06.26.08 5:00 AM CDT
• Books
• Jamie Malanowski
Conservative commentator George F. Will has just come out with a new collection of his newspaper columns called One Man’s America, which includes a piece he published in 2003 called "Hugh Hefner: Tuning Fork of America’s Fantasies." The piece rather neatly summarizes Playboy’s growth and acceptance over the years.
"In a real sense,’’ Will quotes Hef saying, "we live in a Playboy world." And when Will asks Hef how it feels "to have won," Hef, Will says, "pauses, looks down and almost whispers, `Wonderful.’’’
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Comments on this entry:
If we've "won", how come the number of retail outlets that sell Playboy has fallen so dramatically from the late 1960s and early 1970s?
I think Wil has a good question there.
And furthermore, why does my favorite magazine sell less than half the amount of advertising pages then it did in the 1970s and 1980s? Last time I checked an Audit Bureau of Circulation Statement (Dec. 31, 2007, to be specific), Playboy (not Maxim, Men’s Health, GQ, Esquire or Details) delivered the largest paid circulation of any men's lifestyle magazine in the world. And, according to Mediamark Research, which measures the primary and pass-along readership of virtually every major consumer magazine, Playboy stills delivers one of the largest audiences of well-educated and affluent young men. So then, if we live in a Playboy world, why are United States advertisers so meek about using the biggest—and by far, the best—men’s lifestyle magazine being published today?