Playboy's attack on Michelle Malkin

In the latest sign that Playboy "should just fold up and go away," said Bonnie Erbe in U.S. News & World Report, the magazine's website recently posted an article containing a list of conservative women "the author said men would like to, er, have sex with but hate at the same time." The "disgusting, sexist" article, which Playboy has taken down, insulted upstanding conservative women—although it's hard to get incensed about the inclusion of the "venomous" Michelle Malkin.

Imagine the outrage, said Chip Hanlon in The Huffington Post, if Playboy's article, "So Right It's Wrong," had involved wanting to "hate f***" not a conservative blogger like Michelle Malkin "but someone on the Left." Anyone genuinely "dedicated to the empowerment of women" should be offended by this lame, "rancid" drivel.

So much for Playboy's ludicrous claim that it empowers the women who appear nude in its pages, said Ed Morrissey in Michelle Malkin's website, Hot Air. "The fact that the magazine published this piece of effluvium" shows that people at Playboy, from Hugh Hefner on down, want women to be "silent sex objects, and when confronted with women whose opinions differ from theirs, want them humiliated."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

Maybe, but getting the offending article removed doesn't help anyone, said Susannah Breslin in Double X. It doesn't erase the "politically incorrect" thoughts of the writer, Guy Cimbalo, who was branded as a wannabe rapist by the chorus of bloggers who threatened Playboy with a boycott if they didn't remove the piece. This just shows that "free speech is so over" for anyone who's politics don't please the blogosphere.