“Composer Artisan” ISFP. Socially and economically libertarian for reasons having nothing to do with Ayn Rand. Current fields of study:Playboy, A Course in Miracles, building a new life in Humboldt County.
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.)
Thanks to Pot TV, I can direct you to something beautiful that YouTube won’t allow me to embed here: Hugh Hefner’s statements about marijuana policy from March 30, 2006. (By the way, I also attended the same event in 2007.)
I’ll admit that this is species lookism on my part, but don’t judge me before viewing the CNN video. Beavis and Butt-head never jumped the proverbial shark by turning nice, and even they would have said, “Awww.”
Hypothetical date of a lifetime (in a good way) Katherine Mangu-Ward will eat anything—except for these cuties.
In related news, an endangered wild rabbit of Florida, Sylvilagus palustris hefneri, was named after you-know-who.
Explaining the virtues of both personal and economic freedom to friends with high-speed Internet connections has never been easier. Reason.tv, the online video department of the renowned libertarian magazine, has opened up shop.
Their first editors’ pick is this YouTube video of ABC newsman John Stossel sharing his libertarian wisdom with an appreciative crowd at the Blue Velvet in Los Angeles:
Thanks to SiteMeter, I know that a woman in Belgium recently stumbled on a guest essay here by Googling insecure when my husband looks at other women (in English, without quotation marks). She might take heart from the miracle of May 14, when a troupe of fire dancers invaded a benefit party for the Marijuana Policy Project at the Playboy Mansion and upstaged the Playmates on their home turf. It can be done!
The number of millihelens a beautiful woman radiates is measurable by my dorkiness and spazziness in her presence.* I stood bravely in the front row of the audience with no regard for what could happen if they lost control of their flaming toys, thinking only of my duty as a scholar of the seductive power of the human female. Nor did I consider the dangers of looking like a desperate horn dog at an inopportune time. It was totally worth the risk to get close enough to notice the sexy bruise on one dancer’s thigh.
Comedian Joe Rogan served as our master of ceremonies. MPP executive director Rob Kampia presented an award to Bill Maher, who couldn’t be found at the party before or after that. DJ Pooh spun records, and Blues Traveler performed live. I followed a friend’s advice and got my picture taken with more Playmates than last year: this time around, with Julie McCullough, Deanna Brooks, Tiffany Taylor, Stacy Fuson, Miriam Gonzalez, Laurie Fetter, Amanda Paige, Christine Smith, Scarlett Keegan, Cassandra Lynn, and Alison Waite. Since I’m not willing to show my face on this blog, you’ll have to email me through the link on my Blogger profile page to see those photos. Off camera, I coaxed a kiss on my left cheek from Laurie Fetter and a kiss on my right from Deanna Brooks. It got even better when Brooks let me return the favor. Sincere apologies to Amanda Paige for pulling her hair while taking my left arm off of her shoulder.
Sadly, I missed my photo ops with a few of the Playmates there, including August 2004’s Pilar Lastra. But I can take pride in this candid, unauthorized, impulsive shot of her cottontailed derrière:
I wonder how she got that sawdust on her thigh. A better photographer would have patted it off before shooting.
Another blogger describes his experience at the same party—with photos—here.
Now, if only landspeeder liberals like Queen Amidala didn’t support the taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems—and the overreaching government that makes new taxes necessary—the cross-dressing catfish of the Trade Federation couldn’t have been so easily manipulated by Darth Sidious. If some sentient beings display greed, it’s more realistic to try to make greed work for as many people as possible, as libertarianism does, than to give secular sermons on the sin of avarice, as the left does.
Those who believe that pure selfishness lies at the heart of the libertarian movement may consider “libertarian charity” an oxymoron. But in a sense, it’s arguably redundant. Find out specifically about ACCION International. With the help of donors and investors, this organization provides “microfinance” services such as small-business loans to the very poor. Ordinary banks don’t market these services because they’re not cost-effective without charitable giving, and loan sharks are otherwise the only possible access to borrowed money for many of those most desperately hoping for a better life. Let’s see how much good capitalism and philanthropy can do together.
Post title explanation: In the early Simpsons episode “Homer the Heretic,” the cover of a vintage Playdude (July 1966) includes this text as an article teaser: “Don’t laugh. It’s a car from Japan.” Somehow, I find that encouraging when people laugh at my blog.
The “liberal” leftists at Pandagon.net call me pseudo-intellectual. I’ll let my readers decide that for themselves, but I have to answer the attacks on libertarianism that Amanda Marcotte and her readers make.
Marcotte paraphrases a sentence of mine from my last post, “Does this ad for Royal Elastics shoes, blacklisted in the summer 2005 Ms., encourage men to kick women in the head?” as, “Is this ad implying there’s something sexy about kicking women in the head?” She seems oblivious to the subjectivity of her affirmative answer to her own question. Some of her commenters give alternate interpretations that make just as much sense, or as little. They may all agree that the ad insults women, but since these people ignore the distinction between an image’s ascribed meanings and its tangible consequences in the real world, the differing interpretations reveal a lack of honest consensus about exactly how it harms women. Ms. certainly finds the ad menacing—as opposed to merely tasteless—or else it wouldn’t praise its readers for lobbying against it. As usual, the ad’s target audience is presumed to be the victim of a Jedi mind trick. Free will, shmee will.
But then, we libertarians hallucinate a bizarre notion of free will according to Marcotte:
The simple-minded libertarian right’s [sic: I’m not on the right wing of a one-dimensional spectrum but the top wing of a two-dimensional spectrum] major fallacy, which is in thinking that only government power counts as power, is evident [in my post]. Social power and economic power may technically exist, but are not worthy of consideration, because they disappear in a poof if you apply “free will”. Similiarly, if the blogger wanted to start writing exclusively in Russian, he could do so this very second by willing it. Some puritanical liberals might say that he’s not writing in Russian because he doesn’t know it, due to social forces (namely, everyone around him speaks English), but that’s balderdash. He is only writing in English and not Russian because he coolly examined his choices and freely chose to write in English. Now, some people say that one could switch languages not by will but by a huge amount of effort [emphasis added] and that it would require collective action, i.e. finding a teacher to teach you Russian, some books written by people on learning Russian, moving to Russia and learning it from the people around you. But that’s crap. There’s no legal ban on you using Russian, so you can speak it right away without help from anyone else just by willing it. To say otherwise is to deny the existence of free will.
So what’s the difference between will and effort? I see them as synonyms in this context; Marcotte sure as hell isn’t describing my idea of free will. How does the effort involved in learning a second language as an adult make it unattainable through free will? Conversely, how does the impossibility of certain acts, like speaking a language one hasn’t learned or flying by flapping one’s arms, disprove free will as commonly understood?
Flawed though it is on its face, her language-learning analogy can prove unintentionally instructive on the differences between thoughtful, principled libertarians and everyone else. Notice that the “collective action” necessary to learn Russian is not presumed to involve government in any way except to protect buyers and sellers of Russian-language instruction from force, fraud, or theft. Well, duh. But if enough Americans saw fluency in Russian as either a moral obligation (like abstaining from marijuana) or an entitlement (like enough money for a child-raising lifestyle), they might rationalize ineffective programs, intrusive laws, and expensive lawsuits to try to teach everybody Russian. And in light of the depressing history of moral panics, the hypothetical example of learning Russian isn’t so preposterous. Libertarians may be just as capable of moral panic as other human beings, but they tend to keep better watch against that tendency than garden-variety leftists or rightists do.
In a textbook case of projection, libertarians are accused of “a certain blindness about how social and interdependent humans actually are.” The lefty campaign against genetically modified organisms doesn’t seem to care about the poverty and starvation it would leave in its wake. But libertarian science reporter Ronald Bailey—the selfish bastard—does the humanitarian job of mapping their road to hell paved with good intentions. To say that big government isn’t the answer is not to say, “Screw the less fortunate.”
On March 30 of this year, I attended a benefit party for the Marijuana Policy Project at the Mansion in Los Angeles. If I recall correctly, I got an early-bird discount and paid $500 for admission. Also, I seem to remember reading in a letter from the MPP that it will be a recurring event. Bookmark the MPP site and check it regularly for the next Mansion fundraiser. This post, dear readers, is the only notification you’ll get from me. All of you are potential competitors for a limited guest roster. I missed out on Hef’s brief appearance by choosing the wrong time to use the bathroom, and it made me very sad. I won’t make that mistake twice.
This is “TV Turnoff Week 2006” according to the leftist crypto-puritans at Adbusters Ballbusters. The other night, Jimmy Kimmel rightly congratulated his viewers for ignoring it.
In my journey from liberalism (in the distinctly American sense of the term) to libertarianism, I’ve learned to my frustration that crypto-puritanism abounds on the left. While many on the right are prone to moral panics about issues like same-sex marriage, emergency contraception, and medical marijuana, various subgroups of the left are prone to moral panics about television, consumerism, fast food, tobacco, biotechnology, cosmetic surgery, alternatives to public school, ethnic humor, or sexual speech in the workplace. All these panics exhibit faulty scientific or political reasoning, and they’re all potentially dangerous. If you’re against genetically modified food, please explain why, on at least one occasion, activists on your side would have preferred to see victims of a natural disaster starve to death rather than receive emergency food shipments.
Since many, perhaps most, of these left-wing moralists aren’t traditionally religious, religion doesn’t deserve all the blame for the human tendency to let moral reasoning degenerate into crude moralism of one kind or another. Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, in the chapter titled “The Sanctimonious Animal” in his book The Blank Slate, makes an eye-opening argument that humans have a natural tendency to moralize—and that they should make some effort to resist this tendency in themselves. I credit Playboy with encouraging this effort on some fronts, although its justification for the effort has sometimes been flawed by the influence of 1960s romanticism.
At about 8 p.m. on Thursday, March 30, I was in a chartered shuttle bus traveling from one of the parking lots at UCLA to the residence at 10236 Charing Cross Road. We twisted and turned through the narrow, dark, tree-lined roads of the exclusive neighborhood for a few minutes. Then there was a gap between the trees through which I saw the distinctly Tudor architecture of a certain rooftop. I gasped in amazement. It was the Playboy Mansion.
We, the guests of a benefit party for the Marijuana Policy Project, stepped off the bus and were led through a doorway in an open-air wall on the Mansion grounds. On the other side was the swimming pool area, where a bar and a small stage for music and comedy had been set up. On each side of a very short staircase descending towards the pool stood a row of three or four gorgeous young women in black dresses. As each of us passed, they would say, “Welcome to the Playboy Mansion.” I studied their faces for a few seconds and, sure enough, I recognized them from their centerfolds. Playmates!
Finally seeing these icons in person was something like getting to see the dinosaurs for the first time in Jurassic Park (the friendly herbivores, mind you, not the predators). As a paleontologist catching his first glimpse of living dinosaurs, Sam Neill says, “They’re moving in herds. They do move in herds.” The moment held something of that Spielbergian sense of wonder for me.
I was fortunate enough to spend several minutes in conversation with Miss May 1998, Deanna Brooks, and later on with Miss November 2002, Serria Tawan. Brooks and I discussed the philosophical underpinnings of the sexual revolution. A self-described feminist, she objected to the frequent claim that her posing for Playboy was in any way anti-feminist. I’ve said essentially the same thing here. But we politely disagreed on whether people’s anxiety and awkwardness about sexuality are learned through social conditioning or at least partly inborn. I argue the latter.
During my chat with Tawan, a tall, leggy, cute black woman, I was reminded of the mixed blessings of being a sex symbol. A male party guest pinched her backside as he walked by. (I wouldn’t have known it had happened if she hadn’t told me.) Some men behave that way towards Playmates, she explained, because “they think we’re whores.” Playboy shows respect for women, but some guys don’t get the message. Don’t feel too sorry for Tawan, however; she can reportedly kick ass[not work-safe] when she needs to.
Tawan and I were soon joined by Libertarian (yay!) political candidate Edward Teyssier. “Your mission,” he told me, “is to find a libertarian Playmate,” since an endorsement of libertarianism by a Playmate would help the movement. If, by chance, any actual or aspiring Playboy models are reading this, I invite them to take this very short political quiz. They may be libertarian without knowing it.
Playmates at the party included Cassandra Lynn (Miss February 2006), Christine Smith (December 2005), Julie Cialini (1995 Playmate of the Year), Scarlett Keegan (September 2004), Jillian Grace (March 2005), Athena Lundberg (January 2006), Tina Jordan (March 2002), and Marketa Janska (July 2003). I think I probably saw Pilar Lastra (August 2004) and Julie McCullough (February 1986). (Several of the female guests, I might add, looked good enough to be Playmates.) Adam Carolla showed up. My fellow stoners might have recognized cultivation expert Ed Rosenthal, who wore a wizard costume with images of cannabis leaves sewn on it. Tommy Chong dropped by for a while, but, regrettably, I didn’t see him there. Worse yet, I didn’t see Hugh Hefner, even though he’s in one of the photos on the MPP page on the event. So near and yet so far! When I think of it, this makes my memory of the event somewhat bittersweet.
Party guests were not allowed inside the Mansion itself, but we had access to most of the grounds, through which the Playmates led tours. We saw the pens housing many animals, including birds, monkeys, and rabbits. We could play billiards, pinball, and video games for free in the game room. At one point, I wandered into a guest bedroom with mirrors covering two walls and the ceiling (wink). For the wild party capital of the world, though, much of the property has a surprising air of tranquility. When I wanted a break from the party, I could easily find peace and quiet in a garden path. Playboy often impresses me with this kind of balance of yin and yang.
Four hours was too short a time to spend in such a delightful place. Ask for my snapshots through the email link on my Blogger profile page, and I’ll gladly send them to you.
