{"id":10643,"date":"2017-09-28T17:12:51","date_gmt":"2017-09-28T21:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=10643"},"modified":"2017-09-29T10:47:12","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T14:47:12","slug":"thanks-and-r-i-p-hugh-hefner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2017\/09\/28\/thanks-and-r-i-p-hugh-hefner\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanks and R.I.P., Hugh Hefner"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"\u00a0Hugh\u00a0Hefner<\/strong>,\u00a0the\u00a0founder\u00a0of\u00a0Playboy\u00a0<\/a>magazine,\u00a0passed\u00a0away\u00a0yesterday\u00a0at\u00a0the\u00a0age\u00a0of\u00a091.\u00a0\u00a0One of his best lines serves also as his epitaph: “Life is too short to be living somebody else’s dreams.”\u00a0 Hefner was one of the great hellraisers of modern America and had a huge impact\u00a0for much of the second half of the 20th century.\u00a0 Playboy<\/em> was a champion of freedom of speech and freedom of the press and was in the forefront of criticizing the Vietnam War.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I sometimes disagreed with Playboy’s political slant but I always loved their cartoons (well, most of them).<\/p>\n

I wrote for\u00a0Playboy\u00a0from 1994 to 2002.\u00a0 In a 1995 memo to my editor, Jim Petersen<\/strong>, Hefner said that I was a writer who\u00a0 has a clear voice.\u00a0\u00a0 I appreciated that\u00a0 and\u00a0 appreciated even more that Playboy\u00a0did not balk at controversial pieces on no-knock raids, racial profiling, Ruby Ridge, asset forfeiture, war on drug absurdities, Janet Reno, Waco, and other topics.\u00a0 Some of the Washington\/East Coast publications I dealt with in those years seemed paranoid of my ideas (as opposed to my investigative reporting).\u00a0Not so with\u00a0Playboy<\/em>.\u00a0 This was also thanks in part to Petersen – who was\u00a0far more open-minded and literarily gifted than most editors I have\u00a0encountered.\u00a0\u00a0 Plus, Petersen enjoyed firing machine guns.\u00a0 (The New York Times <\/a>labeled Petersen “a cultural icon of a carnal sort” thanks to his 20 years as the Playboy advisor.)<\/p>\n

Playboy was the only\u00a0magazine that ever allowed me to use the phrase “Flying Philadelphia ****” in a discussion of government health care subsidies.<\/p>\n

After I started getting published there, some of my conservative and libertarian friends thanked me for making them honest men – since they could sincerely say that they were buying the magazine for the articles.<\/p>\n

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RIP to Hugh Hefner & thanks to @Playboy<\/a> for never flinching when I pitched them articles on federal atrocities https:\/\/t.co\/fViMayLbTI<\/a><\/p>\n

— James Bovard (@JimBovard) September 28, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n