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.
I wasn't speaking about moral equivalence of religiouis institutions. Christianity allows the very freedom that you enjoy. I was reacting to your suggestion that the alternative to nudity is burkas. Perhaps you were less clear than you intended to be?
Shalom.
Sure it does. Sure it does.
You and your friends were so weak you were ruined by porn? How pathetic than an inanimate object held such sway over you . . .
It all depends on how you handle the cards you are dealt with.
Why the sarcasm?
Wasn't Hugh Hefner the original pajamahadeen, as a matter of fact?
Dear God, please save us from those who mean to save us from ourselves.
Hard to resist, I'm afraid; your post was so vague. You knew some "feminazis" were bunnies, but you couldn't name any, and maybe one was in some movie about bunnies, but none came to mind....
People are sometimes sure of what they know until they start talking about it. Then it's apparent they don't.
Sorry.
It just seems to me that there is a connection between society - or at least a significant part of the young male portion of it - viewing women purely as sex objects and sex as a recreational rather than a sacrimental and procreative intimate act between two people who really love each other - and the simultaneous or slightly later appearance of man-hating feminazis as a connection.
But I guess there are people on this post who view that degenerate old reprobate as some kind of social icon.
Sorry to offend you.
He changed America for the better?! You're kidding, right? I'll say what I want about him and it ain't that he's an American icon. He's considered an icon because of the sick, twisted media that adores him.
How did he -personnaly- change America for the better? I gotta hear this. It ought to be good.
Sorry, but that makes your life as pathetic as Hefner's. Is having breast-implanted nitwits pretending to fawn over you because of your money your idea of happiness? No, thanks. I only hope that I am lucky enough to have my lovely wife by my side when I'm 80. If you don't understand that, then I feel sorry for you and would wholeheartedly recommend that you should focus on finding true love. Only then will you understand the joy of companionship that is so much deeper than what Hefner has ever experienced in his life.
Like I said elsewhere in the thread - the more tasteful photos of nude women, the better! Also while it is a cliche, the magazine is more than just pics, there are articles too. Most are liberal garbage, but many of the interviews of newsmakers of the last 4 decades are noteworthy.
But your post said that he was an icon who changed America for the better. How was that accomplished with interviews and "tasteful" pictures of airbrushed, naked women.
Sorry, it just seems obvious to me that a world with tasteful photos of naked women is better than a world without them.
So is Queen Elizabeth II, but I'm not going to her birthday party either.
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