To not understand the sanctification of Hugh Hefner?

[Yamayo]

So dirty old man dies.
This morning I woke up to dozens of tributes. Why??

He wasn't a visionary or a feminist. He played a huge part in creating the whole culture of casual sexism and misogyny of the world we live in.
And when you read accounts of life in his manor as described by his 'bunnies' it is quite frankly sickening.

Why his death treated with such respect?

Because our culture is obsessed with the adoration of celebrity and regardless of how heinous people are if they are famous they are to be feted. Hefner was a vile creature.

It kills me that my preteen is exposed to this "culture" and I spend a lot of time asking her why this or that person is famous and if she thinks they are a good role model. Hopefully, she can see through it, but I think my best efforts will be eventually overridden by this rubbish that she is bombarded with from every side.

Yep, dirty old man. Bleugh.
Yanbu

Couldn't agree more OP.

YANBU. Elderly pornographer and letch dies. Nothing to see here.

I agree. The archetypal dirty old pervert. Sadly, Society is full of the vacuous who think that he was someone worth lauding and his seedy business is something iconic.

He was a great advocate for LGBT rights.

Also recently deceased at age 90+, Read about the life of Zuzana Ruzickova, instead.

He was an 'icon' (much mislabelled term) but so were The Krays...

All wastes of DNA in my opinion, never did anything good for mankind at all. But they've gone, thankfully.

I don't think HH is as much revered. It's just the usual, what's the term? Grief wanking? Appropriate!

Link!

I agree OP. Him and Heidi fliess had the same job, they were both pimps, why is she vilified and he is celebrated? Huge sexism and double standards.

brownfang I'd never heard of her but it seemed she was an incredible woman.

His lifestyle was questionable but there is no doubt he was iconic and to my knowledge none of the women, in recent years anyway, were co erced, in fact they queued up to be in the magazine, his home and in his company. It’s not my lifestyle choice and I’d be horrified if my daughter chose it, but I don’t sit in judgement of others choices.

Time has moved on and I doubt we will see his likes again.

Irish effort of a sleb magazine rsvp has described his death as "tragic". He was 91, surely death at that age (even if he hadn't been scraped off the bottom of a toilet bowl in the first place) does not qualify as tragic. There was no fear I would ever have bought that rag anyway but now they have a lifetime guarantee that I will never be one of their readers!

He was pretty gross.

I read an article by an ex-bunny a while back and apparently the mansion is just awful now, dirty, smells of dog urine as all the bunnies have little dogs. He sounded quite strange behind closed doors.

Whether you agree with pornography or not, Playboy was very important in the middle of the century in terms of literary and civil rights development.

The authors Hefner published in the 50s-70s reads like a whos who of the most important American writers of the period. Ray Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451 in Playboy before it went anywhere else. Some of the most important interviews with the like of Malcolm X and Dr Martin Luther King Jr. were in Playboy. No-one else had the courage to publish them. 'I only read Playboy for the articles' may be a joke now, but back in the day, they were worth a read.

He was among the first to integrate black people in a white-run oranization. When he found out that franchises of his Playboy clubs in the Southern US were segregated, he bought them in house and integrated them.

The vast majority of people know him as the caricature dirty old man in pajamas and smoking jacket he from the late 90s, but when he was in his heyday in the 50s and 60s he was a very important an influential figure in the development of literature and civil rights in the USA.

People are multidimensional.

YANBU.

It doesn't matter how controversial the public figure was, as soon as they die they become almost sanctified. Its not so much "don't speak ill of the dead" as "gush enthusiastically about the dead".

Yy squishy. See immediately following jimmy saville’s death 🤢

YANBU.

Basically, Hugh Hefner got away with things because he was rich. If an elderly pensioner living in a normal house moved a load of barely-legal girls into his house and spent all day feeling them up while dressed in grubby pyjamas, people would be calling him a revolting old pervert. But because he was a millionaire apparently it's just quirky old fun-loving Hef. It really annoys me.

Apparently he has left nothing in his will to his wife, who is 30 years old. Either he believed it really was a love match - in which case he'd be a right shit not to leave her some money. Or their relationship was openly a transactional one - in which case he's still being a right shit, as he hasn't stuck to their arrangement and has essentially humiliated her.

One less dirty old man on the planet. Meh.

People are multidimensional.

Yes, they are. That doesn't mean that one of those dimensions excuses the other, however admirable it might be. The fact that (for example) he supported the civil rights movement was admirable.

It doesn't, however, cancel out the fact that he built an entire career out of being, essentially, a pimp.

The authors Hefner published in the 50s-70s reads like a whos who of the most important American writers of the period. Ray Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451 in Playboy before it went anywhere else. Some of the most important interviews with the like of Malcolm X and Dr Martin Luther King Jr. were in Playboy. No-one else had the courage to publish them. 'I only read Playboy for the articles' may be a joke now, but back in the day, they were worth a read.

Fair enough but I can't get past the bunny tails.
Publishing serious articles written by men whilst literally reducing women to pets isn't acceptable IMO.

I see your point but at the same time there were young women practically queuing to be a 'bunny'. It's not for me to pass judgement and if a woman wants to trade on her tits and bouffant hair then I say more power to her hairdryer.
He exploited, and practically pimped out those women but better they're in that mansion than a street corner in Scunthorpe.

I was really depressed by William Gibson, an author I admire, retweeting tweets praising Hefner for apparently not being homophobic (towards men, at any rate) or racist. Well, Jimmy Saville raised lots of money for charity, but he was still an abusive creep, and same for Hefner.

Fucking depressing.

He was a great advocate for LGBT rights.

So great, Onion, that his bunnies - most of whom were not lesbians or even bi - were instructed to fake "lesbian sex" in pairs as a backdrop to whenever he fucked one of their number.

What a fucking hero. Move over, Audre Lourde.

I don't think we should just see the one dimension of the dirty old man. He stood for someone, who didn't judge others in the rigid societal norms of the time including homosexuality, civil rights and civil liberties. His presence also helped usher in the sexual revolution.