Hugh Hefner’s Legacy: The Celebrity Pornographer Turns 80

Breakpoint with Charles Colson ^ | 4/10/2006 | Charles Colson

[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.

[MineralMan]

"The west hardly reached perfection 1000 years ago."

No, and it hasn't reached that state yet, either.

[connectthedots]

Put me on it.

[steve-b]

Of course, you just read Playboy for the articles, right? What do you think their cicrulation would be today if they just published interviews and not titty pics?
Answer: 0.

Yeah, that's why not a single magazine in existence has ever published interviews with substantive public figures unaccompanied by nude pictures.

[antiRepublicrat]

Almost every media or media distribution mechanism has been used for "porn" practically since its inception -- painting, photography, post cards, motion pictures, magnetic video, digital still and video, the old BBS systems and the Internet.

[Skooz]

On some level, religious puritans realize that the current war will doom them in much the same way the war against Naziism doomed genteel anti-Semitism. The parallels are just too uncomfortable, even if not conscously considered.

Christians = Taliban.

Please. Spare us.

[Windsong]

Using the same criteria, bootleggers and drug runners chang the world for the better as well.

Now youve done it. Youve gone and made sense..now the Libertarians will descend upon you like ravens

[linda_22003]

"Its no accident that some of the most virulent feminazis were once Playboy "bunnies". "

Gloria Steinem comes to mind; who are the others?

[Skooz]

Delta Burke?

[linda_22003]

I'm not aware that she was a Bunny, nor a "feminazi". I think the poster is inflating "one" to "some".

[Skooz]

It was a joke.

Delta Burke is not a feminazi.

ha ha

[antiRepublicrat]

Another example: Crack addicted females have left their children in the car for hours while 'endulging a person choice'.

You're right, crack needs to be illegal because of that. But then there was the case a while ago when a woman left her kid in the car to get her hair/nails done. Illegalize beauty salons!

[linda_22003]

I had to think for a moment to even remember who she was. I think Gloria Steinem is still the only one that fits the category, despite the previous poster wanting us to think that former Bunnies are on the march.

[ZULU]

Not Delta Burke.

I was thinking of that other actress with the weight problem who is kind of sexy, but is a total airhead. She does some commerical for a weight reduction program and once had her own show on TV which flopped. She did a movie about a baby. I can't remember her name - light eyes, brown hair.

Or maybe she just played in a movie called "A Bunny's Story" or something like that. I have a problem remembering these actors and actresses names.

I was thinking mainly of Steinem, but couldn't remember her name.

[Skooz]

I think you're right.

Steinham is the only one I know of, but I am hardly a bunny historian and I could be wrong.

[rlmorel]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

[linda_22003]

Oookay, I'd say that plumbs the depth of your expertise on the statement you made.

Thanks.

[drjimmy]

Its no accident that some of the most virulent feminazis were once Playboy "bunnies".

Perhaps in your fevered imagination, but not in reality. Gloria Steinem is the only "feminazi" I know of who was a Playboy bunny, and not only did she do it for an investigative writing assignment, she also took your side in the debate about Hefner.

From an article on Steinem:
In order to do research for the article, Steinem applied for a job as a Playboy bunny and was hired. She held the position for three weeks in order to do research. The articles that she wrote as a result of her experience exposed the poor working conditions and meager wages of the women who worked long hours in the lavish clubs where rich men spent their leisure time. Years later, in 1970, she published a lengthy interview with Hugh Hefner, founder and editor of Playboy magazine. In that dialogue Steinem debated Hefner on issues such as women's rights, the "sexual revolution," consumerism, and the "Playboy philosophy."

[Heyworth]

There were a number of outlets for 8mm porn, and it was pretty popular among the young adult male set.

I'm just old enough to remember the pre-VCR days of porn, and while I don't disagree that those films were out there in large numbers back then, it's just nothing like what home video wrought. The home adult film biz in those days was small and underground. Most of the distribution channels were mob controlled--adult bookstores or PO boxes. Plus the films could only run, I think, 20 minutes tops in 8mm. The VCR caused a huge boom in the business. There's also a case to be made the porn is what showed the mainstream movie business that there was lots of money to be made selling home video directly to consumers rather than basing the business on rentals. Remember when a VHS movie cost a hundred bucks?

[TheGunny]

"what the hell do we call the statue of David?"

You sir, are a dolt!

[Rebelbase]

"that they crafted their communism knowing that people would buy it wholesale. But I could be wrong, perhaps folks wanted such tripe from anyone who would sell it to them."

I think it was the music that drove them, not the politics.