Hugh Heffner and Ayn Rand
Posted by coaldigger 7 years, 1 month ago to Culture
Not being much of an intellectual, I am not ashamed to admit that my second encounter with anything related to Ayn Rand was her interview in Playboy which comes to mind today on Heffner's passing. First my roommate had tried to get me to go to her lecture on campus a year before and I didn't bother (I kick myself). Second was the interview. I used to force myself to read Playboy interviews so I could claim that I didn't subscribe just for the pictures (I was lying). I related her interview to the fact that I missed her lecture and thought I should have gone but it did not inspire me to read her books. I was too busy trying to figure out what I wanted to be, while taking courses towards a degree in Electrical Engineering. I never intended to become an EE but graduated before I picked something else. I was going to just keep going to school but fell for this girl and decided to get married and become a responsible citizen.
Several years later a colleague asked if I read Atlas Shrugged because he thought I had already read and accepted it. When I said no, he bought me a copy and left it on my desk. 50+ years later I am retired, still reading the same book and married to the same girl. Somehow all this comes to mind because of Hefner. His interviews were amazing, the articles on style, travel, music, food and drink increased my awareness of a greater more sophisticated world, also but I still liked the pictures.
Several years later a colleague asked if I read Atlas Shrugged because he thought I had already read and accepted it. When I said no, he bought me a copy and left it on my desk. 50+ years later I am retired, still reading the same book and married to the same girl. Somehow all this comes to mind because of Hefner. His interviews were amazing, the articles on style, travel, music, food and drink increased my awareness of a greater more sophisticated world, also but I still liked the pictures.
Hugh Hefner's Playboy was an important element in the extension and expansion of freedom and equality, no less than the Civil Rights, and anti-war movements. They all were fraught with problems that eventually came back to haunt them. But those philosophical contradictions do not condemn the larger works any more than the fact that Thomas. Jefferson owned slaves invalidates the Declaration of Independence.
I still continued to be a teenager who'd buy Playboys and hide them between the mattresses of my bed.
Five or so years ago, I read that each night a dirty old Heff had his live-in whores--and that's what they really were if temporarily while there--surround him topless and he'd pick one out for a bed partner.
This was revealed by a guest who refused to remove her top and got glowered at by Heff.
Think she left on her own the next day. If I'm wrong, she got booted.
(2) Your view of Hugh Hefner was shaped by Mad magazine. Interesting and insightful as it could be, Mad parodied and ridiculed everything without discrimination, so, not everything funny was really funny. I liked Mad also, but I would not put too much stock in it as a philosopher's stone.
(3) You called the women "whores" to denigrate them. What is it that you object to? Their having casual sex? Why?
I've had some casual sex. Can't recall requiring women to line up half naked like whores in a bordello.
And if that second hand story ain't true, I very much doubt that at the very least all those hot chicks are paying with money for their room and board.
Feminists, like many active groups have been duped to take on extreme positions dangerous to our society. I think that calling people out as "conspiracy theorists" has become a defense to protect some from exposure but I am willing to take that risk in saying that there is an invisible hand behind every movement we see today to destroy the only system based on rational morality in the history of the world. Transgender, feminists, white supremacy, Black Lives Matter, single payer health care, bogus tax reform, climate change, all being pushed by progressives with the goal of telling everyone what to do and how to act. There's no rational debate, just a "feeling" for what is in the common good.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/ob...
better late than never!
To celebrate the Interview’s 50th anniversary, the editors of Playboy have culled 50 of its most (in)famous Interviews and will publish them over the course of 50 weekdays (from September 4, 2012 to November 12, 2012) via Amazon’s Kindle Direct platform. Here is the interview with the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand from the March 1964 issue." -- https://www.amazon.com/Ayn-Rand-Playb...
Ayn Rand's interviewer was Alvin Toffler.
We talk about economic controls and the loss of political freedoms. But consider that in the 1957 of Atlas Shrugged the looters successfully blackmailed Hank Rearden who sought to protect Dagny Taggart from the public exposure of their affair. In the movie, it just fell flat. Can you imagine Carly Fiorina or Marissa Mayer being blackmailed over an extra-marital affair? That change in social standards is attributable in large part to the revolution that Playboy responded to and fed.
It would have been cool to have gone to the Playboy mansion and meet him, but I never got invited !