I
first met Bob Guccione, who died this week, when he asked me to
defend Penthouse magazine against charges of obscenity in the Deep
South and the Midwest. Such prosecutions tended to be instituted in
the buckle of the Bible Belt. Penthouse’s pictures offended not
only many on the religious right (some of whom I’m sure enjoyed
them in private) but also many on the feminist left (very few of whom
I’m sure enjoyed them). Notwithstanding the widespread outrage at
Penthouse’s graphic portrayals of women and couples, we won every
single case, because the First Amendment trumps offensiveness in the
United States.
Many
feminists, most especially the late Andrea Dworkin and Professor
Catherine McKinnon, reviled me for defending “a pornographer.”
Dworkin called me a “pornocrat” and was photographed giving me
the middle finger for defending the obscene. Civil libertarians
tended to support me on the ground that the First Amendment protects
bad people who do bad things. The quotation most often associated
with that position was by H.L. Mencken, who famously said:
“The
trouble about fighting for human freedom is that you have to spend
much of your life defending sons of bitches: for oppressive laws are
always aimed at them originally, and oppression must be stopped in
the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
Although
there is undoubtedly some truth to that position—I have defended
Nazis, Stalinists and other assorted bigots—it does not apply to
Bob Guccione. Bob was a nice guy who did things that some people
thought were not nice. I think what he did was none of anybody’s
business except those who enjoyed his magazine. He never forced
anybody to look at the pictures, and the pictures didn’t harm
anybody. I know that this last view is controversial and I have
debated it with numerous feminists over the years. I will be happy to
continue to debate it, as I did in the many columns I wrote for
Penthouse magazine and in the testimony I gave before the Meese
Commission on pornography, but that is not the purpose of this
column. The purpose of this column is to tell its readers about Bob
Guccione, the man. Since he led a relatively solitary life and was
seen largely through the lens of his controversial magazine, not very
many people got to know him. He was not Hugh Hefner, who used his
house to exemplify his sexual values.
Bob’s
house—an elegant mansion on the East Side of New York—was his
private refuge from the world. He invited people to dinner and I was
a frequent guest. The only naked woman I ever saw in the house was
rising out of a seashell in the Botticelli painting that hung on the
wall near his marble staircase. The guests at his dinners were
philosophers, British barristers, poets, occasional athletes (mostly
boxers), and artists. I don’t remember any politicians or Hollywood
celebrities. The talk around the table was serious, often revolving
around the wonderful art we were privileged to see throughout his
home. He loved early 20th-century paintings, especially by
Modigliani, Picasso, Leger, and Rouault. He had so much art that much
of it was stacked up in his office. In addition to the art of the
great masters, Bob had a collection of his own paintings, most of
which were done when he was a young man living in Europe and
exploring various forms of painting. His paintings were exhibited in
several museums and some hung in his office.
Guccione
believed deeply in what he was doing to expand boundaries of sexually
explicit photography, as well as his efforts to expand the boundaries
of medicine through his other magazines and the research he
supported. We often disagreed about both, but I never questioned the
seriousness of his views. Bob was a serious guy. He didn’t laugh
much. He always seemed to be on a mission. Some of these missions
succeeded, especially during the early years of Penthouse. Others
failed, most particularly his efforts to build casinos and expand his
business into other areas. These failures resulted in predators
coming after him with a vengeance. They took his homes, the art he
had collected over the years and even his furniture. Bob could live
with that, because he knew that taking financial risks had
consequences. What he could not bear was his creditors taking his own
art—the painting he himself had done as a young man. Although these
paintings did not have enormous commercial value, they meant
everything to Bob. He wanted them around him as he lay dying, but his
creditors denied him his last wish. Bob Guccione died fighting for
his right to maintain control over his own artistic output. It was a
good fight, and although he died fighting it, the fight is not yet
over. I hope his family eventually gets to enjoy the paintings that
were so much a part of Bob’s soul.
