishing. Last week, the “sophisticated” gentlemen’s magazine had a dismal conference call announcing its fourth quarter and full-year financial results. Jerome Kern, the company’s interim CEO, gulped and reported a 2008 loss of $156 million.

Want to know why Playboy is struggling? To put it in terms a Playboy reader can understand, why pay for the cow when the milk is free? (In case that was too subtle, we mean to say that there’s so much free porn on the internet that no one is willing to pay for “sophisticated” nudity anymore.) OK, we’ve put this off long enough. Let’s just say it quickly and get it over with. “Knocked Up” star Seth Rogan’s ugly mug will be on the cover of Playboy’s March issue. Maybe Christie Hefner hasn’t noticed but he’s a man. A...

Now even Playboy falls victim to the credit crunch as company considers sale By MAIL FOREIGN SERVICE 20th February 2009 It is the trailblazing brand that made soft-porn mainstream. But it seems even Playboy isn't immune to the effects of the credit crunch after posting a loss of £102.6million in the last quarter. Bosses at the company, best known for its adult magazines and bunny logo, have now said they are willing to sell what is regarded as one of the most iconic brands in the world. Enlarge Pamela Anderson poses for Playboy in July 1992: She is one of...

Christie Hefner, daughter of doddering, octagenerian Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, has a new job. CNN announced this morning that she has been “added to our roster of economic analysts.” Hefner breathlessly revealed her economic expertise by saying the “sense that I’m getting, in talking to CEOs, is that people are hoping for a late 2010 recovery.” “I’ve proposed a special program called ‘The Anchors of CNN,’” Hefner might have said. “In a cost-cutting move, we’ve chosen Larry King as our first centerfold because he already had a staple in his belly.” “I couldn’t be prouder,” said proud papa Hugh Hefner....

Obama Justice Nominee Used to Represent Playboy David Ogden, President Obama's pick for deputy attorney general, used to represent Playboy -- in one case paving the way for the blind to enjoy the magazine at the Library of Congress. FOXNews.com Wednesday, February 04, 2009 Senators might want to hold David Ogden's confirmation hearing after the kids go to bed. That's because the man in line to become No. 2 at the nation's top law enforcement agency was once a strident defender of Playboy and other purveyors of nudity. And some critics are drawing attention to his risque legal work ahead...

CHICAGO – President Obama has made a major mistake and put America’s families at risk by selecting David Ogden to become Deputy Attorney General, says Fidelis, a pro-family organization. “David Ogden is a hired gun from Playboy and ACLU. He can’t run from his long record of opposing common sense laws protecting families, women, and children. The United States Senate has a responsibility to the American people to insure that Mr. Ogden’s full record is fully reviewed before any vote on his nomination” said Brian Burch, President of Fidelis. “Ogden’s record is nothing short of obscene. He has represented Playboy...

Playboy has apparently dropped plans to carry out its Saturday Super Bowl bash in Tampa due to "lack of sponsorship." The famous lad magazine was said to be closing its office in New York and further fusing Chicago operations, reports the New York Post. However, the magazine was reportedly "hawking tickets to game-day bash at the Playboy Mansion in LA." The general admission would allegedly cost enthusiasts 1,500 dollars, while those with tables and cabanas were priced at 10,000 and 25,000 dollars respectively. Meanwhile, the annual pay-per-view Lingerie Bowl has also been scrapped following disputes whether members of the Florida...

Tuesday January 13, 2009 Scottish Government Considers Investigation into Playboy Marketing Products to Children By Kathleen GilbertSCOTLAND, U.K., January 13, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Scottish Parliament members have called for an investigation into sexually-themed merchandise marketed to young children.The Equal Opportunities Committee said more research should be undertaken in response to complaints about the sexually themed children's T-shirts, animal-print high-heel slippers for babies, and pink pencil-cases emblazoned with the Playboy logo."We do need more research. I think there is some evidence to show that the goods we're talking about do sexualise children," said Nationalist MSP Sandra White.  Other members were less...

Edgy snowboard graphics test liberal Vermont By Aimee Picchi Globe Correspondent / January 5, 2009 BURLINGTON, Vt. - For Nicole Zarrillo, seeing a snowboarder with one of Burton Snowboards' new Playboy designs at a Vermont ski slope underscored the reasons why many Vermonters - including her boss - are protesting the new men's snowboards. "When you really think about it, it's a young man standing on top of a naked woman's body," said Zarrillo, 38, an office manager for a nonprofit based in Burlington, also home to Burton's headquarters.

Catholics and Christians in Mexico have expressed outrage over Playboy’s latest cover. The shot feature a model wearing a white head covering and nothing more in front of a stained-glass window, an obvious attempt to evoke the Madonna (the original, not the singer) at the time Mexican Catholics celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Fox News was all over this story, to no one’s surprise: I suppose I should be outraged as well, but honestly, Playboy and the rest of the porn industry stopped surprising me years ago. Their hostility towards religion has been obvious for a long...

Playboy magazine has been offending sensibilities since it began publishing in 1953, and ordinarily its stunts to attract readers are not worth noting. But the cover of the December issue of Playboy Mexico, featuring a semi-nude model presumably portraying the Virgin Mary, is out of bounds even for a publication that revels in being out of bounds.

Some of you by now may have heard about the cover of Mexico's Playboy magazine. To wit: A nude model resembling the Virgin Mary on the cover of the Mexican edition of Playboy magazine, published only days before a major Mexican festival dedicated to the mother of Jesus, prompted the company's U.S. headquarters on Friday to apologize. The magazine, which hit newsstands on Dec. 1 as ceremonies began leading to Friday's pilgrimage to the Mexico City shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, showed a model wearing nothing but a white cloth over her head and breasts. She is standing...

How could political analysis of the 2008 election be complete without the input of the bathrobe-wearing Hugh Hefner? For those who couldn't care less what Hefner thinks about politics, a video of Playmate Kendra answering a really controversial question is presented at the bottom of this story. But first, here is the Hef answering a few questions about Sarah Palin beginning with, "As an advocate of teen abstinence, is Sarah Palin a hypocrite because of her daughter's pregnancy? Is she fit to be VP?" I wouldn't call her a hypocrite. I think, uhh, she's not the one who got pregnant....