THE GREAT ORNPAY DEBATE: Follow it like this: Holtsberry, Radic, Holtsberry, Radic, a Holtsberry aside, an a Dale Amon aside. Ornpay because the adult filter software in the library wouldn't let me read Kevin's initial post as it had too many banned words in it. Wotta development. So I'm limiting my use of the p-word, if I can. Never mind, I give up. Here's a Natlija comment:

People do not use marriage as a marketing devise, they use sex, because that is what people actually think about much of the time. Pornography is just the essence of that. In reality most well adjusted people do not get porn and real life confused, keeping them in different boxes in their heads. Yet I don't read Vogue primarity for the articles anymore than most people read Playboy for the articles (which are mostly crypto-socialist drivel anyway). I read them both for the sex. I don't have a problem with pornography because unlike many conservatives and their socialist-feminist friends, I do not have a problem with the reality of human nature. I just wish those conservatives and their statist allies on the left would stop trying to use the force of law to impose peculiar world views on everyone else.

I don't know from crypto-socialist, but the articles in Playboy really do suck. The only thing that's sometimes okay are the interviews, like the famous Paglia interview, the Parker & Stone one, this month's Iverson one is supposed to be good too. But there's no consistent sort of point of view in Playboy articles; the magazine has no reason to exist apart from the pictures of nekkid ladies. I mean, Penthouse tries to be the magazine about sex (or one version of sex), Hustler tries to be the girlie MAD magazine, Club does porn entirely from within the adult industry and has no qualms about being anything but a dirty magazine. Playboy never does anything consistently well and I suspect its time as a viable cultural entity has long past, much like the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Where I disagree with Natalija is in her assessment of Playboy: the porn sucks too. I don't have a problem with the cheesecake soft-core porn Playboy specializes in --their specials are really great examples of this: excellent production values, good variety of women. But the magazine's formula --centerfold, idiot para-celebrity, group-of-women-related-by-profession where half the pictures are too tiny and cropped to fit the page-- is stale beyond measure, and the magazine itself seems only to exist to advertise the Playboy brand name. And I think Hefner has gone insane. Have you seen him lately? He's always wearing that "iconic" bathrobe. And he lives with like seven identical --I mean i-den-ti-cal-- looking women (blonde, big hooters) who he insists on making into Playmates to the detriment of us, the magazine-purchasing public. Creepy, in an odd way I don't usually associate with creepiness. Hugh Hefner is going Howard Hughes in a way only Hugh Hefner could. That will be my only clever comment for the day.