Hugh Hefner: Same Dirty Old Playboy At 83!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Although the American media has successfully elevated 83-year old Hugh Hefner to the status of a “legendary icon,” many people loathe him with unqualified contempt, and disdainfully dismiss him as one “dirty old man” despite his great wealth and fame. 

*Hugh Hefner: 

Icon Of Moral Irresponsibility?

In an interview with TIME magazine published in its January 26, 2009 edition, Mr. Hefner gleefully celebrated what he considered his paramount contributions to society: “When I first published Playboy [magazine], nice young people did not live together before they got married. Having a baby out of wedlock was a scandal that drove some people to suicide. Oral sex was illegal. Playboy played a major part in changing all that,” he declared. 

Asked whether he sometimes feels like a dirty old man, Hefner replied: “Not for a moment. I’m on the side of the angels and always have been.” What an affront!

Recently, at the Palms Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Hefner, America’s most notorious bachelor, marked his 83rd birthday surrounded by current and ex-girlfriends. “As you can tell I am very, very happy. To celebrate my birthday with new girlfriends and former girlfriends is perfect, it’s wonderful,” Hefner said in an interview in the course of the celebrations, which had received more colour and attention because of the American Country Music Awards holding at the same time and place. During Hefner’s 82nd birthday last year, another symbol of Western depravity and immorally advanced culture, Pamela Anderson, appeared topless to serve the “old, frail playboy” his birthday cake!

 
 Born on April 9, 1926, in Chicago, Hefner studied Philosophy at the University of Illinois, worked briefly for Esquire Magazine, before coming up with the idea of his own magazine to be known as “Stag Party.” But when he discovered that somebody else had already trademarked that name, he chose another name, Playboy. The first edition, which featured the picture of Marylyn Monroe, and which he was said to have put together on his kitchen table, appeared in December 1953, and sold 50, 000 copies. Encouraged by this initial success, Hefner reinvested his profit in the venture, and by 1959, he was selling about one million copies monthly. 

With two crashed marriages to his name, Hefner has endeavoured to be a human demonstration of his magazine’s name. He is now known as the “ultimate playboy” – always living with several “official girlfriends” who many believe are flocking around him because of money and fame. Rumour has it that he invites countless girls, many of who are young enough to be his great grand daughters, after a couple of dates, to reside with him, and compels them to star at “the twice a week orgies” he organises with immense relish in that his house of boundless immorality.

Recently, Hefner added a new girl-friend to his harem. She is 22-year-old Crystal Harris, a Psychology student at San Diego State University. Already, he had the 19-year-old twin sisters, Karissa and Kristina Shannon, who had enjoyed the limelight as his newest addition until Crystal arrived. A photograph of him and this “trio of bland way too-young girlfriends” is already being widely circulated to reinforce his playboy image and show the world that at 83, he is still mired in shameless immorality and very unrepentant.  

“Dirty, lecherous old man,” Hugh Hefner, with girlfriends  (sin-partners)–Crystal Harris and the twins –Kristina and Karissa Shannon– Revolting! Isn’t it? (pix:nydailynews)

Now what kind of desperation and lust for fame and wealth would push two sisters, twins for that matter, to agree to become one man’s sin-partners, probably performing threesomes with him from time to time? Given the obscene excitement with which the American, and indeed, Western media, celebrated this unqualified abomination, one is tempted to conclude that most of the Western society have lost the capacity to be sickened by anything, no matter how revolting. 

But a thoroughly sickened Daily News reader posted this comment: “Doing sisters at the same time – that’s weird and nasty to me. I wonder if he has dates for each? The whole thing seems to be about publicity – I think it is.  It keeps his empire alive if people are talking about it.” Hefner had chosen the beautiful twins to replace Ms. Holly Madison, who had to break away from him, heartbroken, after her determination to tame him, and make him marry her, so she could have the child she desired so much had failed.

Hefner hit the headlines again during the recent US presidential elections when he called on the Republican Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska Governor, Mrs. Sarah Palin, to pose nude for Playboy magazine if she failed to be elected. “Palin would make a great centrefold. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about a really sexy-looking woman wearing glasses. Imagine what she’s like when those glasses come off. It would be a new definition of the word vice in vice president,” he told OK! Magazine.  

Sometimes, I wonder what human dignity still means to the Western mind. Why would anyone in his right mind be inviting a state governor, vice presidential candidate of the ruling party, wife and mother, and anti-abortion and pro-abstinence advocate to pose nude for a magazine that services the depraved taste of a decadent society? In Nigeria, even with all our imperfections, such a proposal would have provoked a national uproar. And the governor concerned would have considered it a grave insult, and may even resort to legal actions because of the damages her mere consideration for such an obscene pre-occupation may have caused her.

Former Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Alaska Governor, Mrs. Sarah Palin: Hefner once invited her to pose nude for his dirty,  immoral magazine (pix: cbs)

What people do in these parts to earn instant and, maybe, perennial isolation from decent society transform them automatically into well sought-after celebrities in the Western world. When the identity of 22-year-old Ashley Alexander Dupre, the high-end prostitute that brought down the former New York Governor, Elliot Spitzer, became public knowledge, Larry Flint, publisher of Hustler magazine, immediately announced a $1million payment to her if she would pose nude for his men’s magazine. The publisher of Penthouse Magazine, Ms. Diane Silberstein, also immediately joined with an offer to put her on the cover of her magazine. There were book and movie offers, and even invitations to appear on such high-profile programmes like Dianne Sawyer’s “Good Morning America” on the ABC. 

I am sure that Monica Lewinsky is now a very rich “celebrity” because of her most outrageously immoral behaviour that shook the American Presidency. And if she would let out the word today that she is ready to pose nude, she would become an instant billionaire! Indeed, something must really be wrong with a society that celebrates its weirdoes, its deranged and the incurably depraved in its midst: a society where the human being has lost the slightest hint of dignity and respect.    
But once in a while, however, one also finds a lone voice of reason. The Vancouver Sun titled the Miss Dupre/Spitzer story thus: “Call Girl Could Parlay Infamy Into Payday.”

*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

The fellow that called Hugh Hefner a “media-sponsored paedophilia” may indeed be right. Many in America and other Western nations are already bemoaning the silly interpretation their society had given to freedom many years ago, which has now turned their worst nightmare. Hefner’s Playboy Mansion which first existed in Chicago, but now located in Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles, California, hosts all sort of obscene and depraved shows weekly. There is no stopping the frail, dirty old man! It is said that “he pops Viagra like candy.”  

What is the “over-liberated” American woman saying to the unending abuse Hefner subjects her gender to, using little girls as mere playthings to amuse himself? In a more decent clime, a man like Hefner would be abhorred by decent society and labelled a shameless old dog. But he is a rich American “celebrity” and pays huge taxes to the Father of soulless Capitalism, so, why would he not be celebrated by the West? Any hope of reclamation then for this morally challenged old man at 83?

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(First Published April 23, 2009)