Sic Hefner Tyrannus?

I note this week a meeting at St. Margaret's on how to launch a children's program called Godly Play.

Since Christmas is just around the corner, the suggestion was made that we hold a pageant to stir enthusiasm.

There was a gasp.

"No pageants!"

"Why not, for heaven's sake," I gasped back.

An extended inquiry later revealed the underlying Montessori-like ciricculum of Godly Play is founded upon a 'theology of playful orthodoxy.'

In his book, The Whisperers, Orlando Figes describes another sort of educational game called Search & Requisition. Boys played Red Army Requisitioners who menaced girls playing bourgeois speculators hiding grain.

Sounds like fun.

Figes continues, there were schools where children were encouraged to organize their own police; invited to write denunciations; and to hold classroom trials.

One young lad, encouraged by this mother, established The Central Bureau of the Russian Committee of the Association of Children of the World. As they marched through the streets carrying home-made banners and singing revolutionary songs, crying out, "window-watcher, shame on you," to observers fortunate enough to be watching the parade from home.

The point of it all, according to Figes, was to create absolutists who'd broken free of convention by supplanting love of family with party loyalty.

Speaking of female encouragement, or not, every time I'm caught watching The Girls Next Door, I change channels immediately lest my absolutist wife tut-tut every five seconds. Where I envision a new kind of, albeit highly attractive family, free of old conventions, the Mrs sees Bimbos.

Could Hef be the ultimate catalyst for the fulfillment of Leninism?

Twenty years after the clubs closed in Chicago former Bunnies held a reunion. Their ranks included writers, feminists, real estate executives, an accupunturist, even a retired homicide detective.

When they worked for Playboy, they were well paid for that time; there was equal opportunity for women of color; and there were strict no-paw rules for patrons. According to one, "Believe it or not, Hef was ahead of his time when it came to issues of sexual harrassment."

I note last week the funeral of Russian journalist Magomed Mutsolgov who officials say was shot trying to take away an officer's gun but whose lawyer says was shot in the head point-blank.

We sometimes wonder why Russians desire strong leaders. It's not hard to see how, building upon existing Czarist repression, the education of Soviet children conditioned them to accept Stalinist show trials where millions were exiled and shot.

The Whisperers asks if it's possible to retain any sense of morality when private life goes public.

In The Girls Next Door private life also turns public.

According to sociologist Max Weber, "in an individual society, religion became a private matter, so the USSR abolished individuality and privacy, with the Party taking its puritanical place."

Puritanical ideology inevitably turns lethal; libertine culture may eventually empower or denigrate women.

Murderour dictatorship or anything-goes

There's a lot at stake here.

Best to hold a Christmas pageant, don't you think, just to be safe?