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Ted Downum
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2436
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| Posted: 21 February 2026 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | 1
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Obviously this is an exaggeration. You weren’t born finding Hefner “creepy”.
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Of course I wasn't born finding Hefner creepy. I found him creepy as long as I was aware of him as a public figure, an aging hedonist in pajamas and a smoking jacket who lived in a Hollywood mansion with a bunch of much younger women. He was creepy, tacky, and a little pathetic. That was Hefner as I first saw him in the media, probably in the early eighties, and to the best of my knowledge, he only got more like that until he died.
If he was, at an earlier time, a champion of American culture and racial and gender equality, I'm glad to hear it. We need more champions of those things in this country, particularly now. I was never aware of a version of Hefner like that.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 135740
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| Posted: 24 February 2026 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | 2
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Found an article by Hefner’s widow, describing the fabled LA mansion as full of termites and black mould. Not unlike the man’s legend……. (Trivia: I built a 3D computer model of the mansion’s exterior to use as Stately Wayne Manor in GENERATIONS.)
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 13128
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| Posted: 24 February 2026 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | 3
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I was born in the 60s and so "Playboy" still carried a weight of seriousness through my maturation into adulthood, but a lot of it built upon some of its earliest features, e.g., interviews with MLK Jr, Albert Schweitzer, Malcolm X, Bertrand Russell, Jean Genet, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Paul Ehrlich, John Kenneth Galbraith, etc. -- and stories by Hemingway, Plimpton, Bradbury, etc.
These intellectual heights certainly masked a font of deep creepiness, from the start. But "Playboy" emerged at a time so repressive that even comicbooks were thought to be corrupting.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 24 February 2026 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | 4
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The Playboy interviews have been collected in several hardcover volumes. Well worth a look.
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 13128
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| Posted: 24 February 2026 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | 5
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The joke in the old days was, "I only read it for the interviews." But -- some of them were stellar, indeed.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 135740
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| Posted: 25 February 2026 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | 6
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Reminds me of the old gag about the foldout showing “a naked lady with staples in her navel.” Only the staples were usually across the shoulders.
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Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3936
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| Posted: 25 February 2026 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | 7
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As I mentioned in the Musk thread, Hefner - back in the 60’s, at least - used his platform to spread liberal values among his (presumably) mostly male readership. And I don't think that was some kind of smokescreen - it was a reflection of his idea of an urbane, sophisticated American man, and Playboy was tied up in the era's politics of sexual liberation and feminism in ways that now seem quaint.
Now, in Musk, we’ve got a pornographer who uses his platform to spread anti-science, racism, antisemitism, and a type of misogyny that’s so retrogressive that it makes Playboy look like Andrea Dworkin. For Hefner, as with Musk, I guess that need to control and abuse and humiliate women is all part of the same impulse, and one that only increases in intensity when indulged. I wonder how Hef would have regarded Musk’s creepy compound and spearheading a definition of masculinity that’s so twisted that it features soliciting multiple women to serve as seed carriers?
Edited by Dave Kopperman on 25 February 2026 at 5:31pm
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