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Hef takes stock of the Playboy legacy
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magazine and the company he has said he intends to pass on to sons Marston and Cooper. But Hefner, 84, is not your average
octogenarian taking stock of his life: He has always been keenly interested in his own historical significance. The collection of scrapbooks in which he meticulously documents his exis- tence numbers more than 2,000. More than anyone, then, he must know that his legacy extends well be- yond the continued publication of Playboy magazine or the prolifera- tion of the rabbit-head logo on T- shirts and watches and casinos. We are living in a Playboy world, and the irony is that the changes Hefner helped usher in have made it more difficult for Playboy to continue to prosper.
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ore than half a century later, we are far removed from the world in which Hefner first pitched a magazine promising “di- version from the anxieties of the atomic age.” He had little money to get his new venture going, only a modest bank loan and the invest- ments of friends and family who pro- vided cash in return for stock in what was then called HMH Publishing Co. It wasn’t much of a company. Just a young guy in his Chicago apartment with a typewriter, a cache of letter- head, and a sense that there was more to life than marriage, father- hood, and some corporate job to sup- port the wife and kids. For Hefner, like many others, the much-touted domestic bliss of the postwar years was illusory. He crafted a magazine he thought he might like
to live the good life? Americans were already pursuing it with abandon. In the latter half of the decade,
Playboy lost circulation to more graphic upstarts Penthouse and Hus- tler. Playboy Clubs, many in declining urban areas, lost money, as did other troubled undertakings. As the com- pany posted losses, its stock price slumped to a few dollars a share. Thus began a long process of corporate belt-tightening. But the company of- ten still failed to report a profit, even as it continued to publish a top- quality magazine. Several other factors contributed
to Playboy’s waning fortunes. In the 1980s, anti-pornography activists succeeded in curtailing the maga- zine’s distribution. And in the 1990s, younger readers were lured away by rival magazines such as Maxim — sexy, but without the taint of pornog- raphy.
Although Playboy was an early en-
trant into the dot-com field, both
Playboy.com and Playboy magazine have been undermined by the deluge of freely available adult content on the Web. And while Playboy’s nudity always kept it off-limits to some ad- vertisers, like all print media, it now struggles even more with declining ad revenue and circulation as advertis- ers and readers look to the Internet. Playboy is coveted today not for its flagship publication, but for the un- tapped potential of its brand — an ironic reversal from the dark days of the late 1970s, when, in a sign of just how far the brand had fallen, Play- boy’s name was removed from its U.S. hotels. The brand’s retro appeal and resurgent popularity among young people, including female viewers of the reality show “The Girls Next Door,” have boosted its status, and it
Why good fences make bad policy
by Peter Schrag E
Playboy’s early stock certificates sold well, in part due to their novelty factor. COURTESY OF ELIZABETH FRATERRIGO
to read, a diversion from adult re- sponsibilities with a well-heeled bachelor as its hero. He filled its pag- es with Playmates — the girl next door, who wanted to have sex! — along with irreverent humor, topical articles and features on expensive li- quor, sports cars, penthouse furnish- ings, attire: all the things money could buy in an abundant postwar so- ciety. By the end of the decade, Hef- ner’s guidebook to the good life reached more than a million readers each month. In 1960, springboarding off the im- mense popularity of the magazine, the first of dozens of Playboy Clubs opened. Millions bought membership in the nightclubs, where young wom- en outfitted in skimpy satin “bunny” costumes with rabbit ears and cotton- tails waited on customers. Executives soon set their sights on more distant horizons. By the early 1970s, in addi- tion to running nightclubs, resorts and casinos, Playboy produced films, published records and books, and owned a modeling agency, movie theaters, a limousine service and a line of Playboy products. The 1971 stock offering generated cash to fi- nance these many ventures. But the hope that everything the
rabbit touched would turn to gold was soon dashed. Playboy had cheered — indeed, had helped propel — the nation’s trans- forming social and sexual norms in the 1960s. By the 1970s, a thriving singles scene had replaced the famil- ial orientation of the ’50s. Sexual con- servatism had given way to sexual permissiveness. Consumption had become a national pastime. In 1972, Playboy’s circulation peaked at 7 mil- lion. In this new cultural climate, however, Playboy was no longer all that special. The changes that fueled its explosive growth now hastened its decline. Even as feminists lambasted the
objectification of women in Playboy’s clubs and in the magazine, the Play- mate appeared quaint, the bunny, passé, in comparison to raunchier stuff found on newsstands and in movie theaters. The image of the playboy in his penthouse, so hip in the 1960s, also seemed outdated. And who needed a magazine to learn how
remains iconic worldwide. In recent years, Playboy’s licensing division has fared well, putting the bunny brand on consumer products as well as the Palms Casino’s Playboy Club in Las Vegas.
move would “reinvigorate the com- pany and create a lasting legacy for the Playboy brand.” But whether or not his bid succeeds, he has already succeeded in transforming American culture. In the 1950s, the pages of Playboy amounted to a total package with a message: self-denial was old-fash- ioned. So were the era’s conservative sexual attitudes. It was okay to pur- sue pleasure. In fact, it was American. Above all, individuals did not have to follow the strictures of society — they could find fulfillment in a lifestyle of their own choosing. Though concerned primarily with freeing young men from the con- straints of marriage and fatherhood, Playboy’s promotion of lifestyle choice carried over to women. True, feminists would still have to fight for the gender equality that could give more substance to women’s choices. But the magazine said that women, too, could enjoy sex, and that a wom- an’s virginity wasn’t the measure of her worth — an important statement, given the era’s sexual double stan- dard. Sex in Playboy was tastefully pack-
N
aged, and discussed without all the guilt that had characterized 1950s sexual mores. But if Playboy opened a door to frank discussions about sex- uality, it also opened the floodgates for the increasingly crass sexual im- agery that followed. In Playboy’s wake, American culture became more sexualized and sex more commercial- ized, as a glimpse of almost any ad- vertisement or reality television show will testify. Playboy’s reach now extends far be-
yond Hefner’s initial promise “to give the American male a few extra laughs” in a magazine serving up “en- tertainment for men.” Regardless of its fate, we are still living in a Playboy world.
ow, Hefner wants to regain to- tal control of this empire. In a statement last week, he said the
ven before 2007, when the last attempt at comprehensive immigration reform was killed in the Senate, immigra- tion restrictionists made
“sealing” the U.S.-Mexican border a precondition for supporting legaliza- tion of the more than 11 million illegal immigrants already in the United States. For a lot of Americans, this idea has been orthodoxy ever since. Now, with immigration reform again on the table, President Obama has duly taken up the call for a stronger border. In his speech on immigration earlier this month, he lamented the “porous” and “broken” state of U.S. borders, and he described controlling them as an “obligation” and a “responsibility,” ar- guing that the nation has “more boots on the ground near the Southwest bor- der than at any time in our history.” More than 670 miles of border fenc- es, walls, bollards and spikes that Con- gress decreed in 2006 at an estimated cost of $4 billion (plus future mainte- nance) are almost completed. The Bor- der Patrol, which was increased from 9,000 agents in 2001 to 20,000 in 2009, costs an estimated $4 billion an- nually. Throw in the cost of occasional de- ployments of the National Guard, as Obama has ordered again; the cost of electronic sensors, surveillance air- craft, training of local police; the cost of detaining, incarcerating and deport- ing illegal immigrants; and the count- less other expenses associated with border security, and the bill runs us nearly $10 billion a year.
But will more boots really seal the border? Immigration reform has a long history of unintended consequences: More than two decades of increased enforcement since the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 has done little to reduce the number of illegal immigrants. In fact, its seems to have increased their num- bers. Meanwhile, the question of jobs, which are the true driver of legal and illegal immigration, has been largely neglected. Princeton University sociologist Douglas Massey pointed out nearly a decade ago that measures to secure the border seemed to produce almost the opposite of what was intended. By making the northward crossing more dangerous and expensive, Massey and co-authors Jorge Durand and Nolan J. Malone wrote in 2002, the border buildup discouraged seasonal laborers from going back to Mexico when they were not working.
With increasing border enforce- ment, workers who used to shuttle be- tween jobs in California or Texas and home in Zacatecas or Michoacán sim- ply began to stay put and sent for their families, becoming permanent, if sometimes reluctant, residents. Ac- cording to Massey, post-IRCA border enforcement may have increased the size of the permanent Mexican popula- tion in the United States by a factor of nearly four. More unintended consequences:
The anti-immigrant backlash that sparked Arizona’s string of anti-immi- gration legislation— the new law seek- ing to drive illegal immigrants out of the state most famously among them — was produced in large part by tighter border controls in Texas and Califor- nia. That enforcement squeezed the smuggling of immigrants and drugs into Arizona’s Sonoran Desert and mountains. As noted by the nonpartisan Public
Policy Institute of California among many others, the element missing from this picture is that immigration, both legal and illegal, is driven more by the economy than it is restrained by bor- der enforcement. That’s not all that different from the
immigration patterns of the past cen- tury and a half, when immigration lev- els were almost invariably trailing in- dicators of the U.S. economy and its sometimes severe worker shortages. One hundred fifty years ago, after the dislocations and slaughter of the Civil War, some states even sent agents to Europe to recruit workers. When times were good, we beckoned to immi- grants; when they were bad, we tried to expel them. “We wanted workers,” says Philip Martin, an immigration econo- mist in California, “but we got people.” Americans have historically been
ambivalent about new arrivals. Ever since colonial days, immigration and immigration restriction have been tightly wound around each other like a double helix. In the same polls in which Americans express support for Arizona’s immigration legislation, they also say that by paying fines and back taxes (which most already pay) im- migrants should have the right to be le- galized. Some places accept, even wel- come, illegal immigrants. Some try to expel them. My own state of California grants illegal immigrants relatively low in-state college tuition but denies them driver’s licenses. In the past three years, the U.S.
population of illegal immigrants has declined, perhaps by as much as 10 percent, from about 12 million to 11 million. Anti-immigration groups such as the Center for Immigration Studies credit tougher border and workplace enforcement for much of that decline. But some, if not most, has
forcement of labor laws on wages, hours and overtime, and of worker safety laws. That would sharply reduce employer incentives to hire and exploit illegal immigrants. In a small step in that direction this summer, Labor Sec- retary Hilda Solis moved to crack down on the employment of young children in agriculture. But that’s barely a start. For the long term, immigration scholars such as Robert Pastor of American University argue that in or- der to deter illegal immigration we should shift funding from ever-tighter border control to collaborative efforts to bolster Mexican infrastructure and economic development. He cites the economic aid the European Union pro- vided to Spain and Portugal when it ad- mitted those countries in 1986: This aid seems to have effectively reversed the flow of immigrants from those na- tions to the rest of Western Europe. The best way to pursue such a strat-
egy, Pastor argues, would be to create something he calls “the North Amer- ican Community.” This body, which would include Canada, the United States and Mexico, would manage a range of matters, from crime control, drugs and continental security to transportation, the environment and labor.
But for the millions who cross be-
tween the United States and Mexico ev- ery day to work, study and shop, and for those involved in thousands of joint commercial and cultural institutions, the border is already more a region than a line. Thus, in many ways what Pastor proposes via formal institutions already exists on the ground. “Our two largest trading partners are not England and China,” he point- ed out in 2007, “but Canada and Mexi- co. The two largest sources of energy imports are not Saudi Arabia and Ven-
More than two decades of increased border enforcement has done little to reduce the number of illegal immigrants. In fact, its seems to have increased their numbers.
almost certainly been driven by the re- cession, beginning in the construction industry and continuing in many other sectors that employ large numbers of immigrants. During those three years, more immigrants returned to Mexico than came north. None of this means giving up on bor- der control, especially if it’s focused on drugs and other criminal activities. But if the objective is to reduce the attrac- tion of U.S. jobs for undocumented workers — about a third to half of whom, in any case, have overstayed their visas, not crossed the border ille- gally — it requires different strategies. In the past year, the federal Immi-
gration and Customs Enforcement agency has conducted “silent raids” — auditing farms and businesses to check employee records and then, using the threat of large fines, forcing them to fire illegal immigrants. But given the dependence of tens of thousands of employers on such workers — about 60 percent of U.S. farm workers are be- lieved to be undocumented — it’s hard to imagine that quiet raids will be enough to drive out many of those 11 million illegal immigrants. Probably the most promising work- place strategy, which has hardly been tried, would be far more rigorous en-
ezuela, but Canada and Mexico. . . . There are roughly 500 million legal crossings of both borders each year, and the preferred tourist destination of Canadians, Mexicans and Americans is their neighbors in North America.” Given the world’s integrated econo-
my, and the rapidly changing nature of, and constraints on, the nation-state — think terrorism, or the flow of illegal drugs, or the regulation of multina- tional corporations, or the Internet, or pollution — no wall, moat or border pa- trol will be large or wide or deep enough to fully stop the flow of im- migrants. Trying to tightly seal any border will almost inevitably bring unintended consequences — in reluctant illegal residents, in increased offshoring of in- dustry and jobs, in cross-border smug- gling and crime or, as with Arizona’s new immigration law, in a whole new set of foreign policy problems. “Show me a 50-foot wall,” Homeland
Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said when she was governor of Ari- zona, “and I’ll show you a 51-foot lad- der.”
Peter Schrag is the author of “Not Fit for Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America.”
FRED GREAVES/REUTERS
A wall along the U.S.-Mexican border near Campo, Calif. With increasing border enforcement, workers who used to shuttle between jobs in California or Texas and home in Zacatecas or Michoacán began to settle permanently.
SUNDAY, JULY 18, 2010
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