Hollywood, California, is my spiritual hometown. I actually grew up in three other communities in California, but it hardly seems to matter which three. How could my heart take root anywhere under the tyranny of American public schooling?
I don’t have to work for a living. After my father died in December 1997, my family and I won a legal settlement.
The Blog About
Nothing: Sudheer of Hyderabad, India, is a big fan of Playboy and an
even bigger fan of Seinfeld. In this blog, he composes humorous
dialogues for the show’s characters.
Hit & Run: the official
blog of my other favorite magazine, Reason: Free Minds and Free
Markets; winner
of the 2005 Weblog Award for Best Group Blog; “the best
libertarian blog” according to the October 2005 issue of
Playboy.
Scoobie Davis Online: a self-described “filmmaker, surfer, and party crasher” in southern California. He’s also a Playboy fan, a left-leaning political gadfly, and a connoisseur of Jack T. Chick religious tracts.
The Search for
Health in Decadence: poetry and philosophical writings of Will, who has
engaged me in lengthy, good-natured debate through comments on my
blog.
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven
Pinker. With stylistic flair, a Harvard cognitive scientist
refutes myths about human nature underlying a multitude of political
beliefs—including many of those that would either favor or
oppose the sexual revolution.
God in Popular Culture by Andrew M. Greeley. A liberal Catholic
priest sees quasi-Christian messages of grace abounding in the
allegedly soulless realm of commercial pop culture. For all I know,
Greeley is not necessarily a Playboy fan. But his
interpretation of Madonna’s song “Like a Virgin” has
influenced my impression of Playboy. (In case anyone wonders, my religious heritage is Lutheran on my father’s side and secularist on my mother’s.)
With all due respect to Dr. King’s legacy, I promise that it’s not as much of a non sequitur as you think. As always, YouTube may be lying if it calls the video “no longer available.” Reload this web page and give it another go.
I have to admit that Reflections on Playboy is not necessarily a model of racial sensitivity. When someone in the Bush administration wondered out loud about bringing back the draft, the paraphrase in my post title that day was “18-year-olds are the new niggers.” I still wonder about my own wisdom in using a word that probably disturbs African Americans in ways that I, as a white guy, can never completely understand. Still, this is by far the most appropriate day of the American civic calendar for me to put my two cents in. And if I can’t be a racial saint, maybe I can at least be weird enough to command attention, even a kind of respect, when I share some thoughts on King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
I spend a lot of my time at this blog defending certain cultural artifacts against charges of vulgarity. For an earlier MLK day, I observed that, with all the sobriety inherent in his mission, King was not ashamed to exert influence on frivolous items of pop Americana like Star Trek and Playboy. Nor should he have been. History shows that, whenever human beings are liberated, they invest in frivolity. Suddenly free of the Taliban vice squads in 2001, the people of Afghanistan disappointed Western snobs by going for “shallow,” “materialistic” things like consumer electronics and fashionable haircuts. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing in their position?
King had a noble dream of interracial justice and peace. In their various ways, Playboy and songs like “Barbie Girl” remind us of the “low” dreams of sensual pleasure and sexual satisfaction that seem to compete with the noble stuff for humanity’s attention. Perhaps a sense of zero-sum competition between low and high dreams encouraged King in his socialism. But let’s remember King as a hero, not a god. Even after the scandal of racist rhetoric that has just embarrassed the libertarian movement, let’s all consider the possibility that a free market in almost all goods and services—including education and health care—is the best deal for consumers of whatever color. Maximal realization of King’s dream may involve transcendence of King’s economic prejudices. Please think it over, everybody.
