Sunday, April 09, 2006

Happy Birthday Hef


Speaking of Satan, that little ol devil Hugh Hefner is in the news again. Today is his birthday.

Yep Mr. PJ's Hugh Hefner is eighty years old today. He is the archtypical devil to those who mistakenly view nudity as exploitation, both prudes on the left and right. In fact a recent shoot at McGill University would have had some feminists up in arms in the past. Now its all passe.


The recent critique of Playboy and its icon the bunny influencing younger women and girls seems to be return to the main stream fear of sexuality. Prudishness in the disguise of concern about exploitation. If they actually read the magazine, yep we all read it for the articles, they would see that over these fifty years it published a libertarian perspective on sexuality and human relations.

Robert Anton Wilson was on the editorial board promoting a libertarian philosophy. But of course then came the reactionaries of both the church and womens movement, strange allies, who identified Playboy with exploitation of women.

It began with MS. magazine founder Gloria Stienem, and former flack for the CIA, with her expose of the exploitation of working in a Playboy Club in Chicago. But she failed to organize her sisters into a union. In fact interestingly MS still is not unionized. Anyways that's an aside.

By comparison to the growth of the real porn industry, and even the revival of the soft core industry in magazines like Maxim, Playboy stands out as practicing what it preaches. Hef gave over the business to his daughter who has spent the empires millions on womens and liberal causes, much to the grief of prudish feminists and the right wing.




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