Post by K-Box on Oct 7, 2008 23:24:13 GMT -8
Larry Flynt is a guy I've always had time for.
In stark contrast to John McCain, a guy whom I used to admire because he seemed to represent so much of the best of America, there's a lot of bad things that have been said about Larry, and it's safe to say that the vast majority of them are probably true.
"White trash" might be the nicest thing you could call Larry. Even I couldn't begin to guess at the worst you could credibly say about him. Throughout his life, he's been undeniably self-serving, frequently deceptive, arguably misogynistic and, quite literally, clinically insane.
Larry married an underage stripper whose upbringing was somehow even more dysfunctional than his own, and the two of them managed to amplify one another's damage to the point that his wife finally died from the drug-heavy lifestyle that they both led.
Larry was an "attention whore" before the term even existed, willing to waste massive amounts of money and run afoul of the law on countless occasions, just to see his own name on TV and in newspapers, even if he had to lie like hell and get sentenced to several lengthy jail terms to do it.
And depending on where you stand, Hustler, the crown jewel of his publishing empire, is either the root of all anti-Christian indecency, or the single most anti-feminist cultural institution, in modern America.
And yet, I genuinely like the guy, not in spite of being a pig, but because of it, because even his sworn foes would acknowledge that Larry Flynt is one of the few figures in either the media or politics to own up to damn near the full extent of his own fucked-upness.
Any straight guy of a certain age is going to look back on his adolescent memories of reading - or rather, "reading" - Hustler fondly, but however deep my appreciation is for Larry's work on that score, his far more significant positive contribution to society came from his willingness to fight the Supreme Court case of Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, which officially cemented the supremacy of freedom of speech over the desires of public figures to avoid having emotional distress intentionally inflicted upon them.
Even The People vs. Larry Flynt, a largely sympathetic account of Larry's life which culminated in the Supreme Court's verdict on this case, concedes in its portrayal of Larry that he more than likely was primarily motivated by the same vengeful self-aggrandizement that seems to have driven much of his life, but you know what? GOOD. If that's true, then the value of such a decision becomes even more that one need not have "good intentions" when saying "bad things" about public figures. It's a RIGHT, not an "entitlement," and it extends to all Americans, even unrepentant scumbags like Larry, the self-admitted chicken-fucking pornographer.
And now, with his upcoming porn film parodying Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice and even Bill O'Reilly (that last one just recently got leaked to the press), Larry's doing it again. He won a Supreme Court victory for free speech by publishing a parody that claimed that fundamentalist evangelical demagogue Jerry Falwell had fucked his own mother in an outhouse, and from the looks of it, that was just a warm-up for the even worse treatment that he plans to turn on the players in this year's presidential election, and you know what? GOOD. After eight years of the media generally genuflecting by reflex toward all authority in this country, it's nothing less than our patriotic duty as Americans to disrespect our leaders in as crude and vicious a fashion as possible. "Hate speech" is wrong when applied to those who suffer from societal discrimination, but it is ALWAYS morally right when directed toward those in power.
In America, everybody gets their shot, even a pig, and after eight years of enforced polite silence, in the face of unconscionable atrocities committed against our rights and freedoms, it's high time that Larry Flynt started squealing again, and dragged everyone down into the filth with him.
In stark contrast to John McCain, a guy whom I used to admire because he seemed to represent so much of the best of America, there's a lot of bad things that have been said about Larry, and it's safe to say that the vast majority of them are probably true.
"White trash" might be the nicest thing you could call Larry. Even I couldn't begin to guess at the worst you could credibly say about him. Throughout his life, he's been undeniably self-serving, frequently deceptive, arguably misogynistic and, quite literally, clinically insane.
Larry married an underage stripper whose upbringing was somehow even more dysfunctional than his own, and the two of them managed to amplify one another's damage to the point that his wife finally died from the drug-heavy lifestyle that they both led.
Larry was an "attention whore" before the term even existed, willing to waste massive amounts of money and run afoul of the law on countless occasions, just to see his own name on TV and in newspapers, even if he had to lie like hell and get sentenced to several lengthy jail terms to do it.
And depending on where you stand, Hustler, the crown jewel of his publishing empire, is either the root of all anti-Christian indecency, or the single most anti-feminist cultural institution, in modern America.
And yet, I genuinely like the guy, not in spite of being a pig, but because of it, because even his sworn foes would acknowledge that Larry Flynt is one of the few figures in either the media or politics to own up to damn near the full extent of his own fucked-upness.
Any straight guy of a certain age is going to look back on his adolescent memories of reading - or rather, "reading" - Hustler fondly, but however deep my appreciation is for Larry's work on that score, his far more significant positive contribution to society came from his willingness to fight the Supreme Court case of Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, which officially cemented the supremacy of freedom of speech over the desires of public figures to avoid having emotional distress intentionally inflicted upon them.
Even The People vs. Larry Flynt, a largely sympathetic account of Larry's life which culminated in the Supreme Court's verdict on this case, concedes in its portrayal of Larry that he more than likely was primarily motivated by the same vengeful self-aggrandizement that seems to have driven much of his life, but you know what? GOOD. If that's true, then the value of such a decision becomes even more that one need not have "good intentions" when saying "bad things" about public figures. It's a RIGHT, not an "entitlement," and it extends to all Americans, even unrepentant scumbags like Larry, the self-admitted chicken-fucking pornographer.
And now, with his upcoming porn film parodying Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice and even Bill O'Reilly (that last one just recently got leaked to the press), Larry's doing it again. He won a Supreme Court victory for free speech by publishing a parody that claimed that fundamentalist evangelical demagogue Jerry Falwell had fucked his own mother in an outhouse, and from the looks of it, that was just a warm-up for the even worse treatment that he plans to turn on the players in this year's presidential election, and you know what? GOOD. After eight years of the media generally genuflecting by reflex toward all authority in this country, it's nothing less than our patriotic duty as Americans to disrespect our leaders in as crude and vicious a fashion as possible. "Hate speech" is wrong when applied to those who suffer from societal discrimination, but it is ALWAYS morally right when directed toward those in power.
In America, everybody gets their shot, even a pig, and after eight years of enforced polite silence, in the face of unconscionable atrocities committed against our rights and freedoms, it's high time that Larry Flynt started squealing again, and dragged everyone down into the filth with him.