Playboy fights declining revenue, irrelevance

When he is not busy "entertaining" his newest girlfriends -- 19-year-old twins, I believe -- Playboy Enterprises Inc. (PLA) founder Hugh Hefner must be lamenting the state of the company he founded more than five decades ago.

Hef has done a lot in his 83 years, including making huge contributions to First Amendment rights. He paid the legal bills of his friend, comedian Lenny Bruce, whose act was so shocking in the 1950s and 1960s that he was arrested for obscenity. Without Bruce, there would be no Howard Stern or countless other comedians.

At the time, Playboy was at the apex of the cultural zeitgeist. For generations of young men, Playboy was the symbol of everything cool and desirable.