When Hugh Hefner died, I honestly assumed that the reaction of many people would be “He was still alive?”
Well, I was wrong. In fact, ole’ Hef’s death served as the springboard for an astonishing amount of tongue-clucking from a wide variety of double-dome bigwigs, including Ross Douthat and David French. Mr. Cotton Tail, it seems, has played a major, major role in the downfall of western civilization.
Back in the day, I suppose “Hef” was notable as perhaps the only “open” fornicator in the U.S. of A., not to mention strong whiffs of actual polygamy. Behind the scenes, of course, men like JFK and LBJ were scarcely more, or less, than serial rapists. Every man in power—every “boss”—had a God-given yet unspoken right to fondle and grope to his heart’s content. Don’t like it, honey? Then quit! It’s a free country! Of course, you’ll never work in this town again, but that’s another story.
There was a time, in the early, pre-Beatles sixties, when Hef could pass for cool, but he quickly became ridiculous. It was quite pleasant to read Playboy “with irony”, laughing at the ludicrous masculine pursuit of excess as an end in itself, the $5,000 red leather arm chairs, the $2,000 raw silk jackets, the $1,000 hand-blown, limited edition decanters filled with 30-year-old single malt Scotch. Hefner had no interest in most of the stuff his magazine peddled. He simply hired enthusiasts of all stripes and turned them loose. The more expensive it is, the better it is!
At the same time, of course, one could enjoy the nudes. In most of the takedowns of Hef, it’s de rigueur to claim that Playmates were never sexy. Well, I guess I always had a pretty bourgeois id, or even a pretty petty bourgeois one, because I was usually charmed.
But as for “influence”, I don’t really see it. Hef was a born follower, not a leader, a humorless, self-infatuated man earnestly putting his feet in the footsteps of Mr. Hairy Chest himself, Ernest Hemingway, before Ernesto took a bit of the bloom off the rose by blowing his brains out with a shotgun. But everyone needs enemies, I guess, and Hef, wandering about his estate in pajamas and handing out the Benjamins to his honeys—“Don’t spend it all in one place, kids! Ha, ha, ha!”—makes a pretty good one.
Afterwords
I earlier chuckled at Playboy’s and Hef’s shortcomings here and here. I wrote about the far more charming Anne Jeffreys here.
