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He groomed me and twisted my mind into thinking his way was normal,” she said of Hef, who died of sepsis in 2017. “He introduced me to drugs. I’d never had a drink or a drug before going up to the Playboy Mansion. And my first night there I was handed champagne and the drugs came later, and I was underage.”

Hugh Hefner will be laid to rest next to Marilyn Monroe, one of Hollywood's most famous and scandalous actresses — and the first woman to ever grace the cover of Playboy. Hefner purchased a crypt next to Monroe's in 1992 for $75,000, according to the Daily News. The crypt is located in Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California. Hefner attributed much of Playboy's success to Monroe's inclusion in the magazine's first issue and as a result, the two developed a close relationship. Hefner once remarked that he found the idea of his being buried next to Monroe, "rather...

For the 2020 election, Democrats are proposing policies of sweep and ambition not seen since the New Deal or the Great Society. Ideas that would have seemed radical even five years ago — publicly funded college, a Green New Deal, Medicare for All — are now at the top of many candidates’ platforms. Most intriguing: As once-fringe ideas enter the mainstream debate, they are proving popular. “Medicare for All is supported by at least 55 percent of the public,” says Sean McElwee, a co-founder of the progressive think tank Data for Progress. “So why is that treated as an extreme...

This month’s 50th anniversary of Stonewall, the Greenwich Village uprising that launched the modern LGBT movement, was always going to be complicated. What may seem like a straightforward chance to celebrate progress actually masks a fault line that has divided our movement since its start: whether our goal is equality or liberation, a fight for the right to be treated like everyone else or the freedom to be authentically ourselves. Do we seek belonging in the world as it is (including the military, marriage and parenting) or the chance to transform the world, by throwing off repressive norms, into a...

In media interviews and on his social media pages, Wolf said he was a "former FBI agent" and "Iraq Veteran" who had also worked overseas as a "presidential envoy" with the U.S. State Department. He also claimed to be a "Professor of Human Rights" at Roosevelt University. I'm a cannabis supporter, and it was great seeing a former law enforcement guy embrace it so openly. I especially liked that Wolf spoke of the need not just to legalize it but to destigmatize it. I felt like he was someone that could represent my interests in the nation's capital as soon...

Comparing President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler, as many liberals have done, was so common early this year that it's argubably become quite passé. Yeah, that Trump-Hitler comparison is so early 2017. The new wacky comparison of choice in the latter part of 2017 now seems to be comparing Trump to the late Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner. This is what James Wolcott, who a month ago threatened a deranged "reckoning" upon Trump supporters, has done in the December issue of Vanity Fair.  Of course, he couldn't quite let go of the favored liberal comparison of Trump to Hitler so we...

If Hugh Hefner was the poster boy of the sexual revolution, Alfred Kinsey was the father of the revolution. But that is not the only thing that joins these men together. Both of them were overt rebels against “puritanical” Christianity, devoting their lives to “liberate” humanity from what they perceived to be the bondage of a sterile, restrictive morality.Kinsey was born in 1894 and died in 1956. His claim to fame was his 1948 volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, followed by his 1953 volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. (Is it a coincidence that it was in...

If Hugh Hefner was the poster boy of the sexual revolution, Alfred Kinsey was the father of the revolution. But that is not the only thing that joins these men together. Both of them were overt rebels against “puritanical” Christianity, devoting their lives to “liberate” humanity from what they perceived to be the bondage of a sterile, restrictive morality.Kinsey was born in 1894 and died in 1956. His claim to fame was his 1948 volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, followed by his 1953 volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. (Is it a coincidence that it was in...

Sometimes it’s appropriate to speak ill of the dead. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner died Wednesday, aged 91. But his work of mainstreaming porn will likely live on—and continue to hurt men and women—for many years to come. Playboy helped usher in an era of porn addiction, decreased happiness, and strained relationships between men and women. Porn did of course exist before Hefner, and the internet—a technological innovation Hefner had nothing to do with—greatly accelerated the use of porn. But what Hefner did was to bring porn out of the shadows, to make it something that could be discussed openly and...

Hugh Hefner dies at 91 and women in Saudi Arabia get royal permission to drive a car. These two markers separated by continents and cultures, one in the West and the other in the East, dramatically reflect the changing ways men and women relate to each other. Hugh Hefner was largely responsible for a sexual revolution that hurt and helped both men and women in the never-ending war between the sexes. It's true that neither side will win this war because there's too much fraternizing with the enemy. It's more like the continuous push and pull of ying and yang....

A timely and stunning statistic befitting the recent death of America’s patriarch of pornography: a shocking 110 million Americans—over one-third of our population—are saddled with a sexually transmitted disease. According to The New York Times, "The incidence of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis is increasing, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 110 million Americans now are infected with a sexually transmitted disease. ..." Additionally, more than one out of every six people aged 14 to 49 has genital herpes. (Thus the rise of all of the Valtrex commercials on TV.) Among many...

"Sex for me is ... perhaps the single greatest humanizing force on this earth," Hugh Hefner said during a 1974 interview with CBS, sitting alongside Protestant theologian Harvey Cox. "It would be a rather sad planet if there weren't two sexes. And I think that we've managed to use and abuse and misunderstand our sexuality." "Sex is cheap," sociologist Mark Regnerus at the University of Texas at Austin, explains in his book, "Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage and Monogamy. "It is more widely available, at lower cost to all than ever before in human history. ... Cheap sex...

Hugh Hefner grieved in green silk. One of his most promising Playboy Playmates, 20-year-old Dorothy Stratten, had been murdered, and Hefner was giving Village Voice writer Teresa Carpenter a glimpse at what he had otherwise kept private. After Stratten was shot in the face by her estranged husband on Aug. 14, 1980, Hefner issued an emotionless news release and went into a media-free seclusion. In his trademark silk pajamas, Hefner looked somber. Carpenter described the sight as, “The incongruous spectacle of a sybarite in mourning.” ... “Death of a Playmate,” which would win a Pulitzer Prize, she also addressed Stratten’s...

"THERE IS NO PORNOGRAPHY IN GERMANY....THERE IS ART....EVERY LAST HAIR, EVERY LAST DETAIL...." Journalist Howard K. Smith-"Last Train From Berlin" Hugh Hefner started "Playboy" at a time when there were strict "obscenity laws" in the United States. Total nudity was banned in movies, magazines and other media of the time etc. etc. Violations of the law could lead to fines and or jail time. His nude photos of Marilyn Monroe in the first issue were rather tame shots that focused on the side of her body. It would take more than a decade for laws to change with Hefner himself...

Playboy founder Hugh M. Hefner, the pipe-smoking hedonist who revved up the sexual revolution in the 1950s and built a multimedia empire of clubs, mansions, movies and television, symbolized by bow-tied women in bunny costumes, has died at age 91. Hefner died of natural causes at his home surrounded by family tonight, Playboy said in a statement.

Keith Hefner, Credited with Playboy 'Bunny Dip,' Died Friday Born in Chicago, Hugh Hefner's younger brother was a longtime executive with Playboy and played a role in creating the Playboy Club. Chicago, IL By Dennis Robaugh (Patch National Staff) - April 8, 2016 10:54 pm ET BEVERLY HILLS, CA -- Keith Hefner, an entertainer, Playboy executive and the younger brother of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, died at his Beverly Hills home Friday following a battle with cancer. He was 87. The younger Hefner was a fixture on the reality TV show about Hugh's life with his three girlfriends, The Girls...

The Playboy Mansion -- the backdrop of some of the wildest parties ever thrown in L.A. -- is for sale ... TMZ has learned. The 6 acre Holmby Hills estate, built in 1927, will be listed sometime within the next month. Our real estate sources say the owner -- Playboy Enterprises -- is looking to get somewhere north of $200 million. Real estate sources with knowledge of the area say the owners are dreaming when it comes to price. They say the reality is ... the house is a tear-down and the real value is the acreage and that a...

Founder and editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner, 89, who in his trademark silk pajamas has embodied the Playboy lifestyle, agreed last month with a suggestion by top editor Cory Jones to stop publishing images of naked women, the Times said. At a time when every teenage boy has an Internet connected phone and the web is rife with pornography, the magazine has opted to continue featuring women in provocative poses, just not completely nude, the Times said. "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free," Flanders was quoted as saying in the Times. "And so it's just passe...

Though long a symbol of responsible parenthood — model TV dad, doctor of education, proud supporter of Temple University — Bill Cosby etched his legacy in stone with a speech in 2004 that took black parents to task. It became famous as the “Pound Cake” speech for this passage: “Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged: ‘The cops shouldn’t have shot him.’ What the hell was he doing...

... In 2000, Hugh Hefner and the Playboy empire already seemed like a toothless relic. Yet as Madison writes in her new book, “Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny” (Dey Street), life behind the mansion walls was darker than she could have imagined.... Then Hef approached her, bent over and opening one hand to reveal a bunch of pills nestled in an old tissue. “Would you like a Quaalude?” he asked. Madison was mortified. “No thanks,” she said. “I don’t do drugs.” “Okay, that’s good,” Hef said. “Usually I don’t approve of...