Prior to the first issue of “Playboy,” which reached newsstands in December 1953, men’s magazines, if they were anything other than about sports, automobile mechanics or woodworking, were primarily on the trashy side. 

Let’s start with “Police Gazette” and count them off from there.

Most, printed on newsprint with poor art, graphics and composition, featured mindless articles thats purpose was a shallow attempt to stimulate libido, and with photos of girls standing on their tip-toes obviously with poking-chests the product of Frederick’s of Hollywood bullet bras.

Esquire attempted to be the men’s magazine bible, but it was so stodgy that it missed the mark.

So Mr. Hefner took it upon himself to design and produce a graphically artistic men’s magazine, and print it on slick paper, slick paper just like “Town and Country,” “Vogue,” and “Vanity Fair” were.

He found known experts to write about jazz and theater and cars and cooking and manners and how to dress.  He added photographs of young women who could have easily lived next door to Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. Maybe next door to me, too.

There were short stories by the same writers who were frequently published in the “New Yorker” and “Harpers.” 

There were business essays by one of the world’s most-wealthy, J. Paul Getty.

Mr. Hefner made sure men discovered jazz critic Leonard Feather, humorist Shel Silverstein and cartoonist Gahan Wilson. We found out for ourselves that art could be something more relevant for us than the Mona Lisa because of the excitingly colorful paintings of artist Leroy Neiman.

Somewhere in the ‘60s, Mr. Hefner researched and wrote “The Playboy Philosophy.” It discussed and drew supported conclusions on sex, religion and politics.  It caused readers to think, evaluate and debate.  Many, for the first time, determined precisely how they felt about some matters of life.  Some agreed with Mr. Hefner; others didn't.  Nevertheless "Playboy" was the genesis for a long overdue debate.

Dr. Steven Watts is the chairman of the history department at the University of Missouri in Columbia.  If my math is correct, he and “Playboy” were both born circa 1953.

Professor Watts wrote Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream.  Rather than talk about and discuss what Mr. Hefner brought to readers like me, readers who were at least teenagers in 1953, the story Professor Watts preferred to weave was about the shallow romantic life that Mr. Hefner has led for more than fifty years. 

I think Professor Watts’ book is a disservice to Mr. Hefner, and I’m inclined to think it is because he was never a boy much less a man before Mr. Hefner took it upon himself to teach males how to be cultured.

While abbreviated and perhaps, therefore, not precisely accurate:  Jews and Christians believe in and worship the same God.  A messiah has not delivered the message to Jews that there will be life after death for them in heaven.  By contrast, the Christians' messiah, Jesus Christ, has delivered that message and its promise.

So Jews feel that their afterlife, until the heaven matter is reconciled for them, is comprised of their contributions on earth and how they are each personally remembered by those who live and those who come after them. 

One way Jews meet their remembrance requirements is through charitable contributions, many of enormous sizes.  Drive by a number of local hospitals and there will be buildings named after the Jewish family whose financial support caused each particular building to be built. 

Watch a PBS documentary and find at the end that it was financed by at least one Jewish foundation. 

Look at Jewish foundations supporting enormous number of educational and research benefactors. 

Notice how many Jews in your community spend inordinate amounts of their personal time doing charity work.

You've no doubt read about Bernard Madoff, the Jewish money manager who has been charged with bilking billions of dollars from his clients through a Ponzi scheme.

If you have seen the list of his clients, you'll have noticed that he managed huge amounts of assets for many Jewish charitable foundations.  Another big portion are Jewish individuals' personal accounts.  The government's claim is that most if not all of those assets are now lost. 

So those assets --- probably several billions in value -- won't be able to be used for their owners' purposes:  their contributions on earth and how each will be personally remembered after death.  Even worse, perhaps, the intended recipients of those financial benefits have been robbed of them, short-falling education, cultural events, medical research and the like.

What is commonly called the Holocaust is what Hitler called Die Endlosung.  It referenced "the final solution of  the Jewish question."  And it was to be accomplished by the systematic genocide of an entire people and, congruently, to prevent many from making their earthly contributions.  So the solution?  No more Jews.

If, in fact, Mr. Madoff contrived and headed the Ponzi scheme as many feel he did, isn't it interesting that he, a Jew, has prevented many Jews from being able to leave their sizable mark behind?  In a way, isn't that yet another holocaust, but this time a Jew against his own people?

Copyright 2009 - William S. Cherry

BILL CHERRY, REALTORS

DALLAS - HIGHLAND PARK

214 503-8563

Of course the stock market fell 400 points.  Banking Principles are not at all difficult.  The banking lobby MUST be what is causing congress to act so irrationally.  It simply can't be that those we elected are really that dumb....if they are, they need to resign.