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Really, I'd be happy for both of them if I weren't so alarmed at the way history is being rewritten in the midst of the media shitstorm surrounding this moment-and the fact that no news outlet has accurately reported who's really behind Playgirl's big comeback.

Playgirl's 35-year history is incredibly nuanced and totally absurd. Its archives offer an archaeology of American sexual identity before and after the turn of the millennium, and, if it had evolved differently, it could have informed contemporary conversations about what women desire and how we construct our sexualities. But if you've read the media coverage of Playgirl's current resuscitation you wouldn't get this idea; instead, you might catch a whiff of an enduring myth that the earliest incarnation of Playgirl was intended to deconstruct-that women are out of touch with their sexuality and can't even figure out what's hot and what's not.

Most of this coverage, which has run the gossip gamut from People to TMZ to the Daily News and back again, is lazily built around quotes from either Johnston's press corps or the PR gun Playgirl.com brought on in August, a gay nightlife promoter named Daniel Nardicio. In Jacob Bernstein's November 5th Daily Beast article, "Levi Unzipped: Inside Playgirl's Big Stunt," Nardicio, who is the only quoted source, quips that "The women working on [Playgirl] weren't keeping up with the times. They didn't admit that there were a lot of gay men reading the magazine and gay men don't want to see guys with flowing long locks looking like they came from the cover of a Danielle Steel novel."

And on Monday, Nardicio told The Advocate that "Playgirl was kind of stuck because the women who were working for it were old and they thought that Fabio-looking characters with long-flowing hair and uber-tans... were really hot."

OK, so he has a point about the abundance of Fabio-looking characters. I wasn't big on the long flowing locks myself. (For the record, I also wasn't "old"-at 28, I was the eldest member of the editorial staff.) And we never had a problem admitting that there were gay men reading the magazine-we published letters from them all the time. (We got plenty of colorful correspondence from women too, which is one of the main reasons the magazine never "came out"-our gay readers seemed content with, even titillated by, a magazine with hetero overtones; our female readers were not so easily placated with gayer fare.)

So it's not that we were clueless, but here's a little secret: we were almost totally powerless over the aesthetic content of the magazine.

Which brings me to a rather glaring error in Bernstein's piece-and the huge, pulsating point he misses because of the oversight. The company behind Playgirl.com, Trans Digital Media, doesn't, as Bernstein wrote, own the stoner rag High Times. The dorm-room staple is published by a company called Trans High Corporation. (THC. Get it?) Trans Digital Media, on the other hand, is an affiliate of Blue Horizon Media, which does own High Society, a porn title for straight men-think Hustler but more D-list-and half a dozen similar brands with equally mistakable names, like Purely 18 and Finally Legal. All of which churn out (or churned out-some of them could have folded by now, and nobody but lonely truckers in Midwestern gas stations would be the wiser) clinical quality closeups of heavily Photoshopped labia with an industrial efficiency to give any third-world sweatshop a run for its money. In short, Blue Horizon, which owned Playgirl the print magazine, is a hardcore-porn company (with one vanity magalog-Elite Traveler, "the private jet lifestyle magazine"-that it wears as a beard) that's run by and for straight men.

This is why Playgirl failed in the first place. The men in the boardroom had no idea how to market or appeal to either women or gay men-never mind to both at the same time, an unattainable magic act, in my opinion, but one the company insisted on attempting for years. The tragicomedy of Playgirl's particular aesthetic failure starts to make a lot of sense if you consider that it wasn't constructed by anyone who professed actual physical interest in the male physique. If would-be Fabios were standard, that's because "musclebound with a ridiculous mane" is a comfortable caricature of what women find sexually attractive as doodled in the minds of out-of-touch old dudes.

My colleagues and I wished we could've made something relevant and fresh out of the troubled, tousled remnants of what had once been one of the world's most unique and successful magazines for women. I don't know if we would have succeeded-we never got the chance to find out-but in its last few months, despite the brewing recession, Playgirl was actually seeing an increase in newsstand sales. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Playgirl.com, which, I hear, has seen its subscription rate fall since the print magazine was shuttered. Perhaps this is why, in a desperate attempt to breathe new life into their biggest name brand, the same suits who've always worked for Blue Horizon's elusive millionaire owner, Carl Ruderman, hired a new flack and sent him out into the media armed with a high-school hockey player from Wasilla, Alaska.

Nardicio himself brings some new gay-scene credibility to Playgirl, and he certainly knows how to drop names in the right places-all of which conveniently distracts from the fact that exactly nothing has changed in Playgirl's management or mission. It's obvious if you read between Nardicio's own lines: for instance, the photographer he says is earmarked for the shoot happens to have shot a majority of Playgirl's sets since the 90s. The claim that the downtown and dirty fashion photographer Terry Richardson was entertained for the job is probably true-in exactly the same way I've weighed the option of shacking up with Jude Law.

Which isn't to say that the Men of Playgirl, so to speak, are steady on their own feet. They may call the shots but they don't do the grunt work; that's where we came in. And that explains why one of the first people Blue Horizon called when Levi Johnston's name came up was Playgirl's last editor-in-chief, the now 27-year-old Nicole Caldwell. She is one of those very "old" out-of-touch women Nardicio claims Playgirl is better off without-who has been working on contract all along to facilitate the shoot and who has been assigned the Johnston interview.

In short, its business as usual at Playgirl. From day one this has been little more than a publicity stunt orchestrated on behalf of two fallen icons: a floundering brand that's completely lost its identity and a teenager who's trying to define his, in the wake of his incidental introduction to the bright, bizarre lights of American quasi-celebrity. It would be a typical story-a stunt that's taken on a life of its own because of the low standards and laziness we accept in coverage of this type of "news"-but instead its become a particularly troubling one for the myths and misconceptions it's perpetuating about what Playgirl was and what its failure says about female sexuality.

These misconceptions, unfortunately, may be the only lasting legacy this strange moment in American media has. Because regardless of how much we eventually see or don't see of Levi's johnson, this stunt is starting to feel, well, flaccid.

Jessanne Collins has written for Salon, Radar, The New York Observer, and The Morning News.

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Still, there was something rather troubling about the article: Almost none of the words within it were more than two syllables long. While the article is described as an "as told to" piece, it has clearly been shaped to give a more "authentic" feel, an authenticity which apparently excludes the use of big words. But why stop at two syllables? Wouldn't it be even more authentic if every word, excluding proper nouns, that came out of Levi Johnston's mouth were only one syllable? You can be the judge of that.

I was on a hunt with my dad and his bro. I got a call from my girl. She said her mom got picked to be Veep and I should come there right now. I said no but they made me. I was not sure how Bristol's weird mom thought she could be Veep.

Sarah and Todd don't cook or help their kids with school stuff or the wash. Sarah does not read a lot of books. Sarah likes to take long baths. Sarah likes to watch the tube. Sarah makes her kids go get things for her, like Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supremes. Sarah and my girl Bristol fought a lot.

Sarah was in a bad mood a lot. She said her job was hard. Todd drank beer out in the back much of the time. Sarah did not like Todd to drink so he had to hide it. Todd likes to race his sleds.

Sarah and Todd don't sleep in the same room.

Sarah and Todd fight all the time. Todd would get mad and yell that he and Sarah should split up. Still, Sarah ran the house. Todd would do what she told him to.

Sarah said she was a "hockey mom" but she was not at a lot of games. I have not ever seen her hunt or fish. She asked me how to shoot a gun she had but she did not know what kind of gun it was since it was in a box.

Sarah did not know how to hang a frame on the wall.

At the RNC in Minnesota Sarah made me cut my hair and shave and tried to make me get a spray tan. Sarah told us we should be glad that they would give us a lot of free clothes. All the girls liked the free clothes but I did not. Sarah and the girls were mad when they had to give the clothes back after Sarah lost, but they still kept some of them. Sarah got a lot of clothes.

Sarah's not one to cry a lot but she sure did cry when we told her Bristol was knocked up. Sarah was mad since she had just said on TV that Bristol was not knocked up. I thought Todd was going to kick my ass but he just told me that Bristol and I would have to tie the knot quick. I got a ring from Zales.

Sarah had a thought that we should lie and not talk about how Bristol was knocked up. She and Todd would take the kid. She kept on us to do it but we told her no. It was not a shock, since Sarah had lied when she was knocked up with Trig.

Sarah changed once she ran for Veep. She got used to the way things were done for her.

Sarah was bad on TV. We all knew it. We shook our heads when we saw her talk to the press. Sarah knew that she was not good. She would watch a speech she made and say that she was bad. Tina Fey did a good Sarah.

Sarah was sad when they lost the race. She would walk through the house with a pout on her face. Now she did not want to run Alaska. She would say how nice it would be to quit and make a lot of cash. She said that it was "not as hard" to write a book or do a show as it was to run the state, plus she would make three times as much.

She was mad when the McCain team said bad things like that she was why they lost. She thought she was why they got any votes at all.

When Tripp was born Sarah seemed to like him more than she liked Trig. She made weird jokes. She would say things like, "No, I don't want the retarded baby-I want the other one." We were all used to it.

My mom got nailed for a meth deal and soon Bristol and I split up. I still love Tripp and want to take care of him. These days a lot of folks want me to do press and films and stuff. Who knows? It could be cool. If not I can still go back home and fuse wires like the rest of the Johnstons. That's still a lot of fun to me.

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Hey Guy Who is the Father of My Daughter's Miracle,

I know we have seen things from viewpoints as well as purviews that are maybe staggered on varying differentials, and that I posses the wisdom of someone who was a "hand-picked" public candidate for a high profile job, after having served in that capacity for the state in which we both reside, and... you get drunk at bonfires. (And are now, according to the media, engaged in a sexual cougar relationship with an unfunny redhead who prides herself on her low position on the entertainment totem pole.)

Which is somewhat okay. The Lord knows that there are many a day where I gaze fondly into Todd's eyes and just say "bonfire" and he knows what I am talking about-a simpler time with less responsibility and less demand from the public in terms of what are my convictions vis a vis Nukes, North Korea, Pork-Filled Stimulus, and having a foreign colored USURPER as President, who is obsessed with giving Mexican illegals safe appendectomies.

But I am not there any more in those whimsical days when the leering eye of the media wasn't lurking around trying to pry about what two or three people were off to the side of that bonfire, simply embraced in a copulative, loving position under some florid piney underbrush, and on top of a still-warm dead wolf-and also trying to lie about me all the time.

Sucks for me. But I have a bigger challenge. And that bigger challenge to some degree is known as a calling. And that calling-and here is where I am going to be very direct with you-gets jeopardized when young men who got my daughter pregnant show off their personal giblets in gay men's magazines for all of America's men who swing that way to see and then have fantasies about what? I am not sure, but maybe putting it in their mouths like a lozenge, or directing it into another orifice for some sort of fleeting, puerile connection that is enhanced by stimulants like poppers which I have never, ever done.

I know you have pride in the equipment that God bestowed upon you. And we all know it works, J. But you have a name to uphold to: Johnston. And, that due to DNA and not practicing safe sex is now tethered to "Palin," and I just feel like it would be really sad for you to put all of that on the line by displaying your penis to sinners for money. And though he can not say it in "words," other babies beyond your own have sent me vibrations about how disappointed they would be-namely Trig. You posing naked is akin to the Death Panel deciding on Christmas Morning to come whisk him away and put him in a canoe by himself floating down a black, lead-colored river that just goes and goes out to the horizon, without letting us so much as put Wheat Thins in it or even wave good bye.

Which is all very, very ironic, because I am sure liberals would like to see your machinery. But as someone who had a great chance to be your Mother-in-Law until you let us all down, by helping McCain lose the election, I am politely asking you to not do it, and to do something else with your penis, like keep it in your pants until you have had more worldly experiences.

Love, "Mom"

Previously: Guest Op Ed by Walt Fruttinger, Applebee's Franchisee

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