In Case You Were Planning to Watch ‘The Playboy Club’... - The Daily Beast

Nora Ephron, who wrote When Harry Met Sally, takes aim at the original Playboy prince:

I have for many years been puzzled by the persistence of Hugh Hefner. Why is he still here? Why does anyone write about him? Why does anyone quote his remarks about his own cultural relevance as if they are anything but wishful thinking?

Everything Hugh Hefner is responsible for—the magazine, the clubs, the philosophy, the T-shirts, the keys, the bumper stickers, the brand—has been deposited in the junk shop of 20th-century life, where it belonged. The stock tanked. The magazine’s circulation fell. The clubs were closed, one by one.

But Hefner himself, now 85, is a whack-a-mole, popping up from his life on the D list to give interviews about his pajamas and his little blue pills and his cadre of surgically enhanced women. Why does anyone read about him? Why do I? I can’t explain it.

Hit the link for more of the same, it’s funny stuff. There’s also the dawning realisation that, thanks to the success of Mad Men, we’re going to be deluged with TV shows set in the 1960s that copy the style but have none of the substance.