WHENEVER Hugh Hefner mentioned that his strict Methodist mother had wanted him to be a missionary, he got a big laugh. He got a bigger one when he said he answered: "Mom, I was." His listeners were thinking of the missionary position, no doubt, and the hundreds of women he had conquered with that irresistible saturnine charm. But he was absolutely serious. As the man who brought sexual liberation to America in the form of clubs, casinos, Bunny Girls and naked centrefolds, he too was a preacher and a prophet. But instead of "Thou shalt not", the creed of Puritan killjoys down the centuries, his was "Free-dom!"-and the loud tooting of a sports car, accessorised with beauties, driving at speed through America's drearily conformist suburbs and its herds of sacred cows. Blessed is the rebel, he cried; no progress without him.
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