The Playboy Philosophy and Your Health Care

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's take on the Tiger Woods saga is that monogamy is over-rated. Of course, that randy old coot does not speak for the majority of Americans -- at least not yet.

by: david bozeman | published: 12 22, 2009

But I know I speak for working Americans when I observe highly sexual lifestyles and ask, "who has the time?" With jobs, families and monogamous relationships that require work even under the best of circumstances, sexual shenanigans are largely pastimes of either the very rich or a fraction of those at the other end of the spectrum who don't work at all.

Of course, no group, including family values conservatives, is immune to sexual transgression, but the relaxing of social stigmas is clearly a liberal phenomenon. The refrain during the Clinton scandals was that the Dow Jones mattered more than Paula Jones, as if the foundation of a sound economy was executive privilege to commit adultery and lie under oath. And Hef, by the way, aside from being every woman's fantasy, has been a life-long lefty.

The parallel ascensions of government intervention and a highly permissive, sexualized culture are not coincidental. One buttresses the other. The last line of defense against creeping statism is the traditional family. Renowned economist and social critic George Gilder wrote in 1986's Men and Marriage that, "women transform male lust into love, channel male wonderlust into jobs, homes and families; link men to specific children; rear children into citizens; change hunters into fathers. . . " With the weakening of the family unit over the last forty years, big government invariably seeps in to fill the void. It is true of the socialist, sexually sophisticated states of Europe, notably France, which liberals sneered was laughing at the uproar over the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Observers have noted that the account of Mary Kay Latourneau, the teacher who had an affair with and married a student, while shocking to Americans, is considered a love story in France.

Meanwhile, Americans instinctively perceive government-sponsored health care the death knell of a free society, thus the impassioned opposition. We consider ourselves autonomous individuals, united by family, community and work, not by the frills and fashions of a continental culture where self-gratification, responsibility-free sexual liaisons and government-mandated summer holidays are the highest ideals. The US has accepted many tenets of the Playboy Philosophy but has yet to embrace it in totality. Hugh Hefner is lovably naughty cavorting through the entertainment channels with his current trio of twenty-something girlfriends. Is it telling that two in his current crop -- twins -- frequently sport Obama t-shirts? They, as well, will pass their sexual expiration dates somewhere in their twenties. Just having been his girlfriends, they will survive and even prosper.

Yet for ordinary people, the love 'em and leave 'em lifestyle is a recipe for social disaster. Hef is not the object of envy he fancies himself -- many Americans are repulsed at the notion of leaving women and children to either fend for themselves or become wards of government bureaucracies. Not just conservatives but no less a Democratic icon than the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted, in a 1965 report on the "State of the Negro Family," the alarming rates of unemployment, welfare dependency -- and illegitimacy.

Not all or even most welfare recipients have ever been African-American. The over-riding point is that divorce and unwed motherhood have been the most common reasons people apply for welfare. Once government has stepped in and assumed the roles of husband and father, is health care provider not a logical next step?

One could argue that it's a stretch to link the latest sex scandal to far-reaching government policy, but culture sets the tone for what is and is not permissible. The mores of an if-it-feels-good-do-it, who-am-I-to-judge culture invariably bleed into national politics. Fortunately, in America, as in golf, the standards of gentlemanly behavior remain high, and we still depend on ourselves and our families for our welfare. Despite his fortune, Hugh Hefner is just a soft-core pornographer and not a statesman, and we will fend off the Nanny state by promoting not his definition of cool but what we think is right .

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  Gloria S.

  You go, Nicole! And thanks for letting me use your computer...here goes:

  What a chauvinist comment from Gilder: "women transform male lust into love, channel male wonderlust into jobs, homes and families; link men to specific children; rear children into citizens; change hunters into fathers. . . "

  What total garbage, indeed! It is the men who used the tactic of "divide and conquer" to garnish women to be their domestic and sexual slaves...denying them the autonomy to live life as they wished...

  And maybe Hef did help to emancipate women by turning them into "bunnies", which paid well and women used this as a stepping stone to become lawyers, doctors, educators...but it was by using their sexuality (which kind of cancels out the 'emancipated' part of it).

  And for Gilder to say that women 'channeled' men into jobs, homes, and families...changed hunters into fathers and geared them towards 'specific children' is hilarious! Only the male mind could conceive of this 'predicament forced on men'! And why give women all that power by believing that we had the ability to get males conformed to societal standards? That is still believing in women as "witches" with special secretive powers (the poor men don't know what happened to them...)

  Hugh Hefner is every woman's enemy and nightmare (at least for the "thinking" woman) and far from the female 'fantasy'. Gilder is the most chauvinistic of men to conjure up these crazy ideas...maybe we should turn him into a "male rabbit" wearing nothing but a G-string (include Hef too) and a big fluffy tail on his behind for us to leer and deride while we imbibe the best alcoholic drinks, eat the best food, sit on our tushes and demand more! What a jerk! Hey...Hef was challenged once to wear the fluffy bunny...would love to see him in it before he dies.

  
  

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  Nicole N.

  So much of this is garbage. Many women, including me, want autonomy and embrace "wanderlust". I have three brothers and not one of them wanted to see faraway places like I did. My first boyfriend was an adventurer and explorer so I gravitated to him and rejected the football/baseball/hockey 'crowd' that everyone else seemed to embrace. Sports were a relentless fact of life where I came from.

  More and more women reject marriage and enjoy the benefits of a single lifestyle. Shows like "Sex and the City" are good examples of women living the free lifestyle with men as "coincidental accessories", especially Samantha's men.

  And women reaching a sexual expiration date in their 20's?? I know women who matured into beauty at many different stages of life, and it was not makeup. Men call them "cougars" and young men love them.

  Get a grip on the reality of today's emancipated society. And Hef is not "every woman's dream..." where did you get that idea? Talk about aging...what an ugly guy (actually I thought he always was...,)

  
  

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