Posted on 04/17/2002 3:28:47 AM PDT by Apolitical
By Marni-Rebecca Malarkey
Shy and reserved ex-Enron accountant, Sara Zoftig, ponders Playboy's invitation to pose nude in a centrefold spread in a new 'Women of Enron' issue. Ms. Zoftig commented that she found the idea of posing nude in such a Playboy feature immoral, apalling, and way off the mark in terms of the kind of money she was looking for.
Playboy Magazine is hoping to convince some of the female employees of Enron to lose more than the contents of their bank accounts -- and to do so willingly. A Playboy spokeswoman said that the magazine is attempting to put together a "Women of Enron" spread; and accordingly, the magazine is inviting the women of Enron (past and present) to send photographs of themselves to the magazine for consideration.
"This is an opportunity for them to do something fun in the midst of the turmoil that's going on in their lives. These are women who are out of a job," Playboy spokeswoman Elizabeth Norris said. "We are offering what you could view as a part-time job, or what might turn into a new career."
Certainly, in the past, a number of women at the heart of scandals have appeared on Playboy's pages, including televangelist mistress Jessica Hahn, television bride (and now divorcee) Darva Conger, and Survivor:The Outback bitch Jerri Manthey. However, today reaction among terminated Enron employees has been mixed.
"That's rich," said Deborah DeFforge, co-chairwoman of the Severed Enron Employees Coalition. "We've had so much depressing news or stressful news, and then to all of a sudden come up with something like that, it's kind of cute." DeFforge said she would not pose, but added: "I'm sure there are some in the younger set who would be perfect."
Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione has cautioned Norris and her co-workers at Playboy to be discriminating about who they use in their pictorial feature, after his magazine's recent pictorial debacle, "Women of Canadian Politics." This feature contained pictures of Sheila Copps, Alexa McDonough, Deborah Grey, Kim Campbell, Anne Mclelland, Diane Ablonczy and others, and only sold a pitiful dozen copies (all, interestingly, sold at a newsstand a half block from Grey's riding office in Edmonton).
Guccione blames this issue for singlehandedly bringing about his magazine's recent declaration of bankruptcy. "I got sold a bill of goods," he complained over the phone to the Iconoclast. "I don't know from Canadian politics, and I was told these women looked like Queen Rania of Jordan, or even her step-mother-in-law, Queen Noor, or at least Benazir Butto. God, even Elizabeth Dole would have been more attractive! But these chicks? Not a hottie among them."
The Women of Canadian Politics pictorial included nude photographs of Sheila Copps with the caption "she's a little bit dowdy, a little bit nationalistic and a little bit into threeways," photographs of a leather-clad Deborah Grey whipping a Stockwell Day lookalike, photographs of Ablonczy chained to the headboard of a bed, photographs of Campbell in a compromising position with a gavel and McDonough in a compromising position with her bankbook and photographs of other female Canadian politicians along the same lines.
Guccione says he decided not to scrap the pictorial when he finally saw it because "so much money" had already been spent putting it together, not to mention that "the crew of photographers, makeup artists and aestheticians we had working for us went through so much trauma with these ladies I couldn't imagine asking them to do it all over again with another group, even if that other group were more palatable."
Asked to give a specific example of what he deemed the "trauma" the Penthouse crew went through, Guccione sighed and said "well, just imagine how you would feel if you had to give a Brazilian bikini wax to Anne McLelland. The poor little Guatemalan girl we hired to do that is still in therapy, and I'm the one paying for it!"
Marni-Rebecca Malarkey is the author of 'The Underwire Chronicles' and can be contacted by e-mail at marnimarlarkey@yahoo.com
Ms. Zoftig commented that she found the idea of posing nude in such a Playboy feature immoral, apalling, and way off the mark in terms of the kind of money she was looking for. - LOLreminds me of a conversation I read once (don't know the author) that went something like this:
Six more: Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Tipper Gore.
It would be enough to make you want to gouge your eyes out with a dull spoon.
One certainly hopes not.
"YOU'RE DRUNK....YOU'RE UGLY!" SUFFOLK, UK, SEPTEMBER 28TH- J. Brian Blacklock claimed in the Daily Telegraph that the exchange between Bessie Braddock MP (Lab., Liverpool) and Churchill (Cons., Woodford) in 1946 ("Winston, you're drunk!"... "Bessie, you're ugly, but tomorrow I shall be sober and you shall still be ugly.") is a myth: "This was first recorded, word for word, in the mid 18th century in a London theatre between a bibulous latecomer and a lady whose enjoyment of the play had been disturbed." We don't dispute the origins, but bodyguard Ronald Golding said he was standing next to Churchill and heard the remark. Having found Golding a sincere individual, we accept his story until it is disproved. Churchill may have read theatre exchange and housed it in Churchill's capacious memory. His uncharacteristically ungallant response to a lady came, Golding believed, because Churchill was manifestly not drunk, just tired and wobbly. See Lord Carrington, p.19, for another Churchill remark re Mrs. Braddock. ‹Ed.
Don't know if it's true, but it's funny...
And, she really isn't zaftig from my understanding of the word.
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