Dick Cheney Playboy Interview Called 'Inappropriate' By Anti-Porn Group

An anti-porn group is accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney of alienating women and endorsing pornography and sexual exploitation by giving an interview to Playboy magazine in which Cheney blasts the Obama administration on several fronts. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation said Wednesday that Cheney’s interview for the April issue of Playboy “further mainstreams pornography usage and fuels the acceptance of the hyper-sexualized, pornified state of our union.”

Despite the joke that "everybody reads Playboy for the articles," interviews that appear in Playboy have been conducted with highly regarded newsmakers over the years, ranging from Martin Luther King Jr. to Steve Jobs. Landing a piece in Playboy is considered a crowning achievement for writers; famed Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov has had his work featured in the magazine.

The center, in a statement titled "Note to Dick Cheney: Men Do Not Buy Playboy for the Articles," criticized Cheney not only for his thoughts on President Barack Obama -- including accusing the president and Attorney General Eric Holder of using the “race card” -- but for using Playboy as a forum to espouse his views. The group said the interview given by Cheney “communicates that he is okay with pornography, sexual exploitation, and does not want to reach women with his message.”

“Is Dick Cheney trying not to be heard? What woman would find his interview in a magazine that profits from the sexual exploitation of women? Cheney’s action says to women, ‘I’m not talking to you and you’re no more than an object to be gawked at,’” said Dawn Hawkins, executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, in a statement. “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. As a former public servant, Cheney must know that Playboy promotes sexual exploitation and is an inappropriate forum to make a statement intended for the general public.”

In the wide-ranging interview with Playboy, Cheney says Obama and Holder wrongly blame racism for some of the criticism against them.

“I think they’re playing the race card, in my view. Certainly we haven’t given up -- nor should we give up -- the right to criticize an administration and public officials. To say that we criticize, or that I criticize, Barack Obama or Eric Holder because of race, I just think it’s obviously not true,” the former vice president said. “My view of it is the criticism is merited because of performance -- or lack of performance, because of incompetence. It hasn’t got anything to do with race.”

Cheney also said Obama should have attacked Syria in 2013 after learning Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons in the country’s civil war, and he blamed the president’s inaction for the rise of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. “That’s a classic example, where Obama got everybody ready to do something about Syria and then at the last minute pulled the plug,” Cheney said. We’ve created a huge vacuum in that part of the world, and ISIS has moved in big-time. Now we have a caliphate in Syria and Iraq.”

Read the full interview here.