EDITORIAL & OPINIONS
Feed the brain, eyes and other body
parts
Apparently I am a terrible person, I am a sad person, I am
a desperate person and I am a perverted person because I read
Playboy.
We should completely forget the fact Playboy has interviewed
some of the most brilliant and controversial figures in the
magazine's 50-year history. From Malcolm X to American Nazi
Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell; from Joseph Heller (author
of Catch 22,) to nuclear physicist Edward Teller and from anti-feminist
Camille Paglia to Helen Gurley Brown, founder and former Editor-in-Chief
of Cosmopolitan magazine.
The intelligent discourse from the interviews influenced many
readers and brought forth issues many publications at the time
refused to cover, but I guess that still makes me as evil as
a puppy-devouring fascist.
We should also forget the pages of the magazine have also
seen its fair share of contributing writers, but I'm sure they
were all terrible authors to have written for a smut magazine
like Playboy.
Besides, we all know Alex Haley, author of Roots and The Autobiography
of Malcolm X is probably not a very good writer, considering
he conducted several interviews for the magazine.
And what about Mordecai Richler, Canadian writer, essayist,
journalist and contributor for Playboy. That's horrible, I
guess all those great books he wrote are no good because he
wrote for a porno magazine.
Despite all the great interviews and the talented writers
who have been published, the magazine still possesses this
reputation as a magazine that is known for the Playmates and
not its columns, articles and interviews.
The even sadder aspect of the whole thing is most people will
not want to pick up a Playboy because it has this reputation
of being smut and many fear being insulted for even being seen
with a smutty magazine.
Whatever happened to the sexual liberation that dominated
the sixties and allowed men and women to read an issue of Playboy
without worrying about getting snickered at. Now I can't walk
into the corner store without getting a strange look of pity
towards my supposed desperation from the cashier.
It seems people are becoming more and more sexually repressive;
sex has once again become some sort of Victorian taboo. I'm
not talking about people not having enough sex in public places,
what I mean is people who are just not comfortable talking,
hearing or even reading about sex.
Because I've run out of space, the whole thing can best be
explained by the cheesy cliche: "Don't judge a book by its
cover." So please read before you judge the mag and me.
