Speaking Ill of Hugh Hefner

NY Times ^ | 30 Sep 2017 | Ross Douthat

[Rummyfan]

Hugh Hefner, gone to his reward at the age of 91, was a pornographer and chauvinist who got rich on masturbation, consumerism and the exploitation of women, aged into a leering grotesque in a captain’s hat, and died a pack rat in a decaying manse where porn blared during his pathetic orgies.

Hef was the grinning pimp of the sexual revolution, with quaaludes for the ladies and Viagra for himself — a father of smut addictions and eating disorders, abortions and divorce and syphilis, a pretentious huckster who published Updike stories no one read while doing flesh procurement for celebrities, a revolutionary whose revolution chiefly benefited men much like himself.

The arc of his life vindicated his moral critics, conservative and feminist: What began with talk of jazz and Picasso and other signifiers of good taste ended in a sleazy decrepitude that would have been pitiable if it wasn’t still so exploitative.

[tumblindice]

Hef died doing what he loved—smoking ground up Cialis in a crack pipe.
They have been trying for the last couple days to close his casket lid.
He’s finally as stiff as a ‘72 vintage pair of Levi 501s.
Yeah, great crowd. Yes you are.

[fr_freak]

I didn’t hate Hefner as much as Ross does, but I never understood why anyone admired him.

I might have admired him in the beginning. After all, he built an empire by publishing a magazine which, way back when, actually had good articles and fiction, as well as the relatively tame pictorials of beautiful women (they were quite artful in the beginning). But he became ridiculous very quickly. A young man might be proud of running around from bottle blonde to bottle blonde, but a man who is 60, 70 and beyond, well, you'd like to think he would mature into something a little more impressive than just your average 25 year old skirt chaser.

He could have gone onto other things (still enjoying the occasional buxom babe of course), and shifted his focus to greater interests. But no, he just kept saying "look at me! look at me ! look how I've got all these hot women around me! I'm a stud!" and he never grew beyond it. It's kind of like that kid who could beat every one in the neighborhood in a particular video game, won tournaments etc, but you see him at age 60 and he's still just playing that same game while everyone else has gone on to business, engineering, medicine.

And, at some point, his magazine really started to suck. Last time I looked, it was nothing more than dumbed-down PC crap through and through.

[Jeff Chandler]

Apparently some on this thread think he made a contribute...seem to admire the pimp...

Such folks don't care about rape and exploitation of minors, they're just grateful for the photos they can ******* to.

[buffaloguy]

I thought Hefner was cool when I was 13, but my attitude didn’t survive my introduction to a real girl.

[pigsmith]

Bfl

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Well, you can't say he's in a better place...

Methinks the Devil is the Hugh Hefner of Hell.

[boatbums]

You’re still alive, right? ;o)

[Mr Ramsbotham]

The Constitution and its amendments let us do this sh*t. Ain’t it awesome???

The Constitution is awesome, but many of the things it gives us the right to do are not.

[Robwin]

The summation of Heffner's life: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Mark 8:36

[unlearner]

“The ‘sexual revolution’ was a natural result of the pill and advanced medicine.”

Then, you must imagine that the sexual revolution only happened once in human history.

All of the sexual debauchery that reflects the decline of western civilization is simply a repeat of the history of many nations and people.

And there is nothing natural about it. It produces what is specifically “against nature” as Paul described in Romans 1.

It is not new. It has been repeated many times in history. It’s always caused by the same thing—dishonoring God. It always leads to the same outcome—societal collapse.

[BBell]

My obligatory Hugh Hefner gif.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

a father of smut addictions and eating disorders

This is hilarious. Any men being triggered into "smut addictions" by the tame images in Playboy would probably also have been triggered by National Geographic and Pirelli calendars. And "eating disorders"? The women in Playboy were all well fed and healthy looking - completely unlike the anorexic heroin addicts populating women's fashion magazines. Been a while since I saw such dramatic pearl-clutching in print - could have been written by Dana Carvey's old Church Lady character.

[Freedom56v2]

Would you also admire the drug dealers, the kiddy porn producers, the sexual slavery of children? Demand and supply, right? Can you name one positive that Hefner brought to the world that didn’t negatively cost someone else in some way?

---

Apparently some here would...

[Freedom56v2]

Yes, Hef was such a boon to our society.

[fella]

I’ve never been able to equate jazz and Picasso with good taste.

[definitelynotaliberal]

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

[wardaddy]

Man

Scold Republic at its finest eh

They are so fixated on Hugh Hefner

[wally_bert]

It’s still funny.

[Jimmy Valentine]

The self righteous indignation at Hefner on this board makes me wonder if Cotton Mather isn’t a Freeper
He’s dead people. Have done.

[Terry L Smith]

Ross Douthat, a prime example of an apparatchik culturni mind, post Berlin Wall. This poor man is sexually repressed.

He has no concept of what Playboy magazine meant to many a GI during the Vietnam War. It was ‘from home’, and when folded into a manner that fit into your jungle fatigues chest pocket, gave you a ‘little more mass’ to stop a bullet when you were in the field. It was product to adorn many a locker in a barracks, a hootch, or a dugout’s wall.

I doubt “Mr. Ross Douthat” has ever had the honor and pleasure of wearing this nation’s uniform.