Highlights: I have completely accepted the fact by now that the featured interview is invariably the highlight of each issue. If the interview is wanting, then the issue is sub-par. That's just physics, people. I don't make the rules. If you have a problem with that, take it up with Isaac Newton. So, with that out of the way, this month's interview is a humdinger: Madalyn Murray. She wasn't Madalyn Murray O'Hare yet, mind you. To be honest, I had no idea she was such a public figure in 1965. Growing up, I'd always assumed she was more a product of the 1970s. Full disclosure here: I've never much liked her. Part of that comes from growing up Catholic, and to say Murray and the Catholic Church didn't get along is the understatement of the century. But as I grew older, I realized I agreed with her on many issues and that she served a useful purpose in U.S. society. That didn't result in my liking her more than I had previously. Every time I heard her speak, she came across to me as a narcissistic asshole... and that was before I learned she was a holocaust denier. Her abduction and murder was absolutely bizarre and I'd never wish that on anybody, but I find it more than surreal that with all the death threats she received over the years her eventual murder had nothing whatsoever to do with her atheistic views.
This interview is anything but boring. In fact, it's exhausting. She fires off half a dozen answers to a question and skips on to a third topic before the interviewer has framed the second question. She's supremely self-confident, arrognat even, but knows how to tell a story. The interview is at times infuriating, harrowing and alarming--particularly when she describes police brutality that echoes modern incidents. The following doesn't get into that, but was a pretty controversial view at the time. It's less so now but there are plenty of folks who'd like to change that.Playboy: What is the proper remale role, in your opinion? Murray: Well, as a militant feminist, I believe in complete equality with men: intellectual, professional, economic, social and sexual: they're all equally essential, and they're all equally lacking in American society today. Playboy: According to many sociologists, American women have never enjoyed greater freedom and equality, sexually and otherwise, than they do today. Murray: Let's distinguish between freedom and equality. The modern American woman may be more liberated sexually than her mother was, but I don't think she enjoys a bit more sexual equality. The American male continues to use her sexually for one thing: a means to the end of his own ejaculation. It doesn't seem to occur to him that she might be a worth-while enin in herself, or to see to it that she has a proper sexual release. And, to him, sex appeal is directly proportional to the immensity of a woman's tits. I'm not saying all American men are this way, but nine out of ten are breast-fixated, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am cretins who just don't give a damn about anyone's gratification but their own. If you're talking about intellectual and social equality for women, we're not muchbetter off. We're just beginning to break the ice. America is still very much a male-dominated society. Most American men feel threatened sexually unless they're taller than the female, more intellectual, better educated, better paid and higher placed statusiwse in the business world. They got to be the authority, the final word. They say they're looking for a girl just like the girl who married dear old dad, but what they really want, and usually get, is an empty-headed little chick who's very young and very physical--and very submissive. Well, I just can't see either a man or a woman in a dependency position, because from that sort of relationship flows a feeling of superiority on one side and inferiority on the other, and that's a form of slow poison. As I see it, men wouldn't want somebody inferior to them unless they felt inadequate themselves. They're intimidated by a mature woman. Playboy: Like yourself? Murray: Yes, as a matter of fact. I think I actually frighten men. I think I scare the hell out of them time after time. It's going to take a pretty big man to tame this shrew. I need somebody who can at least stand up to me and slug it out, toe to toe. I don't mean a physical battle> I mean a man who would lay me, and when he was done, I'd say: "Oh, brother, I'd been laid."I once interviewed author Harlan Ellison and afterward described the experience as tossing out a question and then hanging on for dear life. Reading Murray's interview wasn't exactly the same, but it did give me some flashbacks. And having read the entire interview, I still don't like her very much although I must confess a degree of respect.
Though I may have pirated the super-heroes, I never went near their boy companions. If the theory behind Robin the Boy Wonder, Roy the Superboy, The Sandman's Sandy, The Shield's Rusty, The Human Torch's Toro, The Green Arrow's Speedy, and Captain America's Bucky was to give young readers a character with whom to identify, if failed dismally in my case. The super grownups were the ones I identified with. They were versions of me in the future. There was still time to prepare. But Robin the Boy Wonder was my own age. One need only look at him to see he could fight better, swing from a rope better, play ball better, eat better andlive better; for while I lived in the east Bronx, Robin lived in a mansion, and while I was trying, somehow, to please my mother and getting it all wrong, Robin was rescuing Batman and getting the gold medals. He didn't even have to live with his mother.I mean, when Feiffer writes about comics, you have to pay attention. He was probably the most widely read editorial cartoonist in the U.S. at one point, and won a Pulitzer in 1986. But ultimately, despite his obvious depth of knowledge, this piece is merely nostalgic rather than insightful. That's a pity, but maybe the world wasn't ready to think of comics as a legitimate art form in 1965. I've mentioned before how big a deal James Bond was in this era. The movies were a huge cultural event and Ian Fleming serialized new Bond novels in Playboy before they reached bookstore shelves. There is not a new James Bond story in this issue. Rather, we get the fiction parody Loxfinger by Sol Weinstein. I can't say I'm a fan. A quick check of The Google tells me that Weinstein wrote several parody novels featuring Israel Bond, secret agent for the fledgling state of Israel. The Google tells me these were well-received at the time. I dunno--to me it just comes off as ham-fisted and a bit cringe:
In that service he was known as Oy Oy Seven, a status which gave him license to kill. Not only was an Oy Oy holder licensed to kill, but he was also empowered to hold a memorial service over the victim. Bond thought of M, the head of the Secret Service, the only person to home he had ever given his total love and trust: M, who had bestowed the Oy Oy rank upon him. But now, Bond reflected as he gazed into the menacing O of the Olivetti, the sallow-complexioned, wiry Levantine type in the bellhop's uniform who held it had that license to kill. And he would use it. From a corner of a glazed eye, Bond caught the girl's face. No longe was it the sweetly obedient face of the lissome Priental Bond had picked up a few hours ago. Its lips were now curled into a contemptuous sneer. Of course! She was part of the cabal. He'd been had/ As if she'd overheard his rueful thought, she responded with an insolent, "How big swinger rike his rittle Oriental praymate now?" And she spat into his face.Maybe it'd read funnier had I grown up in the northeast and had more direct exposure and interaction with Jewish culture, but I doubt it. Austin Powers, it ain't. Heck, it's not even Spy Hard.
Chicken Ranch Central
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