The Real Heft of Hefner


There has been quite a bit of bandwidth dedicated to whom many consider the progenitor of the sexual revolution's most iconoclastic corporate emblem, Playboy. Hugh Hefner, reported to have an IQ north of 150, provided the lubricity to transubstantiate pornography from a seedy, slimey back-alley industry to mainstreamed, glamorized "sleaze"- the main freight being the objectification of women- book ended by serious journalism featuring such heralded writers as William F. Buckley and Alex Haley.

Hefner sought to philosophically deconstruct theological sanctions-repeal and replace if you will-the prudish, outdated sexual constraint promulgated by moral exegetes. The Playboy philosophy hinged upon this single edict," A man's morality, like his religion, is a personal affair best left to his own conscience."

The scientific construct for this borrowed heavily from the Kinsey Report, an ideological gateway to libertinism. Hefner sought to introduce a new morality, part Aleister Crowley's "Do What Thou Wilt" and progressive advancement of social mores emancipated from the stricture of the cultural, moral and spiritual imprint accreted from the Elizabethan Age.  This new orthodoxy, engorged with sexual iconoclasm, has been celebrated as "a pure lyric of expression of the appetite of human nature."  Hefner commiserated about the incongruity of what people said publicly about sex and sexuality and what they did privately noting that this country's appetite for the forbidden was voracious and he believed insatiable.

He transformed himself into the embodiment of the sexual renaissance man; a strange alchemy of psuedo-erudition and sartorial panache all the while engaging in an unfettered sexual appetite.  His joie de vive made him the imprimatur of this brand of hedonism he sought to repackage as  sophisticated, counter cultural and eminent. He is heralded as an iconoclast who donated to social justice and civil rights causes while simultaneously openly advocating the patrician constraints of his empire's most prized commodity-women as objects of licentiousness.

 The previous paragraphs is my version of the academic, high-brow rendering thus far of his legacy.  For regular folks,sadly, Playboy, the magazine, became a ubiquitous, right-of-passage parchment for prepubescent boys who would, on far too many occasions, discover the dirty magazine in their father's hidden stash. The Bill of Rights for the new sexual Constitution actually delivered a bill of wrongs for conceivably millions of boys whose raging hormones would be skewered by this misogynistic imprint of women and sexual intimacy.  The curating of fetishization, masturbation and promiscuity left scar tissue and a framework for addiction to pornography whose impact was so pronounced that it more than marginally altered the psycho-sexual construct by which they would develop. There would be scores of studies done to demonstrate the neurological damage of this new ethos.

Dr.Tony Evans said that," pornography use is one of the greatest indicators that a man has lost touch with his manhood."  We were indoctrinated into voyeurism and depictions of sex not only bereft of constraint but entangled with violence or Caligulan type escapades in which self-gratification was the primary focus. There is an unspoken malignancy tied to the playboy iconography.  He inculcated a passive recklessness by positing that technology ( the creation of vaccines,abortifacients) would outpace the proliferation of sexually-transmitted diseases, out of wedlock births, and abortions that followed this self-centered odyssey of indulgence. His prescience would be a partial truth.

The internet made access to copious amounts of pornographic material seamless and removed the stigma of having to leave the clandestine confines of one's home to indulge in the salacious, digital ecosystem that brought a dark web of perversion right to your desktop, laptop or phone. Ironically, this proliferation became the death knell of the revolutionary magazine that sought to mainstream the ribald as racy prose and the topography of women as the sole source stimuli for men. The collateral damage, the legacy of this sexual utopia, is far greater than the image of a centerfold burned into boys and men's memories. This contagion created pathogens that are still destroying households around the globe to this day.

                                                           Keepin' It Real
                   ( Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?)
                                                                                                                 Gal 4:16



It was Socrates that posed the question, "What is the right way for a man to live?" This is a nation laden with aphorisms and edicts that declare what being an American is.  The Declaration of Independence starts with these hallowed words," When in the course of human events it becomes necessary".  But if I parse together a sentence by borrowing excerpts from the remainder of the first paragraph, it would look like this.  "To assume among the powers of the earth the Laws of Nature and Nature's God a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."

Under the cascading shower of diatribes surrounding the now very conflated event of protest in the NFL, I have simply been wondering, what is an acceptable concourse, narrative, discourse, anthropology for a man of color in the broader context of western civilization; but more specifically in America. The bandwidth for grievance has never been broad.  The two-ness that W.E.B Du Bois speaks about is something that almost makes you feel transgenic, a permutation of two cultures. "It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."

My first experience of this peculiar sensation was as early as the fourth grade. The elasticity, the subtle nuance and duplicity of metrics for excellence, acceptance and recognition seemed esoteric.  Being an ambivert, I never really cared or explored this dangling participle of our culture.  I was taught to believe in the benefit of a great work ethic, treating people well and the inherent righteousness of the tenets and decrees of American folklore and history.  Even as I began to ask questions about the canned narratives that were an embedded part of all of the school's literature, textbooks and references I was directed to, the volume of the subtext began to get louder.

The only places where a reflection could be found in the expanse of the history of the U.S was on the plantations and the ghettos.  Between those sullied domiciles a smattering of relevance was mentioned in conflicts: Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, WW I & II et al.  Even the peculiar institution, the nation's Great Sin, as promulgated in history books was bereft of the depravity, savagery and gravitas.  Many of my friends from middle and high school would probably be puzzled after reading up to this point.  Let me be clear, I have never seen the United States through a dystopic lens and declared her an irredeemably racist nation with no redemptive characteristics; pockmarked with incongruity, hypocrisy and the pernicious underpinnings of her colonial progenitor.

But when I had an exchange with a former classmate who asked me why was I posting "so much racial stuff' on my FB page, it reminded me of the veracity of the Du Bois quote.  He took issue with the subject matter I was addressing.  When I cogently explained what my experiences had been in the military,education and financial services, his trite dismissal of the validity of my reality was symptomatic of what under girds the almost radioactive political climate today.  RACISM is this country's dead fly in the apothecary.  The parochial view of far too many Americans is that it is either embellished or the derisive tool of "race baiters,( erbody knows Al and Jesse) malcontents, or those who look for excuses when things don't go their way.  The shutdown, ( in their minds) tangential point is the untenable homicide rate among blacks,( blacks are 8 times more likely to be killed by each other) the peculiar, one-sided reference to black-on-black crime or the fact that 52 percent of all homicides according to FBI statistics are committed by that same people group. "Why aren't you protesting that?  When I take the time to give context (NEVER excuses) by showing the nexus socioeconomically between the past and the present.....again.....deflection or denunciation.

Even when providing statistical abstracts on the disparities in health, housing, incarceration rates, and economics to bolster your case about this yet existent social cancer, there is a collective yawn, side-eye and fade to black. "But Theo, you are a well-educated, successful man who hasn't had any barriers to realizing your potential." Well, you can be truthful but not accurate. The vast majority of successful black folks in this country have probably not had a "Mississippi Burning" experience or the kind of vile overt racist experiences that make your blood boil like a scene from the movie "12 Years a Slave." What will probably surprise you is the sheer volume of what has been termed micro aggressions that most have ignored or subjugated to the category of just an ignorant, uniformed exchange.

In 2017, terms like "Go back to Africa" or "You should be grateful" still drip like the anachronistic meanderings of "good people" from a century ago.  The President of the United States can call the White House a dump and say," the United States has done many bad things in the world" and somehow he is keeping it real. Yet without hesitation had his predecessor said the EXACT same things, many "nice folks" would have unloaded with profanity-laced, racial epithets an order of magnitude we would probably still be counting.  The bad things that America has done to its own citizens and the malignant residue that remains in the form of systemic constructs that still impede, encumber and prohibit is the keepin' it real that no one wants to talk about.  It is still the stain on the flag that seems to be evident only to the people that kneel, stand or sit.