Posted on 09/29/2017 10:19:27 AM PDT by drewh
He was the kind of person American conservatism seeks to enable the self-made man; the radical, pajama-clad individual; the author of his own destiny. And he idealized women as women, in a way the left no longer allows.
Ironically, when given the choice of going full-throttle into hard-core pornography, and creating the kind of content the market now demanded, or bowing to mainstream traditional standards that shunned nudity on supermarket shelves, Playboy made the more conservative choice. Even in the battle to survive commercially, there were lines Hugh Hefner would not cross. He thus took his place alongside the very conservatives he once mocked earlier.
That does not mean Hefner was a conservative. But Hefner personified the famous promise at the heart of the Declaration of Independence that this Republic would be devoted to the pursuit of Happiness. He pursued that ideal in an age when the left insisted on grievance and misery. He lived an eccentric life. But in the end, he gave up the thrill of girlfriends for the love of one wife. He challenged social conventions, but he also, perhaps despite himself, affirmed the eternal truth that women are women, and there are moral limits.
Hefners victory came with a loss namely, the institution that was Playboy itself. Our culture now rejects the ideal of feminine beauty that Playboy once promoted, regarding it as a form of oppression rather than liberation.
But that feminine ideal lives on not in the pages of Playboy, but in the imaginations of millions of quietly dissenting adults in the world Hefner helped create. However he is judged, Hefner changed us all.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
[I would question that. How many had to sleep with Heff to become a playmate?
How many were made to do other things at the playboy parties?
How many became hooked on drugs?]
Again, these were all choices the women themselves made.
If they wanted to be a Playmate so bad, they knew the cost, and chose to pay it. Same with parties.
Using sex to get ahead is not/was not unique to just Playboy, nor was it a result. It happened well before Playboy existed.
Playboy was the ultimate freedom of choice.
If you didn’t like it, no one forced you to buy it.
But don’t force your own morality and negative views on those who choose to.
They like the First Amendment maybe?
What the hell is up with Breitbart?
Something that you and I can agree upon?
Are you kidding? On the following point, Hugh Hefner and I were/are in agreement: American society used to uphold the ideal that sex was for marriage, that people should remain virgins until they marry. That was the IDEAL, although, of course, people often fell short of the ideal. That was still the ideal in 1950, but the Sexual Revolution changed that by, say, 1970. Factors contributing to the Sexual Revolution included the birth control pill and Playboy magazine, which paved the way for more provocative forms of pornography. Hugh Hefner takes a big share of the credit for the Sexual Revolution, credit he deserves. Your responding that I had implied nobody ever had sex outside of marriage before 1953 was inane.
Hefner had such a highly inflated opinion of himself that he thought he could debate Buckley.
And thought people were pinning up his articles on jazz like centerfolds in dorms.
His utter surprise that a feminist would throw a hissy fit having a discussion with him on television is priceless video.
But the idea that America before Playboy in 1953 was full of innocent men utterly uninterested in what they offered is delusional.
Ah, no.
One is only a “self-made man” by honest labor and innovation, not by regurgitating vices that made the Greek and Roman Empires fallthat would make one a “Satan-made man”.
Nowadays, “radical” is associated with leftist terrorism, too. And by calling assertion of morality “hatred”, one parrots the rhetoric of the left.
When 19 yr old males away from home for the first time in 44'-45' were told by girls in France, Philippines, Italy etc. just what they would do for a pack of Lucky Strikes...
There was a reason there were millions of doses of penicillin stored before D-Day and they didn't all have to do with combat.
Hefner would like to THINK he had a great deal to do with the sexual revolution of the 60's and 70's but his and Playboy's contribution was minor compared to the pill and access to transportation that could get you anywhere in the country in hours and get people in larger cities with their anonymity.
I feel that you and I may share some common concerns.
There is an interesting confluence of events within a fairly short period of time that led to the ‘loosening up’ of public ideals or whatever one calls them.
1947: Gore Vidal published ‘The City and the Pillar’, the first mainstream American novel to offer a positive treatment of homosexuality.
1948: Kinsey publishes ‘Sexual Behavior in the Human Male’ (Hefner wrote a college thesis on Kinsey).
1948: ‘United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.’ The USSC declares that movie studios cannot own movie theaters because it is monopolistic. They divest and that opens the door for mainstream distribution and exhibition of non Hollywood and Foreign language films that were not subject to Hollywood’s Production Code then in place.
1952: ‘Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson’ Another Supreme Court decision declaring that a state banning a film on ‘sacrilege’ was unconstitutional. Incidentally the film in question was Italian and got displayed as a direct result of the 1948 decision.
I object most strenuously. The women made poor choices, certainly. But the blame must be placed squarely upon the monstrous sexual predator Hugh Hefner, who is at this moment is suffering the unimaginable consequences of his hated of God.
Hefner was a cog in a much larger machine. The juggernaut of the anti-family and anti-religion left had its hooks into society not only via the ACLU and other organizations, but of course the progressive politicians themselves. Modern communication and transportation were only tools by which to disseminate this nihilistic ideology, which was growing long before that, and existed in the past even without such technology (hence the Greek word “porneia” from which we get “pornography”, erroneously translated “fornication” in the King James Bible but really meaning “prostitution”, both female and male).
I just wonder if the next issue will feature women wearing nothing but black armbands.
In the 50's there were already so many women approaching Hefner and Playboy directly to pose that they no longer had to pay calendar photographers etc. for material.
There are only 12 months in a year and often the girl that stroked Hefner's ego got the centerfold.
There is a difference between “conservative” and “libertarian.” Conservatives uphold moral values.
[Conservatives uphold moral values.]
“Moral” means many different things to many people, including conservatives.
Even Ted Cruz looks at porn. I don’t buy for a second that a staffer made that error.
I understand your point, but as the 30-year married husband and father of daughters, I naturally am protective of the “fairer sex,” and have little sympathy with men who exploit them.
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