Arnold Gingrich, once upon a time the editor of Esquire.

Long ago, Esquire used to publish articles celebrating masculinity and male interests, including contributors like Ernest Hemingway. The quality of those 1930s and ’40s issues was such that people now collect them.

Today, Esquire is an excruciatingly irritating voice of metrosexual soyboy hysteria endlessly denouncing Trump and grovelling apologetically on behalf of all mankind before the idols of politically correct wokeness.

Brian Patrick Eha notes that the same thing is happening today across the entire men’s lifestyle magazine genre and subscriptions are everywhere precipitously declining.

When the culture changes,” Esquire contributing editor Wesley Yang wrote earlier this year, “each of us must either seek an accommodation or choose a hill to die on.” He was reviewing Bret Easton Ellis’s White, a collection of jeremiads, many aimed, like poison darts, at millennials, the cohort Ellis has dubbed “Generation Wuss.” The voice of an earlier generation, Ellis, who is gay, finds himself shocked by—and contemptuous of—the weak-mindedness and quickness to take offense typical of some millennials. …

In June, Hearst promoted Esquire.com editor Michael Sebastian to replace Fielden as editor-in-chief. As with Pels at Cosmopolitan, the idea is to bring a digital sensibility to the print product—while making digital the top priority. Esquire, a source told WWD, will be getting “a full Cosmo.” I take this to mean that the trends identified in this essay will only accelerate, and that the commitment to social-justice ideology will only harden; that Esquire will soon descend into the sucking morass of what Yang aptly calls “woke clickbait.” No doubt the magazine will struggle on for a time, like a punctured blimp leaking helium, deflating while still aloft, but if it grows in prominence—if the metrics that men like Troy Young care about improve for a time—it will be only as a wounded airship, once high up in the atmosphere, grows larger in the eye as it sinks slowly groundward.

Just as one can’t reinflate a leaky blimp, there is little reason to believe that Esquire’s editorial quality will improve under Sebastian, however much he juices web traffic. The great men’s magazines may eke out a lucrative afterlife hawking clothes and branding nightclubs in India; but as magazines, they are dying or dead—and the dead do not improve.

RTWT

Amy Biviano, née Nabors, posed as one of the “Women of the Ivy League” for Playboy in 1995.

SBS-Seattle.com reports:

Amy Biviano, Democratic candidate for Spokane Valley’s 4th District House of Representatives, has been “outed” for having posed for Playboy magazine’s “Women of the Ivy League” in 1995. She was a student at Yale at the time.

The lucky candidate even attracted coverage by Xbiz Newswire, a porno industry news feed.

Curiously, Ms. Biviano is not locatable in the on-line Yale Alumni Directory under either “Biviano” or “Nabors.”

Nonetheless, there really is a contemporary Yale Herald article on-line which identifies her as a member of the Class of 1997, so I expect the Alumni Directory has just made some kind of mistake.

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Apparently, Ms. Biviano, at the time foresaw the possibility of her Playboy pictures coming to light later in life, and discussed that possibility in the Yale Herald.

Picture this…you are applying for a job for which you know that you’re perfect. It is unthinkable that your experience, your high grades, and your real interest in the company could be disregarded. Yet, as the decision is made, somehow, you are looked over. Why? The answer has nothing to do with your college education and everything to do with your college behavior – you posed for Playboy, and now your job market will be forever limited.

The above scenario is every Yalie’s worst nightmare – being rejected just because of one stupid, rash college prank. You know that you would never make the same mistake twice if you had the chance. Alright, so I did pose for Playboy. Do I feel that one day the above scenario will apply to me? No. You might ask, “Why not?” Do I have career plans that allow for borderline behavior and overlook my indiscretions? Well, originally I did. I had planned to spend my life doing anthropological research on sex; thus, Playboy may have even enhanced my career. But now? Now, among other options, I am considering law, obviously a less-forgiving field.

So why do I still consider posing for Playboy to have been the right move for me? What I have learned this summer in the face of this scandal has taught me more about myself and the others around me than I could ever have learned by sticking to my role as the sweet little girl next door. …

[D]o I believe that my future might be affected by posing for Playboy? Yes, I believe that it will. But, it has made a positive contribution to my life – I gained a sense of self-reliance which I lacked before the posing scandal. Yes, it was fun to have my five minutes of fame both on the Yale campus and on the national scene. It is a nice little boost to the ego to know that some people consider me to be attractive enough to be in Playboy. But of course I know now, and I knew when I first chose to pose, that these benefits will fade, and they will only be remembered by a few people searching through dusty archives. However, posing for Playboy has permanently changed me by making me think a little bit differently about myself – I’m now more of a risk-taker, fear social approval less, and know a bit more about what I’m capable of. I may never do something this controversial again, but it’s nice to know that I could and did.

Amy Nabors, SM ’97, is an anthropology major.

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Despite the alarmed tone of the liberal news coverage, I think the publicity (and the exposed boobs photo) will do nothing but win admiring 4th district male votes for the candidate.

When I read the headline, I said to myself, “Good! That Cimbalo guy has it coming, for penning that tastelessly nasty piece fantasizing about amorous encounters with ten prominent female conservative commentators.”

Imagine my surprise when I read on and discovered AOL didn’t fire Cimbalo. They fired this other guy, some liberal writer named Tommy Christopher, for trying to report on the brouhaha over the Cimbalo sleaze piece on AOL’s Politics Daily.

It was this posting, entitled Bad Bunny, which was deleted by some AOL editor, then Christopher was let go.

Caleb Howe, another writer for Politics Daily told Newsbusters:

“His coverage of the Playboy “hate f***” list must have had a lot to do with Tommy being fired, if not everything to do with it” Howe told NewsBusters. “It would be absurd to think the timing is coincidental” referring to the fact that Christopher was fired three days after his original Playboy story and only hours after pitching a new story on the same topic. Further allegations of AOL censoring coverage of the Playboy controversy came to light when Christopher and Howe appeared on Media Lizzy’s show this afternoon.

At the 74:50 mark of the show Media Lizzy (Elizabeth Blackney) claimed that her editor, Michael Kraskin, sent her an email regarding a question she submitted for the AOL Hot Seat Poll. Her original question was going to be “does Playboy empower or exploit women”. In his response email Media Lizzy claimed that Kraskin asked for a different question and said “This Playboy story is something we have internally decided not to address”. …

NewsBusters contacted Politics Daily’s editor in chief, Melinda Henneberger who both deleted Tommy Christopher’s original story and fired him, for comment but she never returned our email.

The old saying “AOL Sucks” is clearly truer than ever.

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Cimbalo Playboy article

Freelance writer, quondam blogger, and (according to IMDB) miscellaneous film crewman & producer Guy Cimbalo tried for sophisticated risque humor Playboy-style and came across more like a stalker with misogynist derangement syndrome.

His list of CWILFs (not surprisingly) led with cute and vivacious little Michelle Malkin and, rather unkindly, altogether omitted Ann Coulter. I guess Ann Coulter is just too much woman for Cimbalo, even in an exercise in journalistic Onanism.

1. Michelle Malkin

2. Megyn Kelly

3. Mary Katharine Ham

4. Amanda Carpenter

5. Elisabeth Hasselbeck

6. Dana Perino

7. Laura Ingraham

8. Pamela Geller

9. Michele Bachmann

10. Peggy Noonan

Jimmie, at Sundries Shack, produced the response title juste: I Don’t Know Guy Cimbalo, but I’d Enjoy Punching Him in the Mouth.

And it didn’t take very long at all, once Cimbalo’s limp effort attracted comment, for Playboy to decide the whole thing wasn’t really worth defending, and they simply hit delete.

Doubtless an amusing take on lust for attractive conservative female commentators from a conflicted liberal perspective could be written, but this one wasn’t it.