Hugh Hefner RIP

Once upon a time he did a brave thing. He was Dean Martin as social revolutionary- and led a revolt of the provincial against the provincial. Had the Playboy thing been a flash in the pan we would be celebrating him as a prophet of changes to come- but sadly it caught on and made him money. It was always a little seedy- a country club vision of the high life- and it became seedier and quainter by the decade. He was a solipsist and shared his taste in "banal eldorados" with Nero and Saddam Hussein but unlike them, so far as we know, he never killed anyone. There is a certain grandeur in the way he continued to promote and live his philosophy through the years of wilt and droop.