“Boobies,” The Hef is reported to have sighed as he took his last breath before shuffling off this mortal coil. “Boobies, boobies, boobies.”
The founder of Playboy magazine passed away on Wednesday in his home in Beverly Hills, a mansion that – like all of his empire – bore the brand name he made famous by mashing a word meaning recreation, into the word for a pre-pubescent male, and making it synonymous with sex and rabbits.
Best known for supplying multiple generations with an odd, plasticized version of sexual liberation, Hugh leaves behind a legacy of almost pathological attachment to silk, and an example of how old a person can get without having to mature in any significant way.
“I don’t think Hugh is in a better place now,” chortled millions of men and women as they awoke to the news that he had died, headlining above images of the The Hef surrounded by young women expressing their sexual freedom by living in a cult devoted to an old, pyjama-wearing guy housed in a mansion made of innuendo and varnish. “How could he be? What could be better than running an adult daycare for 50 years? Amirite? Am I?”
Hugh is survived by his wife, a bevy of blondefriends, and four children who are left with an ordeal no child should ever have to go through: burying a parent taken too early, before they were even able to grow up.
“It just makes me so sad to think what he could have become,” said a teary-eyed woman as she rushed past a makeshift memorial of flowers, candles, and bunny ears piled up outside of Hefner’s sprawling home – which is also the largest known depository of 1970’s kitsch. “Holding the attention of an entire generation like that, having broken the mould of sexual repression, only to reform it into another form of control. One that disguised itself as the vanguard of liberation, but in the end was no more modern than a silk smoking jacket.”
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Categories: Life
The Out And Abouter 
Wow, another semi-unemployed academic takes a snarky potshot at Hefner using an intro philo level understanding of foucadian discourse analysis, so original!
Does the intellectual frustration stem from the fact that Hefner accomplished more for art, literature, sexual awareness, civil rights, and freedom of speech in the first two years of the publication of Playboy, then you did in 5plus wasted years of a PhD in (insert bullshit self-absorbed humanities degree here). Or rather, does your appropriation of “victimhood” leave such a shit taste in your mouth that you have to make an attempt at moralizing, for the sake of moralizing, just like the good little Catholic priest you really are deep down?
Here’s a novel idea, try being original for a change. Oh wait, then some incompetent self-righteous asshole would be writing an uniformed blog post about you 😉
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Correct. And I’d also miss out on your spending an impressive amount of time and energy inadvertently handing me compliments. As per the ‘About’ section for this page, you’ll find I’m a university drop out. Thanks for the PhD assumption.
I’d challenge you to follow the page with an open mind. Judging from your own acerbity I’m almost certain you’ll find some posts you like, sooner or later. Thanks for weighing in.
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Nice reply you gave to a mean butthead. You’re better than me 😀
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*Foucauldian
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The difference between a University drop out and a Phd graduate, in my experience, is negligible, so not a compliment, per se. The post was designed to be tongue in check, glad you picked up on parts of that 😉
Lastly, if you want to be a social critic, which is a dirty, albeit nessary job. Then like I said, you might want to throw in a pinch of originality. Rehashing 50 year old criticisms, of a man who’s not even cold yet, dosn’t exactly cut the mustard.
Concering an “open mind,” you might want to re-read your original post and see how everything you say about Hefner skewers him from a certain political dimension. I don’t take umbrage with the fact your criticising him, but rather, doing it in such a dogmatic way.
But lucky for you, your still alive to fend off assholes like me 😉
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Lucky for me indeed. I bet you’re quite nice IRL Austin. Drop me a line at outabouter@gmail.com if you ever want to get deeper into a debate about the weighting of originality vs. topicality when satirizing the news. Sub-topic: does a public figure who showed a pathological lack of originality in the latter 40 years of his life, deserve it in his obituary?
I genuinely always value the input.
You can’t sharpen a knife on cheese, after all.
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Define “originality,” place that definition in some historical context, and then we can start to have a conversation.
The format of Playboy grew old and stale, true, like every other print media in existence. But that criticism of a “pathological lack of originality,” can be applied to most major magazines, The New Yorker as a perfect example, in the age of the internet.
It’s not that your criticism don’t have value, they do, but I am just concerned when people use a supposedly “liberal” agenda to promote highly conservative values. Hefner was in no way shape or form perfect, far from it actually. But I think it rather strange that he’s demonized by people who only now enjoy liberties that he himself helped champion. Or do you think it was possible to have a frank public discussion about sexuality before Playboy became a cultural phenomenon? Did Hefner create the phenomenon, no, but he sure as shit help make it mainstream.
Why don’t you write about how Peggy Guggenheim used her power and money to sexually and commercially exploit young male artists? Not a popular subject matter, no doubt, but certainly more original than parroting every single critism of Hefner that’s on every major news outlet today.
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Originality: ‘to be the source of a novel way of thinking, art, or product.
In a historical context: Hugh Hefner’s exploitative use of women to sell millions of magazines to a puritanical America was deft in its originality.
In my defence I wrote this piece prior to reading other summaries of The Life Of Hef. So not so much parroting as cockatooing. I’ll look into the Guggenheim angle, it’s news to me.
Thanks Austin.
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Well, Austin, someone’s in love with Hef.
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And so what if I was, sexually or otherwise? I don’t see your point, not that you ever had one to begin with.
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Thanks for the epic roast! I thoroughly enjoyed this. That people can’t seem to realize that commodifying women’s bodies and treating them like stupid bimbos is actually harmful for everyone is beyond me.
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I take it you don’t watch movies, go to art shows, read books, fashion magazines, or indulge in mass consumer culture at all?
No, you probably live in a shack on an island, with your dog scooter, who helps you plant the soy beans. Right before you return home to self-flagellation, in light of your sinful thoughts about the picture of the Women/Man on the shampoo bottle that washed upon your desolate shores.
Yet he who has not “objectivied,” and or indirectly profited from it, cast the first stone. Now quickly responded, with that Samsung and or IPhone that was produced by child slave labor, and tell me how bad Hefner really was 😉
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That is a 1 on the ph scale Austin. Please add some alkaline before my page melts.
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Glad you enjoyed it Why?
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The comments are at least as entertaining as the original post. Thanks to all the commenters, who show they care.
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9 years? You are too kind.
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