According to filmmaker Bret Ratner, whose works include the Rush Hour films and the dreadful X-Men III, the true bringer of the heavenly MAGA is not President Trump, but rather Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who passed away just last week.
Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, Ratner gladly called Hefner his “friend” who wanted to make the country a better place, one “less intolerant and repressive” by turning women into his play objects.
Hef was my friend. He was the coolest. And the hippest. And at the same time, the squarest. While he transformed from an Illinois prude to the ultimate urban sophisticate, he never lost the Midwest values on which he was raised. His word was bankable. His heart was a well of emotion, open for all to see. He was the least prejudiced man I ever knew. He had deep pockets and long arms.
Ratner admits that his admiration of Hugh Hefner goes all the way back to when he was kid, the “embodiment of everything I wanted but seemed hopelessly out of reach: beautiful women, a kingly mansion, a bunny-emblazoned DC-9.”
Of those who would say Playboy embodied sin, Ratner appreciates how the magazine gave voices to Norman Mailer, John Cheever, and Allen Ginsberg.
Of course, once Ratner hit it big as a movie director, he admits to “spending time at the mansion,” and it’s not hard to deduce what that implies.
He was trying to make this country a better and fairer place.
The America into which Hugh Hefner was born was in many ways intolerant and repressive. He, among only a handful of men in our history, made it less so. It saddened him to see the pendulum swinging the other way. But Hef was the consummate optimist. I’m sure he passed on believing that the pendulum will swing back, that the progress he was committed to and facilitated will ultimately become a permanent part of our national character.