It’s perfectly okay to hate Larry Flynt. Hell, he’d probably be insulted if you thought otherwise.
After all, we’re talking about the degenerate pornographer who gave America the dubious gift of fully nude girlie magazines, packed cover to cover with mind-numbingly sexist pictorials depicting women in meat grinders, on leashes, and strapped to the hoods of cars.
This is also the same guy who took a fine, upstanding, Christian gentleman like the late Reverend Jerry Falwell and implied in a satirical Campari ad that the Reverend had performed sexual acts with his mother. In an outhouse, no less. That little stunt ended up taking Flynt and Falwell to the U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling officially protecting satire of public figures as free speech. Thanks to Larry Flynt, your conservative brother-in-law is legally allowed to post those Obama-is-a-fool cartoons all over Facebook without worrying about being sued or imprisoned (well, so far).
Whether we like it or not, Flynt has been one of America’s strongest champions of the First Amendment and, as he calls it, “the right to be left alone.”
Flynt began his sinful crusade right here in Ohio, first by operating a series of Hustler strip clubs (including one in Toledo, which was located on Jefferson Avenue on the site where the parking lot across from the Greyhound station now stands), then striking it rich by turning a crude newsletter into the glossiest, crudest smut magazine America had seen up to that point. The rest is X-rated history and not suitable for anyone under 18 years of age.
But despite his notoriety, Flynt has also become one of the media’s most outspoken and fascinating pundits, skewering political hypocrites both left and right — just ask former incoming House Speaker Bob Livingston, who was forced to resign after his marital affairs were exposed by Flynt; the same Livingston who had jumped on the Ken Starr bandwagon and was crucifying Bill Clinton for his indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky. Paybacks. Aren’t they a bitch?
Now 70 years old, Flynt remains one of America’s most unlikely folk heroes—a good ol’ Midwestern boy who achieved the American Dream and in some crazy, messed-up way showed us what America is all about — the freedom for everyone to speak their mind…even if what they want to say is not always pretty or morally acceptable. Even you, Glenn Beck and Michael Moore.
Toledo City Paper caught up with Flynt for a few minutes before he began signing books at one of his Hustler stores in Monroe, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati (and followed up with a phone call at a later date) to discuss the modern political landscape, which nowadays makes Hustler look downright wholesome.
It seems like America has become more conservative than ever – the constant anti-abortion legislation, the moral panic about contraception, increased obscenity prosecution, etc. Why do you think we're seeing a flux of hard-right conservatism?
Well, the conservatives have always been the morality police, but I really think they're in the minority now because I think Americans still want to decide their own reading or viewing material–whatever it may be. I honestly feel that the conservative voice that is rallying this decency call, if you will, is a minority. I really do. I think most people are moderate. You've got the liberals on one end of the spectrum and you've got the conservatives on the opposite end, and the moderates, which are most of the population, fall in the middle.
Do you think the Tea Party is just a political and social fad or is it here to stay?
The Tea Party is just a bunch of frustrated Republicans. That's all. They're frustrated with the political process and I guess they just had enough sense to know that the potential for a third party wasn't viable so they aligned themselves with the Republican Party. Down through history, the progressives have always won out and I think they will again. You get a setback on occasion and that's what we're seeing now–the abortion issue, the contraception question or the pornography question. But I think that the American people today really feel insulted by people telling them what they can or cannot read, view, or do with their bodies.
So what did you think earlier this year when Michigan State Representative Lisa Brown was stopped from speaking on the House floor for saying the word “vagina?”
Well, it just shows you the hypocrisy that exists in a lot of state government, or all government, for that matter. But at the same time that was going on, the Supreme Court was deciding a case where they ruled in favor of CBS and some of the other networks because they allowed a four-letter word to be used during an award ceremony. So there's really no consistency. You have your isolated pockets of people who want to keep everybody's mind clean but at the same time they can't even keep the streets clean.
This has been a particularly ugly presidential election season. As somebody who's been involved in the political arena for decades, have you ever seen a political climate this adversarial?
Yes, but I'm looking at it from a different perspective. In my latest book, “One Nation Under Sex,” which was published last year, we covered the sex lives of past presidents and first ladies and how it affected the history of the country. Whether it was Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton or whoever it was, they were fighting and feuding and throwing mud at the time the Constitution was being drafted and it's still going on today. I can tell you why it seems much more visceral today and that's because of the media and the vast amount of coverage of everything. Technology enables people to do a lot of crazy stuff and both parties are seeing how creative and vicious they can get with their ads.
You've expressed views that are rather conservative on fiscal issues, but obviously you're more progressive on social issues. As someone who's done quite well for himself (Ed.—Flynt’s net worth is estimated to be around $400 million), do you believe the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy should end?
Absolutely. There's no reason why one percent of the people should control almost 70 percent of the wealth. That's ridiculous. But every time you start talking about that being unfair, they want to call you a socialist and say you want to redistribute the wealth. But that's not what it's about at all. This is a land of opportunity and people should be able to live it. But there's got to be a balance. No country has ever survived without a strong middle class and we don't have that now. Most of the middle class today are really afraid of losing their jobs.
How good do you think Obama's chances for reelection are in November?
I think they’re good. I don’t there’s anybody who believes he’ll win Ohio by eight to ten percentage points but I think it’ll be outside expectations. Romney is his own worst enemy. I actually think if he had run a different campaign, he could have beaten Obama. Don’t forget what bad shape Obama was in when his campaign started. I also happen to think (Jon) Huntsman should have got the nomination—he’s a moderate, he’s the former ambassador to China appointed by Obama. That was the guy who Obama was afraid was going to get the nomination. I’m sure Obama was happy when Romney got it, because all of [Romney’s] baggage could be plainly seen. Romney was not an unknown quantity, so they had all these videotapes of him doing interviews back when he was running against Ted Kennedy and from his time as governor of Massachusetts. He had taken on a lot of different positions that he just couldn’t dig his way out of.
What do you think has been Obama's biggest failure of his first term?
I honestly don’t believe there was a failure. I know this sounds like a broken record but I think it needs to be said even more. Clinton said it the other day, that not since the Great Depression have we been hit with such a setback to the economy. And of course, Franklin Roosevelt promised to balance the budget during his first term and he didn’t do it. And also remember, Lincoln promised in the beginning that he wasn’t going to free the slaves but he did, and we’re kind of glad that he ignored that agreement. They try to use everything that Obama says against him when he’s running for reelection but you have to look at the totality of what Obama was up against. He had a Congress that wanted him out and I think that race was part of the reason. You had all these white Anglo-Saxons and they wouldn’t work with him and it’s a sad commentary on our society that the color of a man’s skin could prevent him from participating in government. I think he did everything he could. I think the stimulus package was good, maybe it could have been defined a little bit better. Nothing’s perfect the first time around. Maybe the auto bailout could have been handled a little bit differently. But when you look at it in its totality, things could be much worse. We could be looking at 10 to 12 percent unemployment. Eight percent is not that good, but it’s also not that bad. All of Obama’s detractors want to quickly say “You didn’t do this, you didn’t do that, blah blah blah,” but look on the positive side of what he was able to accomplish.
You have a standing offer of $1 million dollars to anyone who can produce copies of Romney’s old tax returns. Have you had any leads?
We’re going through information now. There’s a lot of legal issues associated with that because if the returns were illegally obtained, it’s a crime for us to release them, so that makes it much more sensitive about how we handle the information. But everybody who has something or claims to have something, our attorney is working with them. We don’t know what the end result is going to be but the way things are going I may have to pay out that million dollars.