The Hilarious Badness of Playboy

I don’t intend to defend the actions of District Attorney Droney; given the current state of jurisprudence, they were bound to be overturned; and I am also not sure that people who desire to see junk should be prevented from doing so by the state. Anyone with such desires, however, should realize what it is he has a taste for. What I find indefensible is the breezy attitude of the most famous university in America—a breeziness shared by Mr. Brudnoy.

Deep Throat, Mr. Brudnoy begins, is “the movie that made Linda Lovelace a household yuk-yuk word.” If reviews of her recent autobiography are to be believed, it made her a good deal more than that: a sexual chattel, passed around like a party favor at the bashes of fellow household words, including Chicago meat-packer Hugh Hefner. Granted, books like hers are self-serving and sensational; granted also, every profession harbors degenerates. Brudnoy could find dozens of similar accounts in the biographies of non-pornographers. Yet surely we judge differently a profession which attracts perverts because it attracts human beings, and one whose sole purpose is to batten off perversion? Caligula’s life (as Mr. Guccione discovered) was as steamy as Linda Lovelace’s. Name the porn star who lives like Marcus Aurelius.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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I don’t intend to defend the actions of District Attorney Droney; given the current state of jurisprudence, they were bound to be overturned; and I am also not sure that people who desire to see junk should be prevented from doing so by the state. Anyone with such desires, however, should realize what it is he has a taste for. What I find indefensible is the breezy attitude of the most famous university in America—a breeziness shared by Mr. Brudnoy.

Deep Throat, Mr. Brudnoy begins, is “the movie that made Linda Lovelace a household yuk-yuk word.” If reviews of her recent autobiography are to be believed, it made her a good deal more than that: a sexual chattel, passed around like a party favor at the bashes of fellow household words, including Chicago meat-packer Hugh Hefner. Granted, books like hers are self-serving and sensational; granted also, every profession harbors degenerates. Brudnoy could find dozens of similar accounts in the biographies of non-pornographers. Yet surely we judge differently a profession which attracts perverts because it attracts human beings, and one whose sole purpose is to batten off perversion? Caligula’s life (as Mr. Guccione discovered) was as steamy as Linda Lovelace’s. Name the porn star who lives like Marcus Aurelius.