Larry Flynt
“What's THAT mean? I'm supposed to give away my magazine for nothing!?”
Larry Claxton Flynt (November 1, 1942 - February 10, 2021) was born Larry Flintstone in Flint, Michigan, where he was often mistaken for a look-alike Michael Moore. Of unfortunate physical appearance, with a large head, bulbous nose, a square jaw, a perpetual beard, unkempt hair, a stocky build, and thick limbs, Flynt resembled a Neanderthal and, in high school, was known as "Caveman". Until later in his life, neither girls nor women had much to do with Flynt.
Hustle[edit]
Larry's cartoon parents were Fred Flintstone and Wilma Slaghoople but he didn't make it to their show, rejected in favour of his sister Pebbles. After graduating from high school, Flynt changed his name from "Flintstone" and moved to Bedrock, Arkansas, where, after serving in the military and working as a crane operator at a stone quarry, he opened several strip clubs and published Hustle, one of the first pornographic magazines that was distributed to the general public. Flynt's periodical had been preceded by Hu Humper's Playgurl and others, but Hustle was hardcore, showing not only nude female models, but also nude male models, depicting bare-naked couples contorting and coupling. One of his magazine’s features was its "Anal Retentive of the Month", in which the writer parodied a famous person, such as Jerry Falwell, whose caricatured likeness, framed, as it were, by a gaping anus, illustrated the supposed biographical sketch.
Flynt was inspired as a very young man by Adolf Hitler. He was in awe of the xenophobic anti-Semitic attitudes that Adolf had and felt Hitler was as misunderstood as Larry Flynt was. He realized one group AdolfHitler didn't attack was women. And he felt misogyny was not utilized to its fullest potential, even for the early centuries in the dark ages. And so he founded Hustler. Now he noticed Playboy and Penthouse had too much text—too many words. And he realized perverts didn't want to read—and most didn't even know how. So he just literally put the most deviant and perverse graphic photos of women and their bodies in his magazines—usually against their will. The feminist community was doing all kind of things in the 1960's and 1970's. So... Flynt figured out how he could put a stop to it. Or at least use his magazine to make money by rebelling against it. He wanted to use his magazine to bring back old-fashioned values and institutions such as the gas chamber and the oven—but for women.
Military service[edit]
As a child, Flynt was poor. He joined the Army at 15, but was discharged a year later, whereupon he joined the Navy and served aboard the Starship Enterprise. He was dishonorably discharged—from a cannon, into a burning tire pit. After serving honorably under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, he opened a strip club before publishing Hustle.
Personal life[edit]
According to his autobiography, his first sexual experience was with a chicken, which he describes as having been similar in sensation to sexual intercourse with a woman and as offering a bonus: "You don't have to buy the chicken flowers or candy or say you love her just to get a piece of ass."
After becoming wealthy as a purveyor of pornography, Flynt had a series of plastic surgeries, resembling Michael Jackson, before finally settling on the look shown in this recent photograph. Women, who had previously avoided Flynt, now seemed to find him irresistible. Flynt maintained his sudden allure was a result of the surgical alterations to his appearance, but critics contend it was because Hustle earned him approximately $150 million per year. Flynt was married five times.
President Jiminy ("Cricket") Carter’s sister, Jean Stapleton, star of The Archie Bunk Show and an evangelical Christian, converted Flynt, and he began to have visions of God after drinking large quantities of whisky laced with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) aboard his private jet. In these visions, he says, Jesus told him to "hustle for God", and, as a result, he changed the title of one of his magazine’s comic strips from "Chester the Molester" to "Chester the Protector" and directed the strip’s creator to show Chester using his baseball bat not to knock out pre-adolescent girls whom he intended to sexually assault but, rather, to knock out perverts who sought to molest these girls. According to a movie, The Peephole vs. Larry Flynt, this strip has autobiographical significance.
He suffers from bipolar disorder and is paralyzed from the waist down due to an assassination attempt. After the assassination attempt paralyzed his lower body and his hairline began to recede, Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee used his image as inspiration for Professor X.
Flynt was loud-mouthed and aggressive, and constantly schemed to improve his working-class lot in life, often with unintended results. He has participated (often as a defendant) in several legal battles involving the First Amendment, and he has run, or perhaps more accurately "rolled", for public office a number of times. "If you're crippled to have genital sex, you can always molest a girl with your mouth. And if you're her own biological father. Well... there's a funny story about that. When I had kids of my own, I..."
Legal proceedings[edit]
Flynt won a case before the U. S. Supreme Court (Keeton v. Hustler, 465 U.S. 770 ) by arguing that the justices were "nothing but eight assholes and a token cunt". In another trial about his refusal to disclose the source of the John DeLorean surveillance tapes that were potentially embarrassing to the FBI, he wore an American flag as a diaper and played The Star-spangled Banner per anum.
During a legal battle related to obscenity in Gwinnett County, Georgia, on March 6, 1978, he and his local lawyer U. Gene Reefer, Jr., were shot from ambush near the county courthouse in Lawrenceville. Some suspect that the "hit" was commissioned by the prosecuting attorney, whose case was not going well, but white supremacist serial killer Joey ("White Boy") Franklin confessed to the shootings, claiming he was outraged by an interracial photo shoot in Hustle. Flynt told the shooter that, "instead of shooting me, you should have just shot your load or turned the page." Flynt's injuries left him paralyzed from the waist down, which he calls "ironic for a pornographer". He adds that, as a result of his paralysis, he has become "adept at providing oral sex". Blaming God for the shooting, Flynt renounced his faith and moved with his wife of the moment, Adele, to a mansion in Bel Air, Californicate, and disowned Pebbles when his daughter became a Christian who made it her mission to oppose pornography. She claimed that Flynt sexually abused her as a child, when he was still proud to call himself her papa, but Flynt maintained that he did not do so, because "oral sex isn't sex".
Philosophy[edit]
He summarized his philosophy of criminal justice, publishing, and free speech thus: "You take a picture of a murder, which is illegal, and you can win Picture of the Year for Time magazine. You take a picture of two people having sex, which is not illegal, and you can get thrown in jail."
The Peephole vs. Larry Flynt[edit]
A film by Miles O. Foreskin, The Peephole vs. Larry Flynt chronicles the trials and tribulations of Flynt's life as a purveyor of filth and a protector of what Flynt called "First Amendment rights to be an asshole". Starring Woody Hornyson as Flynt, the movie centers on a community's objections to a peephole that Flynt installs in the ladies' room of the Liberty Baptist Church. Although the film was praised by critics, it was "unappreciated" by the public, Flynt said, which "would rather watch a snuff film than something with merit that explores Constitutional issues and the functions of religious bodies in modern America". Flynt had a cameo appearance in the film, playing a recipient of his magazine's "Anal Retentive of the Month" award, a Plexiglas colon shaped like Larry Flynt.