Michelle Manhart, the Air Force drill sergeant who stripped for our February issue (and ultimately left the service as a result) is naked again, this time to support PETA’s anti-fur campaign. By our count, Michelle’s ad is at least the 11th instance of a Playboy-approved body in PETA print or billboard advertising. The others: Playmates Anna Nicole Smith, Pamela Anderson and Lauren Anderson, Baywatch stars Traci Bingham and Gena Lee Nolin, actress Carre Otis, Survivor star Jenna Morasca, swimsuit model Joanna Krupa, host-of-all-trades Bonnie-Jill Laflin, and Girl Next Door Holly Madison.

(No, that’s not a typo. Bonnie-Jill Laflin appeared nude in our NFL cheerleaders pictorial in 1999. She was also a Babe of the Month last year.)

Also worth noting, Playboy women take part in PETA’s live protests—Robin Arcuri tends to appear in public places with hardly a stitch on, her body adorned with lines and text indicating “BREAST”, “THIGH”, “FLANK”, etc. Robin was a mainstay of Voluptuous Vixens from 1999-2001, appearing on the cover once. If your memory needs refreshing, go here for tiny NSFW pictures.

Much as we applaud Michelle, Robin and the others, we do feel a slight compulsion to point out that the Playboy-PETA connection isn’t an official one. It’s merely a consequence of the historical fact that hot babes love animals. Playboy itself doesn’t dig seal-clubbing, but we appreciate the merits of a fine leather wingtip and marbled porterhouse.

Normally e-cards are something I, or any respectable man, should stay away from sending. Sure your mother or girlfriend may send you some campy animated missive with a dancing bear that says “I Wuv U” and while that is sweet, only they can get away with it.

Yesterday a friend of mine sent me this e-missive true or not it’s damn funny. After receiving this I tore through the Someecards.com site and spent the next hour sending these to pretty much everyone I know. Finally an e-card exists that is devoid of camp and suitable for a man to send.

In our May issue, Pari Esfanidari and Richard Buskin wrote an article called Sex in Iran, about the tension that exists in that country over matters of sex and morals, among other issues. Although the government is a conservative, hard-line Islamic regime, much of the population has a very western attitude towards sex. An uneasy détente exists, with the population outwardly acquiescing, but acting independently behind closed doors.

Over the last few days, however, the government has begun a crackdown, focusing on women and the requirement that they wear the hijab, or head scarf. Using her contacts in Iran, Pari Esfandiari updates us on the situation:

Continue reading »

Fans of author Chuck Palahniuk call themselves The Cult—an appropriate title for readers who connect with his unique mix of surreal horror, morbid humor and insights into the twisted modern psyche. Called the “postmillennial Jonathan Swift,” Palahniuk has written eight novels including Choke, Fight Club, Haunted and his latest, Rant (cover pictured at left), which we dare any filmmaker to try to slap on the big screen. So far only director David Fincher has been able to capture Palahniuk’s vision on celluloid with Fight Club. Rant continues the author’s impressive streak of subversive, brilliant, and completely unfilmable works with an often-hilarious story about the oral history of patient zero. Here is the official synopsis:
 
“Rant takes the form of a fictional oral history of Buster ‘Rant’ Casey, in which an assortment of friends, enemies, admirers, detractors and relations have their say about this evil character, who may or may not be the most efficient serial killer of our time.
 
Buster Casey was every small kid born in a small town, searching for real thrills in a world of video games and action/adventure movies. The high school rebel who always wins (and a childhood murderer?), Rant Casey escapes from his hometown of Middleton for the big city and becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing, where on designated nights the participants recognize each other by dressing their cars with tin-can tails, ‘Just Married’ toothpaste graffiti, and other refuse, then look for designated markings in order to stalk and crash into each other. It’s in this violent, late-night hunting game that Casey meets three friends. After his spectacular death, these friends gather the testimonies needed to build an oral history of his short life. Their collected anecdotes explore the charges that his saliva infected hundreds and caused a silent, urban plague of rabies.”

There are many facets to this whole immigration story, to be sure. But Don Larsen, a Utah County Republican delegate, has the answer to who's behind it all.

The Salt Lake Tribune has Larsen's perfectly sage explanation:

District 65 Chairman Don Larsen submitted a resolution to be discussed at Saturday's Utah County Republican Convention that opposes the devil's plan to destroy the country by stealth invasion of illegal immigrants.

In order for Satan to establish his 'New World Order' and destroy the freedom of all people as predicted in the Scriptures, he must first destroy the U.S.," Larsen's resolution states. "The mostly quiet and unspectacular invasion of illegal immigrants does not focus the attention of the nations the way open warfare does, but is all the more insidious for its stealth and innocuousness."

Larsen's resolution calls for the closing of national borders to illegal immigrants so as to "prevent the destruction of the U.S. by stealth invasion."

In honor of this weekend's NFL draft, which I recognize as the second biggest day on the NFL calendar, the fabulous folks at Krispy Kreme asked me if our editorial staff would like to sample their new football-shaped doughnuts. Obviously, I said yes.

When I either tailgate or entertain during the football season, cooking time is a factor as I am normally three or four beers deep by the time the grill is hot. The no-brainer now is to pick up a box of these doughnuts to have something to eat during prep time. But how do they taste? I don’t know—I myself didn’t get one. But judging by the way the box looked two minutes after delivery, I’d surmise that they were pretty good.

 

This week Toyota overtook GM in total sales for the quarter to outsell top dog GM, as presciently forecast by Arthur Kretchmer in his January 2006 investigation “Car Wars.” The Playboy alum and go-to car guy said it would happen by 2010. Well he was right, though we admit he could have been a tighter with the over/under.

“No conversation about the state of the car business goes on for long without focusing on Toyota and GM. Both companies want to discourage the idea that we are witnessing a clash of titans… . GM is number one by definition; it manufactures and sells more vehicles than anyone else. But total vehicle sales are a deceptive measure. By every criterion you’d apply to your own business, Toyota is number one.”

Some may argue that Toyota has out-sold GM for only this quarter, but as GM contracts and Toyota expands, the trend, as Kretchmer foresaw, will almost surely continue.

Pamela Anderson roots for the Pepperdine University baseball team. This may be one of those rare occasions where the players come out to watch the fans. Fan, anyway.

Sadanand Dhume is a scholar with the Asia Society and the author of a forthcoming book on the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia. Earlier this month he contributed a smart commentary to the Wall Street Journal about the tense situation in Jakarta, where authorities prosecuted Playboy Indonesia editor Erwin Arnada for indecency. Although the newly launched edition contains no nudity (in fact, it shows less skin than other publications available at newsstands), a small group of radical Islamists greeted the inaugural issue by stoning Playboy's offices. As the prosecutor read the charges against Arnada for the judge, the fundamentalists packing the courtroom chanted, "Hang him! Hang him!" According to Reuters, prosecutor Resni Muchtar told the court: “Photos, drawings and articles in Playboy Indonesia magazine were results of the defendant’s selection. They were unsuitable for civility and could arouse lust among readers so they violated feelings of decency.”

In his commentary, Dhume wrote, "The Playboy affair captures the world's most populous Muslim country's steady slide toward intolerance.... But the silence with which it has been greeted in the U.S.—no press releases from the Committee to Protect Journalists clog my inbox—also underscores the cringe of bien pensant America toward the export of popular culture, especially to Muslim lands... The problem is not Playboy's predilection for the scantily clad, but Islamists' tendency to fly into a rage over a flash of thigh or a bare midriff."

He continued, "The idea of a woman dressing or undressing as she pleases, or that you may personally disapprove of the Playboy bunny but respect your neighbor's right to fantasize about her, undermines the very core of Islamist totalitarianism. On a more flippant note, persuading young men to blow themselves up in order to claim 72 dark-eyed virgins in paradise is that much harder when the dark-eyed virgin next door can be found spread across a Centerfold...."

 

Continue reading »

Raise a glass to Boris Yeltsin, anti-communist and master of the frug, who
yesterday went to the big dacha in the sky.

When he climbed atop a tank in
Moscow in 1991, he nearly singlehandedly kept Russia from slipping back into
the darkness of totalitarianism. That's courage.

If you're like the rest of us, one of the first things that crossed your mind after the tragedy at Virginia Tech last week was:

"I wonder what Cho Seung-Hui's political views are?"

Yep, that was it. Uh-huh. Well, Rush Limbaugh has the answer, folks. Is there anything he doesn't know? 

There’s a tendency to automatically deify the recently passed, but it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that writer David Halberstam truly deserves the reverence. Halberstam was killed in a car accident Monday morning at the age of 73.

To many, the man represented the best of an increasingly rare breed of journalist—the kind who tempered unfailing determination with dignity and grace, and always felt a personal responsibility to provide honest information to the American public.

Neil Sheehan, Halberstam’s friend and colleague, recounted a time when a U.S. general admonished a group of journalists covering the Vietnam War as being “pitiful, lowly young reporters.”

In his typical style, Halberstam shot back: “General, you do not understand. We are not corporals. We do not work for you. We will call a commanding general any time at home we need to get our job done."

Halberstam (pictured here with George Plimpton) was also a long-time contributor to Playboy. He used our pages to address topics ranging from the repercussions of the Vietnam and Cold Wars to his love of both Frank Sinatra and Regis Philbin.

Additionally, Halberstam was a personal friend to many of our editors. Long-time Playboy editorial director Arthur Kretchmer was honored to be included in the Halberstam-compiled book, “The Best American Sports Writing of the Century.” His appearances in our office were always accompanied by a sense of excitement amongst the staff, with everyone on their best behavior for the man with the booming voice and spectacular reputation. It’s not every day you get to meet a legend, and now the world has one less opportunity.

Andrew Hill, Playboy’s 2006 jazz artist of the year, died last week at the age of 75. Not only was he a great jazz pianist—truly one of the giants—he was a sweet man and a remarkable raconteur. We were fortunate to dine with Andrew and his wife Joanne in Manhattan last February. I wished that night could have gone on forever. A lot of stories have circulated in jazz circles about Hill: that he was discovered by Earl Fatha Hines while playing the accordion on 47th Street in Chicago, that he studied composition under Paul Hindemith, that at the age of 12 he played with Charlie Parker in Detroit. But Andrew was a playful and cheerfully unreliable narrator. He grew up in the Ida B. Wells homes in Chicago, but he once told a reporter he had come from Port-au-Prince. The story endured, even after Andrew copped to making it up. I once asked him about the Hindemith anecdote, and he said it was the honest truth, and it had even been confirmed by the Chicago Tribune. The Fatha Hines story was another fabrication, according to Andrew. The real story was better. “I was Fatha Hines’ newspaper delivery boy,” he told me. “He had an apartment in the Grand Terrace Hotel on 35th Street. I delivered the Tribune. I was halfway knowledgeable of who he was, so I was banging the papers against his door, seven in the morning before school, when he was trying to sleep. After two or three weeks, he woke up and confronted me. He got nice for a minute and asked if I played. I told him yes. I went into his apartment and played a rendition of something I heard him play, almost note for note. We struck up a friendship after that.”

Hill lived an amazing life, and with his passing too much of history goes with him. Andrew’s latest album—Timelines—is a brilliant piece of music. If you aren’t familiar with his work, check this one out, or Point of Departure, his 1964 masterpiece. We know Andrew was working on new music, so we hope there will be more to come. Here's his last performance, about a month ago. But we will miss him.

There was a lot of unintentionally funny stuff happening at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday night—New York Governor Eliot Spitzer pushing his way through a crowd to get the autograph of Sanjaya Malakar, the lemur-eyed, Bobby Sherman-coiffed warbler recently bounced from American Idol, for example, or Sheryl Crow and Laurie David, wife of misanthropic comedian Larry David, literally putting the arm on, and offending, Karl Rove.

Entitled Hollywoodans versus the evil genius behind the most disastrous administration in our history? Why limit this conflict to a dinner? Call it the Arrogance Bowl, and hold it in the Superdome.

Alas, these events were funnier than the planned entertainment, a bland routine from aging impersonator Rich Little. A far cry from last year’s brilliant, edgy, nasty performance by Stephen Colbert. Here it is, for any who missed it.

I’ve been a loyal watcher of