Larry Flynt's Gold Wheelchair
The former publisher of Hustler, like most larger than life personalities, looks a lot smaller in person. Yesterday afternoon, Seattle University law school students had the opportunity to take a gander at the first amendment devotee where local chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Constitution Society sponsored an appearance by the patron saint of smut. His bodyguard called 15 minutes after he was scheduled to begin to say he had just landed at Boeing Field so spectators had to wait an extra hour for him to arrive, gold wheelchair, bad red hair dye and all.
But as one student blowing off his instructors observed: “I’ll probably learn more about the constitution here than in class.”
“I know, he’s a living legend,” his slacker friend added.
Larry Flynt is the man that bridged the gap between the ambiguous references to where babies come from in sex ed and the way it really works, sort of. He publishes photographic representations, complete with whips and chains, of the real nuts and bolts of the procreative process. He fought for the right to distribute his material, taking on his equally vehement conservative counterpart Jerry Falwell in a faux print ad that led to the 1988 Supreme Court decision protecting parody as free speech. As Flynt himself says, without Hustler there is no Daily Show. (This and other moments in his life were immortalized in a 1996 movie starring Woody Harrelson and Courtney Love. Earlier this week, Rick Anderson delved into Love’s latest legal battles.)
But these days, Flynt is more quaint than edgy. He’s still making a pitch for the acceptance of graphic material in a world where the internet has made the pages of Hustler look tame.
He has a series of platitudes he draws out to justify his own material: “The price we pay to live in a free society is toleration.” Or: “The church has had its hand on our crotch for over 2,000 years.”
While this may all ring of truth, Flynt just isn’t under the kind of assault he used to be. He asserts that anyone broaching the subject of sex is attacked, but universities around the country have started porn studies classes. Even Seattle Pacific University, a local Methodist school, has a class on human sexuality that gets into the biological role of foreplay. Flynt himself seemed to miss the irony of the fact that he was speaking at a Catholic school.
But if sex doesn’t suffer the same censorship as it did in the eighties, free speech may still need protection in a country where for years after the September 11 attacks, journalists and opinion makers who questioned the evidence leading us into war were branded disloyal and unpatriotic.
And maybe this is where Flynt still has something important to say.
“If you’re not going to offend anybody, you don’t need the protection of the first amendment,” he says. “It’s the people out there that are really raising hell that need that protection.”
And that’s why I’m not ashamed to say that a purveyor of porn in a bad dye job and a gold wheelchair spouting cliches can also be a source of inspiration.
3 comment(s)
Gil Costello says:
I enjoyed, in an ironic sense, the incongruous, juxtaposed titles Ms. Onstot gives Larry Flynt in ?arry Flynt? Gold Wheelchair? ?irst Amendment devotee?and ?atron saint of smut? Incongruous because Larry Flynt hasn? a constitutional bone in his body. He never intended to be and has never been a devotee of constitutional rights. He? just an icky man who is devoted to publishing smut in an effort to amass wealth by indulging his obsession with denigrating women in the only realm that matters to him and men like him?onfining women to being objects of sexual denigration. His life has become a test case for the constitutional right to free speech and nothing more, and the title of ?irst Amendment devotee?conferred on him by the ACLU and Hollywood simply dresses him up in ethical garb to mask his singular obsession. If Hollywood had made an accurate fable of the life of Larry Flynt, it would have been a remake of ?he Emperor? New Clothes? only this time the emperor would have an erection.
It? strange, isn? it? I mean, when a serial rapist with stacks and stacks of DNA evidence proving his guilt is freed from prison because of a constitutional technicality, the ACLU doesn? go on and on about the dignity of the rapist that must be acknowledged because he is a First Amendment devotee, sponsoring events to honor the man and insisting that we, too, acknowledge the greatness of the man.
Hugh Hefner amassed millions with a simple notion: commingle glossy air-brushed slut with intellectual essays and interviews to give professional men a protected place to indulge fantasies of dominating women sexually. It was an ingenious act, original in every way. But there isn? anything original about Larry Flynt. He? just an icky smut peddler, not capable of an original thought. That? why he is basking in and promoting a tile the ACLU and Hollywood has bestowed on him. He never sought it or even imagined it. It originally helped keep his smut empire alive, and now he, in his approach to the final curtain with his dyed red hair, is taking the title seriously. Even here he is a coward, because Hugh Hefner obviously will not forsake or dress up his singular desire to make lots of money so he can continue to have Barbie Doll women at his beck and call in his king-size bed, living out the fantasy he promotes for men like himself in his magazine. He is not living a lie. But Flynt now needs the ACLU lie more than the exploitation of women to extend ad infinitum his 15 minutes of fame, especially since his sexual self-image and activity has been diminished by a wheel-chair, and the ACLU, the Weekly and other misguided forums will continue to accommodate him.
Gil Costello
Posted On: Thursday, Sep. 27 2007 @ 11:56AM
Gil Costello says:
I enjoyed, in an ironic sense, the incongruous, juxtaposed titles Ms. Onstot gives Larry Flynt in ?arry Flynt? Gold Wheelchair? ?irst Amendment devotee?and ?atron saint of smut? Incongruous because Larry Flynt hasn? a constitutional bone in his body. He never intended to be and has never been a devotee of constitutional rights. He? just an icky man who is devoted to publishing smut in an effort to amass wealth by indulging his obsession with denigrating women in the only realm that matters to him and men like him?onfining women to being objects of sexual denigration. His life has become a test case for the constitutional right to free speech and nothing more, and the title of ?irst Amendment devotee?conferred on him by the ACLU and Hollywood simply dresses him up in ethical garb to mask his singular obsession. If Hollywood had made an accurate fable of the life of Larry Flynt, it would have been a remake of ?he Emperor? New Clothes? only this time the emperor would have an erection.
It? strange, isn? it? I mean, when a serial rapist with stacks and stacks of DNA evidence proving his guilt is freed from prison because of a constitutional technicality, the ACLU doesn? go on and on about the dignity of the rapist that must be acknowledged because he is a First Amendment devotee, sponsoring events to honor the man and insisting that we, too, acknowledge the greatness of the man.
Hugh Hefner amassed millions with a simple notion: commingle glossy air-brushed slut with intellectual essays and interviews to give professional men a protected place to indulge fantasies of dominating women sexually. It was an ingenious act, original in every way. But there isn? anything original about Larry Flynt. He? just an icky smut peddler, not capable of an original thought. That? why he is basking in and promoting a tile the ACLU and Hollywood has bestowed on him. He never sought it or even imagined it. It originally helped keep his smut empire alive, and now he, in his approach to the final curtain with his dyed red hair, is taking the title seriously. Even here he is a coward, because Hugh Hefner obviously will not forsake or dress up his singular desire to make lots of money so he can continue to have Barbie Doll women at his beck and call in his king-size bed, living out the fantasy he promotes for men like himself in his magazine. He is not living a lie. But Flynt now needs the ACLU lie more than the exploitation of women to extend ad infinitum his 15 minutes of fame, especially since his sexual self-image and activity has been diminished by a wheel-chair, and the ACLU, the Weekly and other misguided forums will continue to accommodate him.
Gil Costello
Posted On: Thursday, Sep. 27 2007 @ 11:57AM
Lucy says:
Yesterday....I bought a wheelchair from Brookstone store through Couponalbum.com and saved $50........!!
Posted On: Friday, Oct. 26 2007 @ 12:41AM