Larry Flynt, porn publisher and free speech activist, dead at 78 - Washington Post

[webfact]

Larry Flynt, porn publisher and free speech activist, dead at 78 - Washington Post

 

FILE PHOTO: Larry Flynt, head of Larry Flynt Publications, speaks to the news media about the Washington sex scandal involving U.S. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) and accused "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jean Palfrey and the possibility that other high-ranking U.S. elected officials may be involved during a news conference in Beverly Hills, July 11, 2007. REUTERS/Gus Ruelas/File Photo

 

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt Jr., the self-described "smut peddler who cares," who used his pornography empire and flair for the outrageous to push the limits of free speech, has died at the age of 78, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

 

The newspaper said Flynt's brother Jimmy Flynt confirmed his death but did not cite a specific cause. Flynt suffered from a variety of health problems since a 1978 assassination attempt that left him a paraplegic.

 

Flynt loved to aggravate his critics with stunts such as wearing a diaper made from an American flag to court and was involved in a number of legal battles.

 

In the most famous, the U.S. Supreme Court made an important First Amendment ruling in favor of Flynt in a libel battle with evangelist Jerry Falwell.

 

Flynt had published a fake ad in Hustler which depicted Falwell saying his first sexual encounter had been with his mother in an outhouse. Falwell sued for $50 million and won a lower court ruling but in 1988 the Supreme Court said the ad was a parody and protected by free speech standards.

 

In his heyday, Flynt lived a life that could have made Caligula blush. He wrote in his autobiography that his first sexual experience was with a chicken and told of having sex every four or five hours during a workday. After he was paralyzed, Flynt had penile implant surgery so he could continue to have sex.

 

Flynt created a business with an estimated turnover of $150 million at one point. As magazine circulation slipped, he stayed ahead of trends by investing in adult-oriented television channels, a casino, film distribution and merchandise.

 

He said he never objected to being labeled a smut peddler as long as he was considered a First Amendment crusader, too.

 

"Just because I publish pornography does not mean that I am not concerned about the social ills that all of us are," he once told an interviewer.

 

Flynt was often in legal trouble, fighting obscenity charges or lawsuits, and he often turned courtroom appearances into spectacles. His obscene outbursts once prompted his own lawyer to ask a judge to have Flynt bound and gagged.

 

EXPLICIT PICS

Born in 1942, Flynt grew up in poverty in Kentucky and Indiana and dropped out of school after the eighth grade. After stints in the armed forces and a General Motors plant, he and his brother opened the Hustler Club in Dayton, Ohio, in 1968. By 1973 it had grown to a string of strip clubs across the state and Flynt put out a newsletter to promote them.

 

That newsletter evolved into Hustler magazine, his flagship publication, which came to be infamous for featuring explicit photos that made competitor Playboy seem mild. Virtually nothing was off limits on Hustler's pages and Flynt made a point of publishing photos of women's genitalia.

 

At its peak, Hustler reportedly had a circulation of 3 million. Larry Flynt Publications also put out other porn magazines, as well as movies and mainstream magazines.

 

Flynt reveled in controversy. He made news by publishing pictures of a nude Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis sunbathing in 1975 and a cover photo of a naked woman being fed head first into a meat grinder. In 1998 he offered $1 million to anyone who could catch high-ranking U.S. government officials in a sex scandal.

 

"My competitors always masqueraded their pornography as art," Flynt told the Cincinnati Post. "We never had any pretensions about what we did ... We have proved that barnyard humor has a market appeal."

 

In 1977 he was convicted in Cincinnati of pandering obscenity and participating in organized crime but the verdict was overturned.

 

In 1978 Flynt was on trial on similar charges in Lawrenceville, Georgia, when he and his attorney were shot. Joseph Paul Franklin, a white supremacist, later confessed to the shootings, saying he was upset by Hustler's photographs of interracial sex, but was never prosecuted.

 

Flynt was left paralyzed from the waist down by the shooting, restricted to a $17,000 gold-plated wheelchair for the rest of his life.

 

In October 2013, one month before Franklin was executed in Missouri for racially motivated murders not related to the Flynt shooting, Flynt wrote in the Hollywood Reporter that he did not believe in the death penalty and did not want Franklin put to death. He did want vengeance, however.

 

"I would love an hour in a room with him and a pair of wire-cutters and pliers so I could inflict the same damage on him that he inflicted on me," Flynt said.

 

His life was the basis of the 1996 movie "The People vs. Larry Flynt," which starred Woody Harrelson and was based in part on Flynt's Supreme Court case.

 

Flynt was a Democrat whose magazines espoused liberal and libertarian views. He once ran for president against Ronald Reagan - promoting himself as "the smut peddler who cares" - and in 2003 campaigned for governor of California.

 

In 1977, he converted to evangelical Christianity at the urging of Ruth Carter Stapleton, sister of President Jimmy Carter, but renounced those beliefs the following year after the Georgia shooting.

 

Flynt's 1996 autobiography was titled "An Unseemly Man: My Life as a Pornographer, Pundit and Social Outcast."

 

He was married five times and had four surviving children.

 

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Writing by Eric Walsh; Editing by Bill Trott and Rosalba O'Brien)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2021-02-11

 

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[Kelsall]

"The story of controversial pornography publisher Larry Flynt, and how he became a defender of free speech."

 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117318/

Edited February 11, 2021 by Kelsall

[Tug]

Rip Larry and thanks for the mammories!

[Somtamnication]

Oh man. I grew hair on my knuckles because of him!!! RIP

[Rimmer]

A troll post dragging Trump into the topic has been removed

[sscc]

Heard about his name around Year 2000.

Never known this history about him dated back 4-5 decades ago. 

RIP,  Larry Flynt. 

[Captain Monday]

In a never ending quest for publicity in August 1977 Flynt published the original scratch and sniff centerfold. A fond memory of simpler times.

[SomchaiCNX]

R.I.P.

 

[mike787]

Ah ok!  Roger that. 

[John Drake]

Trying to think who is the bigger loss. Flynt? Leon Spinks? Or Tanya Roberts? Or is Tanya Roberts still living?

[Caldera]

I doubt that the younger generations of men who've had to grow up with toxic feminism will produce a character like him.

 

RIP Larry, your magazine proved very educational to me when I technically wasn't even allow to buy one yet. Great memories!

 

[D M G]

P I N K

[onebir]

13 hours ago, webfact said:

He wrote in his autobiography that his first sexual experience was with a chicken and told of having sex every four or five hours during a workday. After he was paralyzed, Flynt had penile implant surgery so he could continue to have sex.

Poor chicken never got a break

[Mai mee]

Godspeed!

[Pique Dard]

RIP! an era comes to an end

[Penicillin]

42 minutes ago, Mai mee said:

Godspeed!

I would be surprised if he went that direction. 

[Jingthing]

What's a magazine?

[pseudorabies]

*Altered quote has been edited out*

 

Roberts had been taken to one hospital where she was pronounced dead but was then taken to a better hospital where she was listed in stable condition.  Sadly she did eventually die.

 

Flynt's first amendment Supreme Court ruling still casts a large shadow and figures into the multi-billion dollar defamation cases brought against Fox News and Trump's attorneys by Dominion and Smartmatic.  If the plaintiffs lose in these cases it will be because of the SC ruling in Flynt's case.  The man certainly left his mark on American history.

 

 

Edited February 13, 2021 by Scott