By Selwyn Duke

His image was defined by silk pajamas and a smoking jacket — and the objectification of women. Hugh Hefner, the playboy who in 1953 founded Playboy magazine, died yesterday at age 91. He passed away at his home, the Playboy Mansion, reportedly of natural causes, Playboy Enterprises has announced.

The publisher is being remembered as a bold cultural revolutionary and savvy businessman, but the reaction to his death, as that to his life, tells us more about the masses and media than the man.

The reportage on his passing is rife with subtle fake news: Hefner is portrayed as helping unshackle us from “repressed,” conformist, priggish 1950s norms, with that decade’s characterization presented as assumed fact. Yet in a land of Lilliputians, a dwarf appears a giant; in a perverted time, proper morals appear prudishness.

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