Not Your Father’s Playboy

Once upon a time, Playboy was an OK institution–remember the days when it featured contributions by people like Vladimir Nabokov and Alberto Vargas, not to mention Miss October. More recently, though, the magazine has fallen on hard times and is struggling to avoid de-listing and stay out of bankruptcy. Perhaps not coincidentally, its web version has become a left-wing hate site.

That’s their word, not mine. Last week Playboy posted its infamous “hate f***” column on conservative women whom the Playboy columnist would like to rape. That’s what modern liberalism has come to, apparently. A number of the women on Playboy’s list are friends of ours, but you don’t have to know any of the women to be disgusted by what Playboy and so many of its fellow liberals have become.

Now the magazine has struck again. You may recall the YouTube rap video by two Dartmouth freshmen, Josh Riddle and David Rufful, which we posted under the title Young Cons. The video got quite a bit of notice, mostly favorable. Unfortunately, it was also viewed by a Playboy columnist who penned this creepy and obscene attack on the two freshmen, accusing them (and their high school basketball coach, I think) in graphic language of being homosexuals, among other things.

The two kids were understandably upset, but all one can say to them is: get used to it. This is modern liberalism in action. It is the rule, not the exception, for anyone who participates in public discourse as a conservative to be slimed in this kind of vicious, bullying and frequently obscene manner. Not every liberal engages in this kind of despicable conduct, but I have never seen a prominent liberal condemn it, either. That is, sadly, the political world in which we live, and a failing magazine like Playboy correctly believes that this sort of behavior will cause it to be viewed as au courant.