Posted on 09/30/2017 9:11:16 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
+1
Can’t remember the last time I agreed with anything printed in the NY Times. This guy nailed it!
I muse on two "sacraments" of Hefner's movement --- "sacraments" in the Catholic definition of outward signs of an inward reality, which effect what they symbolize--- and I think:
Abortion, as sexy as an amputation
The Pill, as funny as the clap
Ol’ Hef still looks like Anthony Weiner...a little.
Not magnificent, because he was a wizened, leering old geeezer even when he was young. Yeah, even as a sleek silky pimp, he had the whiff of a selfish old fart.
Not bastard, because leave his mother out of this.
I have never wished him ill, in life or in death. Wherever he is at present --- and may Christ be merciful --- he now knows the truth about himself.
As one who actually read the articles and enjoyed the regular features and cartoons and admired the pictures, I can testify that Playboy was a superb magazine.
He was a harmful influence.
“He figured out that men like to look at beautiful nude women. Not rocket science.”
He also figured out that women are attention seekers and knew if you turn on a camera they turn on too.
Bkmk
One can profit from going up or going down, good behavior, or bad. The first requires a climb; the latter, the mere force of gravity.
Hef profited on what was compulsive, pathetic, and coarse. As another FReeper said, that ain’t rocket science. In fact it has a whiff of imbecility, however much money was involved. Picture this: an old guy near-naked like one of his girls, feathers of damp currency stuck under the g-string.
This is hilarious. Any men being triggered into “smut addictions” by the tame images...”
Strawman. Those images had bur one purpose. And they weren’t tame to their target audience.
People were having sex in every different way since the beginning of time. Even under supposedly “puritan” societies. It only takes 2 to tango. And nudity is just a layer under everyones clothes. Oh my!!
The “revolution” is unprescendented in recorded history because people for the first time had a scientific understanding of what happens to their body AND the means to control it.
Societal collapse is a result of people not adapting to inevitable change. Not even the ground beneath your feet is static.
People rejecting other people’s sexual rules is not the root cause of any collapse. It has happened since the beginning of time and will always happen as long as sexual beings exist. It is as standard as drinking water.
Telling people “God wrote these rules. You will burn” isn’t going to work in a modern scientific society and we need a much better approach to educate people on sex
“Yes, Hef was such a boon to our society.”
What Hef did was inevitable due to advancements in photography and printing. He was simply first and we may be LUCKY it was him:
Playboy is just photos of healthy nude women. You could say it was a boon to society because it stayed most popular and continued to have only tasteful shoots of women.
Imagine if instead of Playboy being first, it was some crude pornographer showing women being abused? Hef never went that route even when his popularity began to decline.
From a bigger perspective, Hef is somewhat of a hero for sticking to these principles. If he didn’t do it or quit, someone without principles would have taken his place
Uncalled-for.
Much of what constitutes sex education these days is worldview deconstruction (Scientific? Hardly. Often anti-rational) and training for depravity. I know, because I used to advocate for it; and I have studied its institutional supports (PP, SEICUS, UNFPA), its financial resources (tax dollars and internationalist "philanthropic" fellowships and funds like Ford, Rockefeller, Bill & Melinda Gates and, BTW, Playboy) and its results.
Much of it measured in antibiotic-resistant pathogens, family non-formation, and prenatal death.
I think you would change your view if you looked very closely at that bottom line.
I dissent, varyouga. To valorize women who look and behave like sex robots (limitlessly available, nubile, hygienic, and sterile) is abuse in itself.
Photogenic, though, I’ll grant you that.
” Does hedonism bring happiness?”
Like anything else...yes, in moderation.
“He figured out that men like to look at beautiful nude women. Not rocket science”
Compared to Hustler or even Penthouse Playboy magazine was like Popular Mechanics. Always very tasteful and dedicated to the beauty of nature as manifested in the naked female form. Ever see ancient Roman or Greek statuary? Or the classic artists’ works? On top of that the magazine always had quality cartoons and interviews with leading celebrities and intellectuals, All in all, along with Esquire magazine a class act although leaning leftward.
“To valorize women who look and behave like sex robots (limitlessly available, nubile, hygienic, and sterile) is abuse in itself.”
Of course but that is the innate mammal desire. To have the most best females and do minimal work afterwards so one can have sex with more of them. It is hardwired into our brains since the beginning of time because that is what yielded the most offspring by a single male.
Organically, females have a slightly different mission because they can only be pregnant by one male at a time. Biblical law is an attempt to minimize that conflict in missions for a more stable society. It is noble but most people don’t simply do as they are told. Especially when claimed to told written a God they have never felt.
In most of human history, whoever spread the most seed was most successful genetically and often times it was through abuse.
Even many women today are inherently hardwired to be more physically attracted to males with “seed spreading” characteristics. It is a constant theme in female fantasy and pornographic novels.
Porn is merely an inevitable result of ancient human nature expressing itself with new technology.
Everything will change after many generations of living with new technology. But it will always happen organically and not always in the ways all us would like...
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