Hef needs a successor

[Brian Sorgatz]

Peggy Wilkins wrote:

>There seems
>to be an obvious danger of having the corporate machine swallow up his
>creation and morph it into something else entirely -- what was a labor
>of one man's love could become little more than an automated money
>making machine.  This would seem to drain the life out of it; and this
>would not be faithful to the ideas which brought PLAYBOY to life.

For precisely this reason, I suspect that any PLAYBOY monarch would be
better than no PLAYBOY monarch at all. A human face is required to
keep the organization from losing its soul.

>I think that Brian is
>talking mostly about Hef's public image here, but to me this is only
>half of the story.  Hef has a unique relationship to PLAYBOY: he is
>its creator; it is the fruit of his creative labor.  Can someone from
>the outside, who is not its creator, understand what PLAYBOY is and be
>faithful to that idea?  What does this even mean?  And is this even
>desirable?

Good point. Maybe we can resolve this dilemma the way the British have
done: make the monarch a purely symbolic figurehead rather than a real
authority figure. If it seems bizarre to designate someone as the
official enjoyer of life in the Mansion without assigning him the
responsibilities of a head honcho, perhaps it's because we Americans
still suffer from the puritan work ethic. Just a thought.

Brian Sorgatz