Out and About
Ross Douthat takes Andrew Sullivan to task for conflating the expansion of the welfare state during the Bush administration with the advance of the "Evangelical menace."
Michel Foucault was a quack? Gee, who'd'a thunk it?
This year-old commentary on Hugh Hefner and his "legacy" is well worth a read. Here's the conclusion:
Pornography, Hef still assures us, is an antidote to social and personal troubles rather than an obvious source of them, and his own softer brand of the stuff is in any case so innocuous as to have no harmful social consequences whatever. It is not license, he tells us in a typical bit of pretentious blather, but repression that "twists the nature of sexuality. What causes all the sickness, the perversion, the rape, is a repressive society--a society that can't be open in a loving and positive way." Likewise, Playboy and all it brought were "not just for the guys. The major beneficiaries were women."
Enough to say that police investigators, in the sex-crimes units that have expanded roughly in proportion to mass-market "adult material," rarely conclude that the rapist or child predator lacked for pornographic inspiration before committing the crime. As to those "major beneficiaries" of porn, you won't find too many women these days who think that the world is better because of Playboy or the smug, selfish ethic it has always purveyed. For good reason has the Playboy Foundation long been a benefactor to NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood: The Playboy Philosophy has always been for the ladies, too, all right--just so long as they remember what they're good for, don't get too sentimental and feel grateful when the playboy in their own life offers to pay for the abortion.
One hesitates to speak harshly of an old man, who somewhere along the way must have done a few worthwhile things. But as to the public legacy of Hugh Hefner, he should have no illusions. All of us have our share of faults and sins to account for. But the lowest of vices and "strangest secret of hell," as G.K. Chesterton called it, is the desire to pervert others, to coax and corrupt them and drag them down with you. And any man who at the age of 80 has that to answer for is by no stretch the luckiest cat on the planet.
Oh, come on. I, for one, am grateful for the legacy of Hugh Hefner. I have him and his pornography-mainstreaming brethren to thank for the rather matronly-looking thirtysomething woman who came to the movie theater on Friday wearing a T-shirt that said, "No Money, No Honey." It was a breath of fresh air, I tell ya.
Michel Foucault was a quack? Gee, who'd'a thunk it?
This year-old commentary on Hugh Hefner and his "legacy" is well worth a read. Here's the conclusion:
Pornography, Hef still assures us, is an antidote to social and personal troubles rather than an obvious source of them, and his own softer brand of the stuff is in any case so innocuous as to have no harmful social consequences whatever. It is not license, he tells us in a typical bit of pretentious blather, but repression that "twists the nature of sexuality. What causes all the sickness, the perversion, the rape, is a repressive society--a society that can't be open in a loving and positive way." Likewise, Playboy and all it brought were "not just for the guys. The major beneficiaries were women."
Enough to say that police investigators, in the sex-crimes units that have expanded roughly in proportion to mass-market "adult material," rarely conclude that the rapist or child predator lacked for pornographic inspiration before committing the crime. As to those "major beneficiaries" of porn, you won't find too many women these days who think that the world is better because of Playboy or the smug, selfish ethic it has always purveyed. For good reason has the Playboy Foundation long been a benefactor to NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood: The Playboy Philosophy has always been for the ladies, too, all right--just so long as they remember what they're good for, don't get too sentimental and feel grateful when the playboy in their own life offers to pay for the abortion.
One hesitates to speak harshly of an old man, who somewhere along the way must have done a few worthwhile things. But as to the public legacy of Hugh Hefner, he should have no illusions. All of us have our share of faults and sins to account for. But the lowest of vices and "strangest secret of hell," as G.K. Chesterton called it, is the desire to pervert others, to coax and corrupt them and drag them down with you. And any man who at the age of 80 has that to answer for is by no stretch the luckiest cat on the planet.
Oh, come on. I, for one, am grateful for the legacy of Hugh Hefner. I have him and his pornography-mainstreaming brethren to thank for the rather matronly-looking thirtysomething woman who came to the movie theater on Friday wearing a T-shirt that said, "No Money, No Honey." It was a breath of fresh air, I tell ya.
posted by Kate Marie | 3:36 PM | Permalink
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3 comments
3 Comments:
Nothing about San Fran Nan playing footsie with middle east dictators?
I look to WD and SD for posts about San Fran Nan. They're funnier than I am, and dealing with San Fran Nan requires a heavy dose of humor.
I *almost* blogged about that renowned historian and thinker Rosie O'Donnell, but she is so unintentionally hilarious on her own that it becomes hard to make fun of her.
Oh, please don't hesitate to blog about celebs. We get complete coverage of DC "celebs," but Hollywood is not covered much here.
Why, all I hear of RO'D is the occasional clip on a radio talk show or a headline on Drudge. I'm sure she is just misunderstood by Hil's vast right wing conspiracy.
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