Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: October’s “The Ranch”: the self-righteous despair of an aging hippie

September 27, 2007

October’s “The Ranch”: the self-righteous despair of an aging hippie

One seemingly trivial fact becomes increasingly significant to me the more I think about it and the more I compare these guys [in their thirties] with kids their age who didn't grow up in [utopian communes]: Not one of them owns an iPod.
—“The Ranch,” Playboy, October 2007, p. 136

In his article on hippie communes, their founders, and the people raised in them, David Black sees no need to finish his thought on what’s so bad about iPods, taking it for granted that his readers oppose “consumerism” as much as he does. I wonder what he thinks of the iPod sported by the October cover girl.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve seen Playboy contributors do the trendy but hypocritical Adbusters thing by laying a guilt trip on somebody else’s material pleasures. Like liars, sanctimonious people have difficulty keeping their stories straight. Watch Black congratulate his own generation for having no anxieties about becoming poor, and then, in the same paragraph, warn of global economic doom:
The baby boomers were the first generation to grow up out of the shadow of the Depression. Since they had no fear of going without, they embraced voluntary poverty. Today this concept has metamorphosed in our new overheated economy into “voluntary simplicity,” a trend bearing a hint of the you-can’t-fire-me-I-quit mentality: I’ll reduce my expectations before the bubble pops and we’re all left with enforced simplicity, which used to be called poverty.

A different world from the dream of the 1960s. [p. 133]
Although I wasn’t alive to see that decade, I know that Black’s memories of it are rather selective. Paul Ehrlich’s best-selling 1968 book The Population Bomb forecast inevitable global famine in the 1970s and 1980s that would kill hundreds of millions all over the world. This is fairly typical of the many Malthusian predictions that have failed to come true since then. Still, Black needs a reason to sneer at people who shop at Costco and admire Ronald Reagan. The proper term for his attitude may be “voluntary despair.”

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 6:24 PM

  • Blogger Robert Paulson left this comment at September 28, 2007 10:16 AM  
    Articles like this one mentioned above is what keeps me from re-subscribing. The "Playboy Philosophy" is bullshit. They need to be 100% libertarian, not like Bill Maher, 50% Libertarian 50% hard left nutbag. The only thing that separates Playboy from other East Coast liberal magazines like GQ and Esquire are the pictures of the naked girls. Of all of the men's mags that I have read, I actually prefer the one that's aimed [I think...] towards gay men, Details. The articles always seemed to be a cut above those of Playboy, GQ and Esquire, and for the most part, free of the pervasive left wing political slant.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at September 28, 2007 9:34 PM  
    Robert,
    It may be youthful arrogance on my part, but I dream of becoming an intellectual power broker in the Playboy empire and pushing it in the libertarian direction.

  • Blogger Shantra Harmony Muther left this comment at October 6, 2007 10:06 AM  
    Brian,
    Why would you call that arrogance?

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