Hugh Hefner's thumbing a ride on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, and the guy in the pajamas can't seem to buy a break. First a judge orders Hugh Hefner to give a deposition in the Carrie Leigh lawsuit against Playboy. Next Chicago's City Council nixes an idea to name a street after Hefner. No sooner did the City council's Transportation Committee vote to name a street after the publishing magnate, they unnamed a street corner on the Magnificent Mile that was designated in Hefner's honor.
Moments after the first vote, two critics of Hefner in the audience were allowed to address the committee and vent their outrage over the notion of honoring someone whose work they contended demeaned and hurt women.That prompted the second vote, and Hugh Hefner Way disappeared faster than a stack of Playboys at a fraternity house.
The flip-flop enraged Ald. Burton Natarus (42nd), the council's foremost proponent of honorary names and Hefner Way's sponsor. After two African-American aldermen spoke against his proposal, an angry Natarus said he did not try to block "people on the South Side" when they sought to name streets after Black Muslim figures.
Natarus, who is Jewish, fumed that members of that sect "called my religion dirty and unclean." Despite his setback on Monday, Natarus planned an end run that he hoped would allow ceremonies to proceed on Tuesday--with Hef himself in attendance--naming the northwest corner of Walton Street and Michigan Avenue after the controversial Playboy founder.
Natarus announced that Ald. Edward Burke (14th), chairman of the council's Finance Committee, had agreed to reconsider the honorary street designation at a meeting on Tuesday morning. Michelle Dempsey, a lawyer and women's rights advocate who spoke against the honorary designation at the Transportation Committee meeting, asserted that the pictures depicted in Playboy lead to degradation of women and violence against them.
The Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of the press, "but that doesn't mean we should stand up and honor what (Hefner) does," she said. Christie Hefner, Hefner's daughter and the current chairman of Playboy Enterprises, countered that the magazine "has promoted human rights, which include women's rights. Sexiness and equal treatment of women are not at odds with each other, certainly not with the sophistication and good taste with which Playboy photos are produced."
Hefner said that Natarus had called her to express "his surprise, and I think frankly, embarrassment. "This does have the potential of having Chicago look stunningly provincial," she said, adding that her father "has been honored by everything from the London Times to the Editor and Publisher Hall of Fame."
The preliminary decision not to honor Hefner drew a big thumbs up from Norma Aranda, 73, who was waiting for a bus on the would-be "honorary" corner.
"I wasn't too much about those bunnies, the drinking and all the stuff that went on with them," declared Aranda, who said she lived in the same building as a Playboy waitress decades ago. Bunnies "had a hard life. It wasn't easy like everybody thinks, like a fantasyland."
