rapprochement?

[Dan Stiffler]

Note:  I am going to cut and paste a few topics that Donna raises in several
of her posts responding to my "Honor Thy Playmate."  If she thinks I have
been unfair or selective in this cutting and pasting, she can fill in the
gaps.  I just want this to be efficient for our purposes here.

On 5/18/03 2:40 AM, "Donna Tavoso" <dtavoso@earthlink.net> wrote:

> It's been very disappointing to me that with the exception of Peggy's
> comments on the April issue, I have yet to see one comment here on the
> content of the current magazine -- all everyone writes about is the
> poor undervalued Playmates; who I don't believe are undervalued at
> all.

> As for real content and the matter of paying for it -- I must read a
> different magazine than the rest of you.  I loved Sex in Two Cities
> and the Last Score in March, the China Snydrome actually helped me
> understand what the risk was at Indian Point and put it terms I could
> understand, and what about the exclusive book excerpt on Sinatra and
> JRK's secret parties that was in June.

Donna, I think one of the problems might be that I am contributing to two
lists, this one and the PML.  Since I don't see your posts on the PML, it is
likely that you are only subscribing to the playboy50 and, thus, getting
only part of the picture--at least with respect to what I am posting.  So it
may be that you did not read my comments about the Sinatra piece.  Peggy
even replied to that post, pointing out that the Sinatra "as told to writer"
was the same as for the Marilyn Monroe "tattle" piece in the late 70s, a
connection that I hadn't made and for which I was grateful because it
supported my overall impression of the Sinatra article.

> And I'll repeat what I said in an earlier post, I think they would
> listen if someone actually wrote something that was relevant about
> something other than the Playmates. I actually archive the posts and
> went back and read them.  (Peggy excluded and a few comments about
> their being less illustrations and more photographs but not in context
> to an actual piece) Do you like the way reviews are done now, what
> about the new layout of After Hours and Raw Data, I know I wrote this
> already, but since you keep saying you love the book, I want to point
> out again how rarly you actually mention the content of the magazine.

When you read the archived posts maybe you missed the one I wrote, dated
April 15th, entitled "re: changes."  In that post I made a few comments
about the April issue in response to Peggy's.  Among other things, I
applauded the layout for "The Last Score."  But beyond that I made 10
detailed suggestions for how the magazine might be improved.  Of those 10
suggestions, only one dealt directly with the playmates, while two others
referred to playmates incidentally.  It is true that I finish that post with
a call for playmate respect, but that is also the same sentence in which I
am asking for reader and staff respect.

> All I can say is the above paragraph completely discounts anything
> else you have said in your previous posts, you don't care who writes
> for the magazine or what's in it, in fact I don't think you read it --
> Playmates, playmates, playmates and just for the record I completely
> disagree -

My "above paragraph" was in response to David's about average people who
don't know playmate names.  I am not sure how you expect me to respond to
that without talking about playmates.  I was making a point--a positive
one--that PLAYBOY is not for the average reader and that the typical
long-term PLAYBOY reader does, in fact, know playmate names.

> Here's a challenge for you, Mr. Romantic -- see if you can respond to
> this without mentioning the Playmates.

Sorry, Donna, that's a challenge I can't accept, at least in this particular
post.  As those who have read my posts over the past 7+ years know, I can
write without mentioning a playmate.  I have done it many times.  But in
this case, you are using my focus on the playmates as the centerpiece of
your argument, and it would be rather hard for me (or at least a silly game)
to respond without using the word.

It is true that I have been recently riding the "devalued playmate"
hobbyhorse.  Taking the cover away from Christina was a real slap in the
face--to her and to most fans.  PLAYBOY has made mistakes in the past (I
once wrote a piece called the Five Great Mistakes), but this one really
floored me.  I am still mad about it, and it's been a month since I first
heard.  For me, it was a signifier that Mr. Kaminsky isn't going to move
slowly when it comes to PLAYBOY traditions--as he had suggested he would.
Again, I don't have anything personal against Mr. Kaminsky.  I am sure that
he wants his editorship of PLAYBOY to be a success; he certainly didn't
leave a top job to torpedo PLAYBOY.  But as a long-time reader, I believe
that I have a right--even an obligation--to express my outrage when an
outrage has been done to the PMOY.

Donna, you say that the playmates are not undervalued.  You make the case
that many of them are getting TV work; I agree and that is great for them.
There is, in fact, a long tradition of the centerfold as a stepping stone to
other work for playmates, if that is what they want.  But I am talking about
PLAYBOY itself and the evidence supports the devaluation theory.  In the
last ten years, the one thing (and a grand thing it is!) that counters that
theory is the introduction of The Playmate News (which may well have been
inspired by playmate Victoria Valentino's newsletter).  However, I have
already mentioned the paucity of playmate covers in recent years; now, if
the PMOY cannot have her own cover, why should I believe that I will ever
see a playmate on the cover again?  Furthermore, the magazine once ran a
Playmate Revisited series--enormously popular with regular readers--only to
drop it.  In the cyber club, playmates from all decades were once featured
in almost daily chats.  Now the chats are limited to only a few a month and
the "chatters" are usually the current playmate and cyber girls.  The
playmate portfolio refreshers used to be three a week; now they are running
about one a week.  I am just featuring the last decade here but, if you look
at the long history of PLAYBOY--as I am afraid I must do--it is hard to come
to any other conclusion than that the playmates are being devalued.  As I
said before, this started before the Kaminsky hire.

Donna, we can disagree about the playmate's current value at PLAYBOY.
Value, after all, is a subjective thing.  And I freely acknowledge that you
know more about the magazine business than do I (although I once was the
editor of small-run magazine for six years).  My role in life has been as a
teacher, a teacher of reading and writing.  I have been trained to examine a
text and discover the meaning therein, and I have been trained to share my
discovery, such as it is, with an audience, small as it might be.  My
greatest satisfaction in work comes from guiding students to make their own
discoveries and to have the confidence to articulate them.  But I have also
used that training and experience to inform the posts I have made here and
on the PML.

I am sorry that those posts have annoyed you.  I am passionate about this
subject and, I suppose, that passion can seem overboard to some.  However, I
don't think you have been entirely fair to me.  You question whether I read
the magazine.  I wonder just how deeply you have read into the playboy50
archives.  I ask that you take a look at some of my early contributions
there.  One of them, PLAYBOY Lifestyle, dated November 14th, is quite
lengthy and makes only one passing reference to a playmate.  Your earlier
post comparing PLAYBOY and Cosmo as lifestyle magazines was certainly
germane to our discussion here.  Can I interest you in my take on the
PLAYBOY lifestyle?

regards,

Dan Stiffler