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January 13, 2009

Huckapoo are numbers 56-61

Gloria+Steinem+Bunny.jpg So I did some Gigwork for The Daily Beast: an analysis of Playboy magazine's list of the 55 Most Important People in Sex from the past 55 years (here's the essay, here's the complete list).

I wanted to use my TDB space to talk not just about the list itself, but about Playboy's place (or unfortunate lack thereof) in the current culture. Which means that I have a bunch of unused material about the list that editor Chip Rowe shared with me. I don't have time to put it up right now, but watch this space for more about why certain people made the list while others didn't, and why I won every one of my arguments with Chip, even if he won't acknowledge it.

You can post your own thoughts on the list over at TDB, where people will read them, or here, where I'll respond to them. Hopefully Chip will also weigh in on one or both threads, as he did over at Boing-Boing.

Posted by Daniel Radosh

Comments

Rubbish. Blather. Nonsense. Hyperbole. Ridiculous. Uninformed. Naïve. Bombast. Ludicrous. Hodgepodge. So off the mark.

"The fire hose of unfettered sex on the Web has rendered Playboy’s airbrushed nudes helplessly anachronistic."

I'm guessing they pay by the word.

"I'm guessing they pay by the word."

Heaven forbid someone should say something in an interesting fucking way.

I don't see how you can sit there writing about such a frivolous topic as the top whatever-number people in sex when people are being murdered in Gaza.

You might want to fix the links -- they point to Page 2 of the 2 or 3 page article.

I thought Huckapoo only had five members. How come they get six spots on the list?

This Hef-centric list has the quaint odor of a LeRoy Neiman canvas sprinkled with English Leather. (What, no Janet Pilgrim? And where's the Femlin?) Not only no Neeeegrows, but only four homosekshoooolz: two died of AIDS, one died in the closet after playing a principle role in government gay witch hunts, and the last was famous for the topless swimsuit for women, worn only in the pages of Playboy and other rare public venues where white girl tittiez flopped free in 1964. (Maybe this list is saying most gays and blacks have been too busy making hot monkey love to come up for air, while straight heteros would rather watch and comment?)

Off the top of my head I would have added Edward Bernays, modern advertising godfather who used Uncle Sigmund Freud's theories to press psychosexual buttons, getting the unwashed masses to buy what they desire and not what they need. Due to Bernays, images of attractive, often seminaked young males and females seduce us in print and video, serving as proxies for the crappy products we go into debt to possess. FDR was an early fan, as was Goebbels.

Not for nothing, but directly before clicking to this most entertaining blog entry, I stumbled totally at random upon this awkward vintage video clip. Much as my skepticism fights it, fate keeps rubbing my nose in psychic doody.

Jesse: You're forgetting Shemp.

Sex is nothing less important than the very survival of the species. Some believe we come from God, others acknowledge we come from sex.

Sex is said to be the underlying essence of philosopy, writing and the arts. Kill desire and you kill the very will to live. Sexual repression breeds violence and death.

Names up on that list of the last 55 years (the number of years Playboy Magazine has existed) are touted as the most important to sex. Think of the list as say, the Vietnam War Memorial. You don't see the North Vietnamese listed there.

Hugh Hefner never took a bullet for fighting the good fight for sex, as Larry Flynt took a bullet for sex and was imprisoned and had to battle the self-proclaimed moral majority all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Hugh Hefner did, I suppose, nearly martyr himself for sex when he had a heart attack over that psycho Paul Snyder that killed precious Playmate Dorothy Stratton.

Joe Francis was persecuted as well for his contributions to sex. Geez, what they put Jim South through, over Traci Lords, was a travesty. Where is Jim South's much deserved recognition? Or Marjorie Heins? The list is so important and just so incomplete and yet people who are the very equivalent to the AIDS virus, made the list.

I would love to see this list compiled in many different quarters by people who made such a fight for sex and surely we would see names that are giants to the very continuation of humanity, although many of the anti-sex warriors on the list may have already killed them off.

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