"Hugh Hefner is one in a long line of preachy perverts"

That's Daniel J. Flynn's verdict.

Pay to Play

Flynn builds on Chesterton's observation that "A man must be something of a moralist if he is to preach, even if he is to preach immorality." (Proving once again that G.K., who died in 1936, remains the more relevant than almost any contempory writer.)

If you want to dominate, call yourself a liberator.

Hefner the control-freak comes through loud and clear in this Daily Mail article

Playboy mansion? More like a squalid prison: Former Playmates tell of 'grubby' world inside Hugh Hefner's empire

Be warned! Here is Munchkin Wrangler's reaction:

This article on life in the Playboy mansion makes me want to scrub myself down with lye.

Ace asked the right question after he read it:

The whole business is sleazy, of course (porn). I always thought it was odd that Hef would cast Playboy as this sort of upper-class-aspirational lifestyle sort of magazine, with a libertarian philosophy, and get treated as if he wasn't just a pornographer like Bob Guccione.


I mean, that's a thin veneer, isn't it? You review some high-end stereo equipment and have articles about nice clothes so you're not sleazy?

I think it will take a book-- a long yet potentially fascinating book-- to make sense of Hefner and his pop icon status.

We certainly are not going to get the story from the MSM. Unlike their scoop hungry English cousins, American journalists just keep toeing the line and regurgitating Playboy PR.

Here's Politico's Roger Simon:

Hef is more ordinary than you think

He is a down-home, likeable and, in a sense, very ordinary person. In a different era, “playboys” were international jet-setters. They dated screen stars, played polo, drove race cars, skied, sailed yachts and were a regular feature at the parties of the rich and famous.


Hef likes to stay home. He has always liked to stay home.

I dunno, maybe we have a lousy press because we have lousy press critics. Howard Kurtz did a respectful, almost fawning, interview with Hefner back in August. He showed no interest in puncturing the PR myths.