In my experience, most of the people who laugh at the idea of reading Playboy rather than simply looking at it are possibly referring to the post-mid 70s era.
I bought the thing on subscription for many years and read every word - often with help from the dictionary (eat your heart out, Reader's Digest!) - and both the text and the photographs were class leaders.
So why did I quit? Because I used to leave the thing lying around the house, perfectly happy if my two kids picked it up, but then it apparently began to feel the competition from Penthouse and went down the slippery slope. At that point, when I felt I didn't want either my son or daughter to look at it any more, I gave it up; it had stopped attracting me, too. I feel that if you have a liking for pornography then that's probably inborn; as with an artistic ability, I don't think everybody has that drive. Thank God, both ways!
If anything, it strikes me that if Playboy did indeed lose sales to Penthouse for not being "explicit" enough, then the problem lay more in the head of the world's readership than in the editorial board at the old Playboy, which had never been pornographic. What it became after I gave it up, I have no idea.
France 24 tv ran a little spot on it during the Friday Debate slot just because of Hef; Christopher Dickie, both a regular Friday guest at France 24 tv and an editor at The Daily Beast, confided to having had two articles published at the happy rabbit, and that his father had been subject of an interview there, too. He was a little wary about joining in with the general condemnation and ugly-sister complaints from the righteous rest, the majority of whom I felt had a lot of opinion but precious little experience of the actual magazine. That's life in public, I suppose: all opinion and empty sound bite, just to appear clever and of a mind with the world at large. Jesus, I bet the show has a "like" button when viewed on the Internet rather than on the box!