The Nation - News from March 2, 1987

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, confronted with a Playboy magazine centerfold, told a group of high school students in Philadelphia he had “no quarrel” with defenders of soft pornography. During a question-and-answer session with about 500 students at the Junior Statesmen of America convention for a discussion of the Constitution, Jared Scogna, 16, of Falls Church, Va., held up the centerfold. He asked Meese if he thought it was pornographic, then demanded that Meese justify his “self-righteous crusade” against pornography. A visibly flustered Meese said he did not believe magazines such as Playboy fit the Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity.