General Discussion

I read this on DU years ago
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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/donald-trump-hugh-hefner-playboy-persona?srsltid=AfmBOorVO1SeMjitjufkFS75JH11bxsHZCfL0Tdzm8Bcooc1TA2mUeoT

Is the presidency of Donald Trump the price America paid for Hugh Hefner’s sins? Did Playboy magazine’s gospel of monogrammed hedonism ultimately produce the tufted warlock in the White House, much as Charles Manson rattlesnaked out of the hippie ethos of free love? “The current president of the United States may be Hefner’s most sterling achievement,” wrote Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker in September, shortly after the founder of Playboy magazine and its once fluffy bunny empire evacuated his waxen envelope of flesh at the age of 91. “Hefner may have . . . promoted the kind of persona that helped carry Donald Trump to the White House,” the historian Gyorgy Toth speculated on the website “The Conversation.” “[Some] male voters may have felt ‘oppressed’ by political correctness as much as Hefner’s followers felt trampled by the imperative to marry.” Even partial responsibility for Trump’s election is a heavy rap to lay on Hef’s mottled reputation, but affinities between the two glazed oglers are indisputable, as was their mutual-admiration society. Along with lording about like har-em masters (Hefner with the pneumatic Playmates and centerfolds at his Los Angeles mansion, Trump with the tiara-pursuing contestants in the cheesy beauty pageants he produced), both moguls promoted their brands as aspirational models, running their companies as patriarchal fiefdoms, extensions of their biorhythms and fidgets. (The Hefner described in Tom Wolfe’s 60s-era profile “King of the Status Dropouts,” poking at the headboard dials of his round bed, trying to get the damned thing to revolve, is an innocuous precursor to Trump orchestrating chaos from his Twitter app.) In 1990, Playboy featured Trump on the cover, an editorial honor that Trump still cherishes but that Hefner’s son and editorial heir, Cooper, rues as “a personal embarrassment” and a pigeon stain on the brand (my metaphor, not his). Trump was also an occasional visitor at the Playboy Mansion, and, in a bi-coastal salute, “a complete run of Playboy, bound in luxe leather,” resides in the lounge of Manhattan’s Trump Soho, according to The Nation’s architecture critic, Michael Sorkin.

“If Donald Trump has a maestro in matters of taste,” observed Sorkin, “it’s surely his fellow teetotaler and sex fan Hugh Hefner, the pajama-clad, Pepsi-swilling progenitor of the lifestyle that so intoxicated boys of The Donald’s generation.” Trump picked up his cues for public indoctrination from Pajama Man. “Trump’s politics are, like Hefner’s ‘Playboy Philosophy,’ an impossible combination of liberalism, hedonism, bloviation, and misogyny.” What makes this combo platter menacing to civic health is when you add Fascism to the menu. Sorkin posits a third bro looming in the background of these two stylish schlockmeisters: the glowering specter of Adolf Hitler. It is no secret that Trump kept a copy of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside, not exactly lullaby reading, and all three men were arch-merchandisers. “Hitler, Hefner, and Trump—the real rat pack—share a logo fetish (the swastika, the bunny, and the big T are among the most ubiquitous signifiers of their times) and a powerful fascination with building and design. Hefner in the Playboy Mansion, Hitler in the Berghof, and The Donald in his Trump Tower triplex are obsessed with self-corroboration by decorative context and the dramatic possibilities involved in the public marketing of a ‘private’ lifestyle.”

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