The Playboy perpetrator revealed

The accusations that effectively ended Harvey Weinstein’s long career in Hollywood and, more importantly, helped launch the #MeToo movement hit in October 2017. It is notable that Hugh Hefner, the prophet and practitioner of hedonism as the founder of the Playboy media empire, died in September of the same year—just before the storm began to rage.

It is almost certain, however, that Hefner’s place in the relevant history will not be forgotten. A&E has been airing a documentary series on the lives of women adversely affected by their participation in the Playboy enterprise. Several episodes in, it seems clear that the legacy of life at the Playboy Mansion and in the old city clubs was personal devastation for many.

Hefner built Playboy’s empire in two ways. First, he promoted a philosophy of pleasure aimed directly at toppling Judeo-Christian attitudes toward sex and marriage. Second, he offered a lifestyle and various commercial products supporting that lifestyle. Although he was a pornographer by any description, his works in pornography were presented as more “tasteful” than what competitors delivered. There was a time when the articles published in Playboy, along with the centerfolds, had significant status in American society. Major thinkers wrote for the magazine. Jimmy Carter confessed his sin of lust in its pages for a serious profile. William F. Buckley wrote for Playboy for years before finally submitting his resignation in frustration that it appeared essentially no one was reading his work. He concluded that his attempt to influence the readership of the magazine for the good was an exercise in futility. Buckley realized that while the pay was sizeable and the potential audience was large, writing for Hefner’s publication just allowed pornography to hide beneath an illusionary veneer of arts and letters.

The A&E documentary is revealing. Hefner was both an evangelist for his Playboy philosophy of life (maximum pleasure, minimum guilt, and minimal commitment) and its foremost beneficiary. Almost as though he were a teenage boy equipped with a multimillion-dollar fortune and zero restraint, it appears he largely stayed inside the Playboy Mansion, wore pajamas all day and night; consumed endless Pepsis, red licorice, and M&M’s; played board games, cards, pinball; did drugs and facilitated their use; and cultivated a long series of women for participation in shocking sexual degradation. The extent of that degradation becomes clear in the course of watching the documentary and listening to the participants, mostly Hefner’s “girlfriends,” as he called them, and assorted enablers, describe what they endured as the price for staying with their rich and famous benefactor.

More than anything else, the documentary functions as a voice for the women who felt manipulated and controlled by the Playboy kingpin. Their stories include tales of compulsory plastic surgery, being trapped in “a cycle of gross things,” knowing that there was always a “mountain of revenge porn” hanging over their heads, being pitted against one another, and being plied with drugs. One of Hefner’s more recent “girlfriends” described him as being “uncancellable,” which was a result of his eventual victory over even the objections of feminists. They went from being his chief critics to being allies of a sort because of his stalwart support of abortion rights.

Maybe the most effective voice in the series is former Hefner girlfriend Sondra Theodore, who went from being a promising young woman who taught Bible study in the 1970s to part of Hefner’s revolving harem. She came to view Hefner as a kind of vampire who sucked the life out of young girls. Though he was always an exponent of what he proclaimed should be a “healthy sex life,” Theodore said there was nothing healthy about intimacy with Hefner. “He took it too far,” she said. Theodore felt like a ringmaster involved in a circus fueled by transgression and run for Hefner’s benefit. All the while, she labored under the belief that Hefner really loved her and was some kind of a romantic, but the illusion simply could not be maintained. Theodore said eventually no drug could take her far enough away.

The documentary includes Hefner's interviews with several major media figures. One asked him about his morality, with Hefner claiming to be “the most moral millionaire he knows.” Another asked him about Jesus Christ, and Hefner declared, “Our views would be very similar.” When asked to elaborate, he added, “He forgave the whores.”

As Sondra Theodore shared her story, she expressed her belief that Hefner somehow now knows she is telling the truth and doesn’t like it. She added that wherever he is, she “doesn’t think it’s a good place.” It’s clearly her belief that Hefner hasn’t escaped the reckoning due his victims through his death. As Christians know, death is no refuge from the righteous judgment of God.