Playboy does not publish fake letters like this one. You must be thinking of Penthouse.

Eedjit. You're thinking of Penthouse and Hustler. You spent all this time writing this but don't even have the right magazine. Perhaps you should fish your nuts out of your wife's purse and go buy one.

Does this violate the comment policy? Hmm... does this article violate the most basic principles of journalism? I.e. get your subject right? If you're going to make fun of a magazine, try reading it first? My grandmother knows more about Playboy than this guy.

I've been informed that Playboy does not run letters like this but Penthouse does.

My bad. Keep in mind this was satire not academic writing.

You guys seem to be not getting that this was a joke, a satire attempt.

Everyone seems to be so insulted by this piece, but I thought it was hilarious!! Like, every guy's fantasy or something!! Personally, I liked the fact that the guy was left handcuffed and they never came back -- he certainly didn't seem to mind it!!
Of course, you will probably get a pile of comments from folks raging about women being demeaned in the piece, not to mention its unpolitically correctness, but I thought it was very funny, and I am a woman, so not all of us were incensed and/or insulted by it!!

Thank you, Klondike.

I figured if I got any criticism for this piece it would be from women objecting to these types of magazines.
I think I've demonstrated just how long since I have "read" one by my mistake about which magazine ran those letters.


It was intentional on my part to have the women get revenge on the guy as a way for women to get back at guys who sit around telling these stories.

I can't believe the first few comments. People are so...pick a word...dense. I am the esteemed editor who published the piece. Sorry, all you Penthouse & Playboy fans, I get my kicks elsewhere--not by looking at pictures of naked women or reading fake sex letters. Actually, it would have been funnier if he pretended it was for Readers Digest...

Scott wrote one of the funniest satires I've seen on BC. Relax & enjoy it--and get a life.

In Jameson Veritas

Mark--

Where you get your "kicks" is irrelevant, but you're not good at your job. Which is caring about the accuracy of what you publish.

Even if it's just online, and on a subject that conflicts with your particular values. People have pointed out that this satire has taken aim at the wrong target, and your response is that you're better than them for not knowing the difference. That's bush league; dense would be forgivable.

More here...

I just seeded at Newsvine your blog rant about me including your incorrect assumptions about me and my sex life.

I'm usually not one to defend Playboy magazine, but the others have a point. It doesn't matter what the subject matter is, if you're going to satire it, it's important to get the facts straight.

It would be as if you wrote a parody of Glamour magazine's "Do's and Dont's" section (where celebrities and average folks are praised/criticized for their clothing) but attributed it to Cosmo magazine, which doesn't have such a feature. Sure, both are fashion magazines, but they're not necessarily all the same.

Why don't you just change the title on the piece to Penthouse and make it "Dear Penthouse"? It's the Internet after all, you can fix stuff.

Satire only works if the person doing the satire understands what they are mocking. Getting the wrong magazine is HUGE and is a fatal flaw in the piece. Playboy has every right to go after Blogcritics for this one. Mocking Playboy by name for the actions of Penthouse may be sinister, but is not the acts of a superior writer.

While it's been a while since I let my subscription to Playboy lapse, I do remember that these letters aren't a part of that magazine's style.

I'm sorry for the misattribution, missed by the editor; I've corrected the title and the internal reference, and will replace the Amazon link with one more appropos.

Thanks for your understanding that this was a mistake rather than a deliberate snub.

Thanks for fixing that, Phillip.

Folks, I made a mistake. I apologized. I don't know what else to say.... except to ask what choices you made on the different questions.

I asked blogcritics to make that title name change hours ago.

Sorry about the mix-up. It was intended as a sendup of a particular style of writing and fantasy. It was sort of like what would happen if there were choose-your-own-adventure stories for sex fantasies. The name of the magazine was an afterthought. That doesn't excuse me doing proper research - going to the local porn store and asking to peruse the letters section but explaining I didn't want to buy it, I was just doing research.

What I really was looking forward to was hearing people's answers.
That way when some feminist came in and complained it was denigrating to woman I was going to point out that if you chose the right anwers it was actually more denigrating to the idiot writer.

That's ok Scott, we all make mistakes. At least it's not embarrassing as what happened to me during my interview with CAKE frontman John McCrea a week ago (it'll be posted sometime this week). But that was more of a brain fart than improper research ;)

Josh posted this at his blog. Thanks Josh.
"UPDATE: The title of Scott Butki's satire has been changed to better reflect its content. Josh Robertson forgives the author for his error and promises no more flames, but notes with a sigh that the confusion about what Playboy is and isn't will likely continue."

Matthew has posted a piece offering his thoughts on this situation

Wow, what a night? As I look back I can't believe that: a) A playboy editor was mad at me and
b) he called me a prude.

If was a prude would I be writing a choose-your-own-adventure story meets sex fantasy story involving oral sex, handcuffs and the cliche pizza delivery guy?

it was hard to resist writing up a piece responding to that.

The gauntlet has been thrown down. My good name, or what's left of it, has been bismirched, Mr or Ms cowardly playboy editor. I use my real name. You afraid to? Chicken? Too young? To old?

You wanna piece of me? How about centerfolds at ten paces? Huh? You think you're better than me because you can tell the difference between the two mags?

How about a debate, huh, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous Playboy Editor? Let's see. We'll have someone pick an article from the New England Journal of Medicine, and we'll be given ten minutes to prepare ourselves? Any place, any time.

I'm a bad editor, it's true. I spend too much of the money BC pays me on the Penthouse Hookers site.

But, in truth, there's a good reason I didn't fact check the article.

I don't care.

To me Playboy, Penthouse & all the rest are basically the same rabbit dressed in different fur. I have nothing against them, and like the rest of the male population, I abased myself in the eyes of God more than once back in my younger days--long ago in another Galaxy.

But I simply don't understand the "let's pile on Scott" shit going on here by BC folks. O.k., so Playboy has the sense of humor of a Lithuanian mugwump--fine, that's them. But yowzah, fellow BCers, I say it again: It's satire--it's meant to be fun. And it is. Enjoy it. Go attack an article that posits something truly controversial.

If you want to pile on anyone, pile on me--ladies first, please.

I'm at fault. My bad. Scott good. Got that?

Sheesh. What a bunch of duddy fuddies.

Thankfully,

In Jameson Veritas

Scott & Mark,

I wouldn't lose any sleep over this whole tempest in a teapot.

It's a funny satire, no matter which rag's name is on it.

Thanks.

And I'm not sure if it was a joke or not but the last comment on the Playboy blog - suggesting the write come read a hilarious piece about Penthouse - and then linking here is - a joke or an insult but I love it.

It's all a great way to start the day.

Clavos, I agree no one should lose sleep over this. I was just hoping for a jousting tournament with Playboy, all of BC & Playboy dressed up in knightly armor, riding our horses against each other, using perhaps Twinkies rather than real lances to avoid injury (except maybe indigestion or cancer...are we now going to start getting nastigrams from Hostess--hey, I love Hostess cupcakes and ringdings, etc.)...

Where was I. Oh yeah, we could have had fun parodying Scott's satire, but everyone got very serious, alas. And, so to bed, as Mr. Pepys noted.

But...

In Jameson Veritas

The irrepressible Mr. Schannnon, as usual, makes a great deal of wryly expressed sense.

Mark - First of all, while the Playboy writer didn't give his name here, you can clearly read it when you go on his blog.

Second, the reason you probably don't care about Playboy and Penthouse is because of the subject matter that the magazines cover. You find that it's beneath you and thus paid it no regard. As you said, they're the same to you.

But what if it was a different magazine that Scott was parodying? In my earlier comment I used two fashion magazines, Glamour and Cosmo. But perhaps fashion mags are all the same to you as well. What if Scott was parodying the writing style and tone of an Agatha Christie novel but attributed it to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?

People weren't "piling on Scott" as you suggest. If anything, only the second commenter was actually rude. Yes, the Playboy editor wasn't the most courteous, but he was only responding to your comment that you don't "get your kicks by looking at naked women" and telling people to "get a life".

Yes, it was a fun read. As a woman, I think that these kinds of letters are really ridiculous and silly, and Scott did a great job in poking fun of them in that Choose-Your-Adventure style. Yes, it's really nothing to get bent out of shape over, but the thing is that if something is inaccurate, people will call attention to it.

When I wrote my review of "300" and mistakenly mentioned that one of the characters was created only for the film, you can bet a lot of fans quickly replied to alert me of my error. The good thing was that all were gracious and respectful. I apologized immediately and asked one of the editors to edit the piece. No harm, no foul.

Any sort of article - including those of a humorous nature - needs some fact checking before it goes public. Even The Onion and Jon Stewart's writers have fact checkers.