Cheney criticized for Playboy interview

by Ben Kamisar - 03/18/15 4:11 PM ET

An anti-pornography group is bashing former Vice President Cheney for his recent interview with Playboy magazine, alleging he helped legitimize the magazine and its lewd subject matter.

“Playboy’s introduction into American culture has served to break down social mores, ultimately spawning addictive behaviors, decay of marriage, the increase of child pornography and child predators, the increase of sexual violence and more demand for trafficked and prostituted women and children,” Dawn Hawkins, the executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said in a statement.

{mosads}“Cheney’s choice to give an exclusive interview to an explicit publication further mainstreams pornography usage and fuels the acceptance of the hyper-sexualized, pornified state of our nation.”

Hawkins continued to criticize Cheney in the press release, titled “Note to Dick Cheney: Men Do Not Buy Playboy for the Articles,” accusing him of making the interview inaccessible to women with its placement.

Playboy on Tuesday published Cheney’s interview, in which the former vice president accuses President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder of “playing the race card” against critics.

He also criticizes the White House’s response to the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager by a white officer in Ferguson, Mo., and says the national debate that spawned from the incident was unfairly focused on race.

“We should not sort of throw it all over on the burden of race, or racial inequality or racial discrimination, as being responsible for this particular event,” Cheney said in the interview.

“I think that would be wrong, and it bothers me that that kind of an incident has generated that kind of response. I don’t think it is about race. I think it is about an individual who conducted himself in a manner that was almost guaranteed to provoke an officer trying to do his duty.”

Tags Dick Cheney Pornography