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Wednesday, December 17. 2008

The Virgin Controversy

Here’s a bit of over-publicized nonsense.

Let me preference this by first saying this had orginally been a part of yesterday’s column, but it grew too long so I used the power of the “Cut and Paste” function to make it today’s rant.

I’ve been a fan of Playboy since 1968 when I surreptitiously spied my first issue with my brother Rick down in the basement in the old man’s work room. We would smoke pot down there too!
 But that’s a different tale for another day. Rick and I did many naughty things in our formative years down in the old man’s work room!

Eldridge Cleaver was the interview, but more importantly — Cynthia Myers was the Playmate of the Month! I’ve been hooked ever since.

So, it was with great glee that I read about the Mexican edition of Playboy publishing their December issue with a depiction of model Maria Florencia Onori as the Virgin Mary — scantily clad of course. Well, not really that scanty, but quite suggestive nonetheless!

The news organizations are all reporting it as the Virgin Mary nude, which is hardly the case. Check the photo, but the news organizations have to make it as titillating as possible to grope in the viewers. Sex sells, but they should be honest about it: she isn’t nude.

What was disappointing though wasn’t the errant reporting, but the reaction from the offices of Playboy Enterprises once the complaints and condemnation started surfacing: they apologized for offending anyone! The kicker is, the Mexican edition is published by a licensee and Playboy, headquartered in Chicago, really has no influence over the editorial content of the Mexican edition. Sure, they can end the license agreement, but other than that, PEI has no control over how or what the Mexican publisher, Raul Sayrols, does with that magazine.

Both PEI and Sayrols apologized, which is nonsense. Why should they be sorry? Not to mention, why should PEI accept any responsibility? If the Catholic Church is offended, so what? The Church is never going to accept and approve of Playboy anyway.

Worse yet, in the apology, both PEI and Sayrols claimed the photo was not meant to suggest the Virgin Mary, but a depiction of a “Renaissance” they see occurring in the world today. Which is bullshit on a couple levels: A) More people today claim to be religious than at any other time and B) the cover most definitely was designed to suggest the mother of Jesus. They should retract the statements just on those points alone.

The funniest reaction came from the local priest of FOX News, Father Jonathan Morris. he said of the cover photo, “Sensing that the media feeding frenzy wouldn’t bring in purely positive publicity and facing a possible loss of advertising revenue, the publisher released what they called an ‘apology” on Friday.”

Feeding frenzy? I watch the news, like all day, and the only news channel — the only news channel — to get in a frenzy over it was FOX. The others mentioned it in most of their broadcast programs, but as of Tuesday, the story has disappeared. Father Jonathan, nothing Playboy International does brings in purely positive publicity, not even their many philanthropic endeavors that include reaching out to the men and women who serve or have served our country.

In the comments that followed Father Jonathan’s remarks, someone took him to task for spending time writing about the cover photo when we have so much suffering in the world. The good cleric wrote. “... if I were in Darfor today I wouldn’t be writing about a Mexican edition of Playboy, you can bet on that. But I’m not. I would like to be, for sure. And not only in Darfor. The world is full of suffering people. What, though, is the cause of most of this pain? It is selfishness, on a macro and micro scale. Magazine executives who are willing to disrespect the mother of Jesus by portraying her in the nude, are selfish. And with today’s media, their selfishness becomes culture …. It is for Darfor and beyond that I speak out against selfishness in all kinds.”

Aren’t you being disingenuous Father Jonathan? Whose stopping you from going to Darfor? And what does it matter whether you’re in Darfor or not? You can’t write about it because you’re not there? Bullshit! You don’t speak for Darfor or any of the other people suffering in the world! You speak only for the headlines that will get enough reader response to justify FOX giving you a paycheck and the suffering in Darfor isn’t sexy — the cover of the Mexican edition of Playboy is the titillation you’re after.

Even more egregious, in another’s comments to Father Jonathan’s blog, after quoting a few statistics about the number of Christians — and Catholics, being sure to separate the two — in Mexico, one writer suggested “we need to .k.i.l.l.” not only the people who bought the magazine (about 80,000 total), but the 5% of the Mexican population that don’t consider themselves Christian or Catholic.

In his reply to that, Father Jonathan questioned the writer’s references about the statistics, but agreed with the writer’s premise without any admonition for suggesting we kill 5.4 million people because they don’t believe Jesus Christ is the way.
 According to the Mexican census, as of 2007 Mexico has a population of 108,700,891.
 Makes you wonder: how many of them are actually here in the United States?

Real Christian values there Father Jonathan. And stop lying about the cover; the model is not nude. It’s a small lie to be sure, but you use it to sell your column and your employer’s brand and that’s really bullshit!

I love Playboy and the Playmates. When I was hospitalized over the holidays one year, Playboy was one of only two organizations that thought enough of my fellow patients and I to send people to visit in the hospitals and they continue that tradition today — quietly, without fanfare. They don’t do it for “purely positive publicity,” they do it because the company and the models — all volunteers — appreciate the sacrifice service people make to defend their security and right to publish or appear in a magazine (and web site) like Playboy.
 The other organization: The Miss America Pageant.

•••• •••• •••• ••••
On a happier note: one of my favorite Playboy models, Roxanne Dawn, said she has big news coming! She hasn’t given us the great details, but we do know it isn’t Roxanne as a Playmate of the Month. Too bad. But, her news is really big and when it’s official I’ll announce it here!

For now, I’ll just post a photo!

Posted by Tim Forkes in Media Madness at 01:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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