By Colby Itkowitz
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
The Washington Post
(This post has been updated.)
If you happen to find yourself flipping through the April issue of Playboy, you’ll land on a wide-ranging interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney.
In excerpts published online Tuesday, the greatest takeaway is that Cheney is not fond of President Obama. At all.
(There are 10 hours of tape, or about 80,000 words, from the Cheney interview that reporter James Rosen said could someday exist in book form.)
Cheney’s choice of outlet to vent his frustrations has angered the D.C.-based National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a nonprofit that advocates against pornography and commercialization of sex. (The group also called for a boycott of the “Fifty Shades of Grey” movie.)
“Is Dick Cheney trying not to be heard?” Hawkins said. “What woman would find his interview in a magazine that profits from the sexual exploitation of women? Cheney’s action says to women, ‘I’m not talking to you and you’re no more than an object to be gawked at’.”
Of course we’re reminded that Jimmy Carter, a self-described born-again Christian, gave an interview to Playboy in 1976 when he was running for president. There, he famously said, that he had “looked on a lot of women with lust” and had “committed adultery in my heart many times.”
Other noteworthy people who gave Playboy interviews? Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Ayn Rand.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation must have forgotten that when it promoted several Martin Luther King quotes on its Facebook page on MLK Day this year.
UPDATE: Hawkins got back to us on this point. She said the group feels the same way about any person who gave an interview to Playboy.
“We are not anti-Cheney; we’re anti-exploitation,” she said in an e-mail to the Loop. “Whatever political, artistic, or educational message one desires to communicate, it will have more impact and reach a larger audience if it is communicated in a context that is not sexually exploitative.”
Playboy denied request for comment.
