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.
Once upon a time, there was a little boy whose mother was so phobic about germs that she never hugged him, or kissed him. His name was Hugh Hefner.
Playboy figured large in our imagination back in the 50s and early 60s. There are probably a lot of guys - myself included - who can tell you where they snuck a furtive look at their first Playboy - in my case, Brown's Pharmacy (now defunct) in Seattle's Ravenna neighborhood, circa 1962.
A sick,amoral piece of garbage.
"In this case, it's sexual sin. Sex is intended to create a lifetime bond between a man and a woman."
Well, that's one way to look at it, I guess. Still, sex is common to all mammals. All of us mammals have the same parts, and sex is done pretty much the same way.
I don't believe in any special status for humans among the mammalia. Sex is for reproduction of the species, and it all works pretty well, overall.
Human beings are, perhaps, unique in that they have the power of imagination. Because of this, human males have always created images of human females as a stimulant for the imagination.
You call Hefner's depictions of women pornography. I can't see that definition applying to the idealized, airbrushed women depicted in Playboy. I'm old enough to remember seeing the very first issue of Playboy as a youngster. I was bemused by it, of course, and I believe I did a naughty thing after seeing it.
However, it was not the first photo of a naked woman I had seen in my youth. Not by a long shot. There were lots of photos of naked women out there. They weren't as well-printed, of course, but who cared, really?
I stopped looking at Playboy when I was about 16. By then, I had opportunities to view the real thing, and found it far superior to those Playboy photos. In short, I got on with my life.
Playboy is not, and never has been, pornography. It's very far from pornography. I've seen pornography, and it's quite a different thing from those soft-focus photos in Playboy. Those are just nude women. Pornography is something else again.
Yep, They took an already established medium and popularized it beyond anything imaginable.
They set a new standard and benchmark. And rock n roll has never been the same. Same with Hefner.
I friend of mine had the Playboy channel, and most of what was on there seemed a tease, very frustrating, actually. The men never got what they wanted, only a promise and a letdown, sometimes with actual taunting from the women. There actually seemed to be quite a bit of contempt for men, not women, in what I saw.
For Me it was a 7-11 in 97'
Right on. Nothing is more pathetic, really, than a dirty old man. Compare the dignity and grace of an older man--let's say Billy Graham or GHW Bush to the pitiful hedonistic sight of a Larry Flynt or Hugh Hefner.
You nailed it. As a teenager, I would hunt down a Playboy mag from miles away, in a heavy snowstorm, while walking barefoot over broken glass. It was the 'taboo' thing, and the fact that the magazines were hard to get/find/keep.
Now, all a teen needs to do is log on to the PC in their house when Mom and Dad aren't looking.
I've wondered what the end result of 'easy access' porno will be. Whether kids will be desensitized to the indignity of it, or whether they'll just lose interest. I'm betting a little bit of both, with an emphsis on the latter.
And, Hef exemplifies the hedonistic lifestyle (unlimited sex with GORGEOUS women, parties all the time) that a whole lot of men think that they want. But, I'm sure that he has his own problems, as well. Not the least of which would be a constant worry about STDs. :-)
I agree that Playboy is quite tame judging by todays standards. (Seen anything on the Internet lately?)
I also wonder where, in the free sexual society that *we* have today, are those slick, glossy mags with the cute, airbrushed guy hotties for us girls?
You know, the hetero ones?
Am I looking in the wrong places? What happened to 'equality'?
Bunny ears...:)
My teenage sisters used to read that and some of the other women's magazines and they were more sexual that Playboy! LOL
Playgirl I believe your looking for.
What you're describing is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind.
Shalom.
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