Hustler’s June 1978 cover caught the enigmas of a magazine that was at once salacious, satirical, perverse, decadent, gleefully immoral and hypocritical. It portrayed a woman upside down and half gone into a meat grinder, with a plate of hamburger below. A “seal of approval” noted: “Prime. Last All Meat Issue. Grade ‘A’ Pink.” A caption quoted Mr. Flynt, “We will no longer hang women up like pieces of meat.”...
[T]he feminist Gloria Steinem wrote a scathing denunciation on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times. “A pornographer is not a hero,” she said. “Hustler is depicted as tacky at worst, and maybe even honest for showing full nudity. What’s left out are the magazine’s images of women being beaten, tortured and raped, women subject to degradations from bestiality to sexual slavery.”
The images featured in Hustler were certainly graphic and often violent: Women were depicted crawling at the end of a dog leash, nailed to a cross, bagged like a deer and bound to a luggage rack. One cover showed a woman’s head in a gift box....
Much more at the link — the court cases, the First Amendment victories, the gruesome shooting, the movie Milos Forman made about him, the 5 wives, the success in business despite a lack of education. I'll just add the quote from his lawyer, Herald Price Fahringer , that I blogged when the lawyer died 6 years ago:A 1983 study financed by the Justice Department and conducted by Judith Reisman, the conservative author and academic, found that thousands of cartoons in Hustler, as well as its competitors Playboy and Penthouse, depicted rape, botched abortions and children in sexual poses. “Chester the Molester,” a long-running Hustler cartoon feature about a pedophile, was denounced by many critics, but Mr. Flynt defended it as bawdy social satire.... After being approached in 1977 by the evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton, President Jimmy Carter’s sister, Mr. Flynt announced that he had become a born-again Christian, saying he had had a vision of God while airborne in his jet with Ms. Stapleton. He banned smoking at Hustler, gave the staff a raise, began a carrot juice diet and vowed to “hustle for God.” But he soon resumed his ventures and vices, calling himself an atheist.
"Freedom is only meaningful if it includes all speech, no matter who is offended by it. It would be a hazardous undertaking for anyone to start separating the permissible speech from the impermissible, using the standard of offensiveness. The freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment is indivisible. You can’t take it away from Larry Flynt and keep it for yourself. The real issue of this case is: Are we afraid to be free?"
It's a lot easier to answer that question now, unfortunately: Yes, we are afraid to be free.
122 comments:
A puppet show. That said, normalization, tolerance, or rejection?
Good that he gave the staff a raise and banned smoking.
Sometime in the 70's Hustler had a cover of crucified plush Easter bunny that I still think about from time to time.
He was only 78? Thought he would be much older. Jesus. RIP.
Who is this “we” you speak of?
"The success in business despite a lack of education" is an interesting statement. Apparently he lacked credentials, but not capability. Let's not confuse the two. Hustler showed it all in glorious, bright colors. No pretense of intellectual journalism. I would choose Larry Flynt for companionship over Gloria Steinem on any occasion.
He was always entertaining in Imus interviews. Al Goldstein was good too. A sense of humor might run with pornographers.
Popular heroes, like popular speech, don't need protecting.
Perhaps a crusty old wheelchair bound perverted smut monger wasn't the most ideal free speech advocate, but he's what we got. In his day it was largely the moral crusaders from the right that were far more significant. But taody it's the left that are the censors. In the era of high tech speech suppression, cancel culture, and Twitter mob justice he was an anachronism.
"Yes, we are afraid to be free."
Not that I agree with him. Or not that I agreed with him at the time I read it, but this was in part Erich Fromm's theory in "Escape from Freedom" where he claimed that many people want to be told what to believe, or more accurately, want the reassurance of everybody believing the same thing -- which was part of Erich Fromm's theory of why National Socialism happened.
I can't recall exactly. But I remember being irritated by Fromm's dystopian view of human nature. But maybe it is relevant and especially now.
Ironically, the religious (e.g. moral, "ethical") adventurists were liberals of the left-side (i.e. consolidation of capital and control) of the political spectrum. Liberals of the right-side ("libertarians") are more concerned with prospects of normalization, tolerance, and rejection. They still are. Liberalism is a divergent ideology.
Larry Flint taught me that there is nothing more beautiful on earth than healthy female genitalia in all its glory. Since the dawn of Western Culture, great artists skirted around the edges a bit (Gustave Courbet's, L'Origine du mondecomes comes to mind), but Flint dove right in.
Many, perhaps most, have always been afraid of freedom, especially other peoples' freedom.
Like our black bird, I'd take dick Flynt's company over cunt Steinem's any day.
Narr
And what makes an alliance of feminists and moralists "unlikely'?
Attacking evangelicals so brave.
IIRC one of his centerfold sported a scratch-and-sniff strip Down There.
Chicken f*ckr. Once you do that to a chicken, and brag about it, it’s hard to associate anything else with your name.
He is both timely and antiquated at the moment...
The freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment is indivisible.
Now there's an archaic statement.
Black bear, not bird. Sorry Oso!
Narr
Stupid computer!
I admit to purchasing Hustler back in the day. Or at least picking up a copy when available. Not for the pics, but for the jokes. The Most Tasteless Cartoon, Chester the Molester, etc.
Raw, raunchy and funny.
"In 1978, while on trial in Lawrenceville, Ga., on an obscenity charge, he was shot near the courthouse by a sniper who fled. Mr. Flynt’s legs were permanently paralyzed, and he spent the rest of his life using a gold-plated wheelchair. The assailant, Joseph Paul Franklin, a white supremacist who objected to Hustler’s portrayal of interracial couples, was captured in 1980."
--
A bit of a difficult narrative..
From hustler to cuties how far we have gone.
"The freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment is indivisible.”
Terms and conditions apply.
One cover showed a woman’s head in a gift box....
I remember that cover from years & years ago because it was a joke. The woman's head was clearly not severed. It was just a woman's head in a gift box & the title of the article was "Giving Head". Clearly, to anyone with even a barely functioning sense of humor, the joke was pun on a slang term for oral sex & the sense of "giving" as in giving a gift. There was nothing violent or inherently misogynist about it.
It's really hard to take these people seriously when they miss up the details so badly.
Never knew the Chester the Molester origin. We pre-teen kids called potential kidnappers Chester, and I now I am sure it originated with some teens who had access. We were always wary of potential Chesters, so maybe it was good to be alerted to it. Also recall my friend's dad who found our clubhouse stash of nudie mags and casually told us that our stack had one fewer publication. He left the Playboys and even a Penthouse or two, but removed the Hustler. We didn't need an explanation why.
At the time, and still now, I assume he burned it. But I guess I really don't know what he did with it. . . .
Hustler had funny cartoons.
Another point is that the counterculture of the middle 60's until the mid-80's was just muuuuuuuch raunchier as a matter of course than is commonly understood in these politically correct days.
There were underground comics, underground newspapers, magazines like Hustler, magazines for men that featured sex & violence like "Stag", grind house movies, and above all, National Lampoon. I'm amazed that NatLamp got published at all. I used to go into a mall bookstore as a 14 year old boy in northern Alabama and buy a magazine on the stands that would now get me arrested for possession of child pornography!
The 1st Amemdment/Free Speech attitudes of Boomers like myself & La Professora reflects that we came from a much more rip-roaring time, free speech -wise.
I read about how he toured with Falwrll to talk about 1st Amendment issues.
I hadn't cared for either man - but the story improved my opinion if both. Still cannot claim to be a fan, but credit where due.
Any enemy of Gloria Steinman and Jerry Falwell is a friend of mine.
Unmentioned is that he was a pioneer of modern journalism. His reporting on Jerry Falwell's blow jobs set the standard for accuracy that the media strive for today.
Heh ken b, so cuties is ok, but free thinking ala carano is verboten
Then: Chester the Molester
Now: Joe Sniffengroper
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Interesting Flynt interview at CBS news back in 1977 with Morley Safer. Flynt impresses me as a very smart guy. He definitely had an interesting life offending people right and left and defending freedom of speech.
I definitely agree with him that porn is boring but serves a purpose for people who are repressed and can be very humorous.
I've been listening to The Dershow (Alan Dershowitz) on rumble lately and his discussions about the 1st Amendment regarding Trump's impeachment theatrical presentation and Dersh makes the point that freedom of speech is protected even if what is said is wrong, even if it is a lie.
An illustration
https://babylonbee.com/news/gina-carano-rehired-by-disney-after-she-identifies-as-an-abusive-male-director
The only blog in the universe where you can find sequential posts discussing Larry Flynt, Thomas Pynchon, Shakespeare, and pinion nuts.
If I were you, I'd pull a George Costanza and leave while you're hot. George goes out on a high note.
I only looked at Hustler for the interviews.
Young Hegelian has it right: the 60s counterculture let it all hang out, and boy was it fun while it lasted! The release of the once-suppressed and unnoticed into the American dreamscape changed everything, and IMO mostly for the good.
That 90% of it was crap is immaterial; that 90% of today's youngsters profess their own rebeldom while conforming to the most rigid social signaling and sorting is just proof that we could use some freak now.
The saddest part of the last 20 years or so for me is seeing so many of my old friends turn into MSDNC zombies. They don't question--in the slightest--the official line from the scum at The Organs, as reported by such luminaries as Andrea Bitchell.
Narr
I've changed my front, but I've never changed my ground
Jim at said...
I admit to purchasing Hustler back in the day. Or at least picking up a copy when available. Not for the pics, but for the jokes.
Yeah. I remember buying Playboy for the deeply intellectual articles as well. It was a hip lifestyle thing doncha know.
He was only 78? The movie has to be 25 years old and he was in his 80s then.
"Yes, we are afraid to be free."
No, "we" are not. Progs pretend to be afraid, or claim others have to be afraid, in order to maximize their power and coerce us into doing what they want. Like anything else, fear is a tool.
Flynn was useful to the left as long as he transvalued values and shocked the right. Afterward, not so much.
Question: what is the current prog position on porn? OK only if gay or interracial, or what?
Yeah. I remember buying Playboy for the deeply intellectual articles as well. It was a hip lifestyle thing doncha know.
Heh. Thing is, there were plenty of mags with nekkid women, but only one with Hustler's sense of humor.
Where is the government restricting speech on the internet? By banning people spouting unpopular views, private internet forums are expressing their privately funded speech.
I hear parler is a funtastic place to plot insurrection and screech the November-word with Glee. No one would be complaining about twitter Facebook YouTube if they banned Hustler style content.
Never liked Hustler. The roughnecks loved it. They liked the look of "bubblegum" and we're amateur gynecologists.
One wonders if Althouse followed in her father's footsteps by keeping the latest Hustler on the coffee table when her kids were young.
Howard asked: "Where is the government restricting speech on the internet?"
When they team up with Zuckerdork and Dorsey.
"private internet forums " enabled by section 230 protections until they act like publishers.
But as that TIME piece spells out, collusion, cancellation is cool so long as it's against Orange Man Band and anyone who dares support him.
Semper Fud!
YoungHegelian said...
I'm amazed that NatLamp got published at all. I used to go into a mall bookstore as a 14 year old boy in northern Alabama and buy a magazine on the stands that would now get me arrested for possession of child pornography!
Nowadays the store would be doxxed. The owner and its employees would be doxxed. Anyone going in would be harassed and doxxed. The store would fold quickly and remove the offending items, apologize abjectly, put up a solidarity sign in the window, and make a donation to whatever outrage cause demanded it.
One of my fave historical sites: I like to take visitors to see the courthouse pavement where some sicko blew his balls to kingdom come. Oddly, nobody has ever taken me up on my sincere, yes written, offer to do an historical marker and interpretative tours at the site. Lest someone whine, the guy was a rapist and pedophile, not a free speech hero. So tit for tat.
"Freedom is only meaningful if it includes all speech, no matter who is offended by it. It would be a hazardous undertaking for anyone to start separating the permissible speech from the impermissible, using the standard of offensiveness."
Do you really believe in free speech?
Believe Larry Flynt's Lawyer?
yes/no?
"Where is the government restricting speech on the internet?”
Everything Standard Oil did was legal right up until it wasn’t. It may be too late in the U.S. It may be that Big Tech has established a permanent dominance over our society, but look for India, the EU, lots of countries to rein in this cancer of a loophole in the first amendment before it’s too late for them.
Nobody was actually blacklisted in the fifties either, because they could still make movies on Super 8 film and show them in church basements either. It’s funny to hear the left support it, and if you support Biden, who is no longer going to measure policies by effect on GDP. but on gender fairness and climate impact, you are on the left.
"Where is the government restricting speech on the internet?”
The textbook definition of fascism is when corporate powers and the state combine forces to put and keep the fascist party in power.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.*
*Terms and conditions may apply.
It's a lot easier to answer that question now, unfortunately: Yes, we are afraid to be free.
What you mean we, Kemosabe?
The old fraternity house bathroom was full of hustler but honestly I preferred Georgia O'Keeffe.
the guy was a rapist and pedophile, not a free speech hero
Trans-social. Standards evolve with sociopolitical climate change.
gina-carano-rehired-by-disney-after-she-identifies-as-an-abusive-male-director
Stranger than fiction. Satire, even. Oh, wait.
From hustler to cuties how far we have gone.
From one real and imagined extreme to another, there will always be rebels with a cause and without... And so social standards evolve, perhaps progress at the Twilight Fringe, sometimes on principle. Normalize, tolerate, or reject?
All in all, Hefner had the most successful career. He looked a little silly or maybe even strange towards the end, but, for the most part, he ate his cake and enjoyed it without getting fat. Guccione looked more sleazy than sophisticated and went broke. Nobody loves a broke pornographer. Even worse for Al Goldstein: he not only went broke but went crazy and got extremely fat. But of all the sad stories among pornographers, Larry Flynt had it the worst. Wheelchair bound, in pain a lot of the time, unloved by intimates. A pornographer's lot is not a happy one.
The freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment is indivisible.
No, it evolves (e.g. living), sometimes progresses (i.e. monotonic), and always mutates. Such is the secular sensibility of a selective, opportunistic, relativistic (e.g. "ethical") quasi-religious philosophy.
alas poor yorick, which was kind of referenced in endgame, this harkonnen flesh peddler did little to improve the public space, you see what is verboten, and what is allowed, free thinking on issues of note, is the formers, 'the feelies, see huxley is the latter,
If you didn't like Hustler (or don't like me) you should skip this comment.
Speaking of interracial sex (NTTAWWT) I recall one spread (I'm pretty sure it was Hustler) featuring a tiny petite little blonde and a strapping young African-American male. My friends and I used to read out, with foot stomps and guffawing, her comments about the aftermath of their fornications which ended with the observation that "it was all pink running out of me--you know, mixed with the blood and all."
Narr
I still think it's funny but they're mostly prigs now
meanwhile,
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/02/grim-reaper-lawyer-in-hot-water-with-district-court-over-lawsuit-to-get-desantis-to-close-beaches/
An issue of Hustler was the prime porn possession for a pre-teen boy when I was growing up.
It's a lot easier to answer that question now, unfortunately: Yes, we are afraid to be free.
I'm not so sure why that should be unfortunate. We should be afraid to be free. We should be afraid of a woman's freedom to destroy her unborn children, of a father's freedom to abandon his family, of a teenager's freedom to commodify and monetize his body, of an addict's freedom to indulge in his own self-destruction, or of a user's freedom to exploit.
that isn't freedom that is license, a substitution of same,
I never liked Larry Flynt. He struck me as an uninteresting person apart from the natural attraction a martyr for free speech ought to command from anyone who holds the principle as sacred and inviolable.
Nor did I enjoy his publications, though I must have thumbed through an issue of Hustler only once or twice. All I recall is a mounting sense of dread and ennui. A peculiar pairing of sensations, granted, but they summarize my reactions accurately. I found Hustler simultaneously disgusting and boring. Of the erotic, it had nary a drop. Nevertheless, Larry Flynt was a saint.
Yes, you read me right. Pope Quaestor hereby this bull and encyclical to all the prelates of the Holy Constitution doth decree the canonization of Saint Lawrence of the Bearded Clam. Furthermore, we proclaim the Sixth Day of March to be his feast day to be celebrated henceforth by all the Faithful. Another Saint Lawrence was barbequed for his faith, just as Saint Lawrence Flynt was roasted metaphorically many times by the Enemy, and later crippled for life in the name of free speech. Let us pray...
Flynt was an honest pornographer, unlike the risible Hugh Heffner and the bling-bedecked debauchee, Bob Guccione. Trash was Flynt's stock-in-trade, and never once did drape his silicone-inject nymphs in a diaphanous drapery of "redeeming social values". Susan Sontag was never interviewed by Hustler, though she happily agreed to be interrogated by Heffner, as did Betty Friedan, and the arch-fiend Gloria Steinem.
Heffner was a coward and lickspittle -- a fly-by-night fake philosopher who longed for the approval of the glitterati. The dull-witted Cuccione thought he could buy salvation with just one more 18-carat gold medallion the size of a frisbee. St. Larry never longed for these trinkets of Hollywood respectability.
Yes, dearly beloved, Larry Flynt wasn't a nice man, but that does not subtract from his sanctity. Few saints are nice, and the really important ones are total assholes. The entire mission of the Congregation of Saints is to rub our noses in it. Saint Lawrence did a swell job of rubbing our noses in the carpet stain that is postwar American culture whilst he lived. And he will continue such nose rubbing in the Hereafter. Amen
I'm sorry Larry Flynt died.
I'm sorry he didn't die sooner.
How many of the liberal/left "pornography is free speech", "we must let it be published no matter what" types are in favor of cancelling and banning political speech or Christian speech in the public square?
A lot. In fact, the ACLU is AWOL. So it their support of Flynt was NEVER about the 1st amendment. NEVER.
Most on the Center-Right aren't in favor of censoring or banning anything or anyone. well bully for us. I guess we get a gold star and a cookie.
Free speech or hate speech against women?
He was a nasty man who was vicious and unkind to vulnerable people, again and again and again and again.
If you are not praying that the vicious little man repented before his death, well then you don't know how the game is played.
I prayed for him often, and my best guess is that he, like most people like him, had a chance to repent of their evil before they died. I hope I am right. It is no small thing to be a vicious man who again and again and again victimizes others, but we are all God's creatures, and I have prayed for the most evil of the evil people who have ever lived to repent before they die. No joke.
In fact, the ACLU is AWOL. So it their support of Flynt was NEVER about the 1st amendment. NEVER.
That may be the case. Their motive seems to be retributive change, per chance redistributive change, and suppression of competing interests with a bid for uncivil rights (e.g. civility bullshit).
Free speech or hate speech against women?
Spiros demonstrates, yet again, his complete ignorance of the concept of free speech.
Get this through your head, Spiros. Free speech is ALWAYS "hate speech" to somebody. In a free society, no one should care if Quaestor hates Spiros and says so loudly and often. However, if Spiros punches Quaestor so hard he has to eat soup through a straw for a month, that's assault and a crime since the dawn of civilization.
Howard said...
Where is the government restricting speech on the internet? By banning people spouting unpopular views, private internet forums are expressing their privately funded speech.
I hear parler is a funtastic place to plot insurrection and screech the November-word with Glee. No one would be complaining about twitter Facebook YouTube if they banned Hustler style content.
Howard comes in to remind us that there are people out there stupid enough to want the biggest corporations in the world to own every aspect of the political process and all of the politicians.
Interesting observations by Quaestor, but I don't think Hefner was a phony. He really believed in his product and what he was doing. He hit the news stands at just the right time. He could pretend to be a liberating force because, to some extent, he was. I don't think Larry Flynt had that option. We had gone past liberation and onto something that looked like decadence when he turned his first trick.....A few kind words for Bob Guccione: his girls and their poses were really hot. He knew how to rub your nose in it, and by rubbing nose I'm speaking metaphorically. He knew his business when it came to pornography.....Well, now they're all gone, their insubstantial pageant has faded and has left not a rack (heh,heh) behind.
Stephen Cooper writes ...and I have prayed for the most evil of the evil people who have ever lived to repent before they die. No joke.
If there is one ironclad certainty in the little world that is the Althouse comment pages it is this -- if it's a Stephen Cooper opinion it's no joke. Far, far, far from a joke or anything witty, insightful, or even momentarily entertaining.
Please don't take this personally, Stephen Cooper, but your comments have the sanctimonious tone of a TV evangelist, one with secrets involving teenage boys and massage parlors.
Quasator - the man victimized hundreds of young women.
Don't take this personally, but you are on the side of evil, and I am not.
Now go away.
And Questor, I guarantee you that what you said was vicious and untrue, and I feel sorry for you.
Where is the government restricting speech on the internet? By banning people spouting unpopular views, private internet forums are expressing their privately funded speech.
A lone baker, who bakes, but fails to endorse, they are not. Fascism is a many progressive thing with liberal overtones.
Quaestor does not accept guarantees from pederasts.
Like I said, Quator, you are the creepy little guy defending the vicious pornographer.
I am the person who is saying that pornography and exploitation of women is wrong.
Now sober up and go away.
Some value freedom, even though afraid; others fear the freedom of others.
Narr
Pay yer money and take yer choice
Flynt was an honest pornographer, unlike the risible Hugh Heffner and the bling-bedecked debauchee, Bob Guccione. Trash was Flynt's stock-in-trade
Yes, a human and civil rights leader without the pretense of internal, external, and mutual consistency. His faith, religion, and ideological bent were consistent in his own mind. Not a bigot to be smeared under the judgments and labels of those who bend their knee for secular lucre and preach quasi-religious philosophies to calm dissonant minds. Let us bray to Stork and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, too. RIP, degenerate saint.
Some value freedom, even though afraid; others fear the freedom of others.
And when those who fear the freedom of others gain power, the gulag and the auto da fe are just round the bend. And if you open the window you can smell the faint odor of the crematoria warming up.
The only somewhat interesting thing is that, yes, Flynt got shot for “expression”
It’s not high brow expression, it wasn’t change the world speech, it was a pron mag.
At least proponents of free speech are getting shot and ostracized to higher brow principles. Progress I suppose.
I am the person who is saying that pornography and exploitation of women is wrong.
Don't try to make me laugh, Reverend Cooper, you're not up to it. You're just covering your tracks. And doing an amusingly piss-poor job of it.
At least proponents of free speech are getting shot and ostracized to higher brow principles. Progress I suppose.
I dare say Martin Niemöller would recognize the brewing tempest.
Quaestor, all I can say, is that you seem to be insane. Who taught you to show such hatred?
God help you ---- slander and viciousness are not what you were born to be the champion of.
What can I do to let you know that I care about you, and that I realize why you are so angry? Life is hard ---- IT IS NOT MY FAULT.
I am not fooled by your recent wikipedia research into the Holocaust, and your employment of that research on a Larry Flynt thread. AND NO, I am not a bad person with the evil tendencies you viciously said I had. Why are you so angry, and why are you lying about me --- if you bought a few Hustler magazines back in the day, that is ok, God forgives you. Is there something worse going on?
I guarantee you I am not used to the level of hatred you are expressing here. Even Larry Flynt himself, were he to talk to me on the phone, would be friendly.
Who taught you to show such hatred?
Sanctinmous frauds and sophists like you, Stephen Cooper.
And kindly keep your prayers to yourself. You'll need them all for your own bleak, infertile soul.
When did I teach hatred?
That is harsh!
“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so. R.A. Heinlein.”
The master has been more right than wrong. We white people have been legislating truth and justice and respect into law for way too long, it needs to stop for the benefit of everyone else, except Asians.
I guarantee you I am not used to the level of hatred you are expressing here. Even Larry Flynt himself, were he to talk to me on the phone, would be friendly.
Quaestor does not accept guarantees from pederasts.
Seriously, Larry Flynt is far from my hero, but if you are feeling bad that you used to subscribe to Hustler, don't worry.
Lots of good people did much worse.
What matters is being kind to people, starting here and now.
Why are you calling a fellow commenter a pederast, when it is not true?
Look, I understand why people get angry, and trust me, many people have gotten angry at me.
BUT I GUARANTEE YOU THAT God forgives the worst we have done, IMMEDIATELY.
If you are overdosing on meth, dude, call a friend.
If you have no friends, walk outside, and the first cop you see, say ---
I think someone poisoned me.
99 percent of cops know what to do in such situations.
What does it even mean "to be free"? What does a free society look like? Has one ever existed or is it merely an unobtainable ideal that can only be strived for?
Garden of Eden
"Garden of Eden"
There were two free people in the garden of eden, God and the snake.
Who is today free? all the Irish.
God, the snake, and the Angel Custodians. Many of whom have in later days taken on the Equally Important job of Guardian Angels. IF you have a Guardian Angel, thank GOd for that. If you don't, well don't worry. God loves us all almost equally.
Why are you calling a fellow commenter a pederast, when it is not true?
Since when did a Stephen Cooper comment have anything to do with truth? You denounce someone you never knew as evil and you prop up your own self-image at the expense of the dead. Oh, the most holy, sin-forgiving Archdeacon Stephen Cooper, God's right-hand man, prays for the hell-bound soul of Larry Flynt.
What utter bullshit. If you can condemn someone who did not know, then so can I. You say Flynt was an evil exploiter of women. I say Stephen Cooper may be an evil exploiter of little boys.
But cheer up. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
I was never taken in by all the free-speech bravado. To me he was just a dumb redneck from Kentucky who got lucky running strip clubs, and then lucky again producing and selling porn. Just a gross little man.
You are assuming I never knew a woman who was drugged and misused by pornographers?
I grew up in a mob neighborhood. I know bad people.
Larry Flynt was on the level of an average mobster, at best.
Even the worst people, though, were created by GOD.
What does a free society look like? Has one ever existed or is it merely an unobtainable ideal that can only be strived for?
You're getting all Platonic on us, again, J. Farmer. As just another one shackled to the cave floor I can only say we have ample examples of what unfree societies look like, don't we?
What does a free society look like? Has one ever existed or is it merely an unobtainable ideal that can only be strived for?
An ideal, an article of faith, a secular experience. Ideally, people in a society will reconcile, but often there is a minority/democratic regime that sets the standard (e.g. "moral", "ethical", "legal") that evolves (and mutates) with progress until it reaches a dysfunctional convergence, then it persists, eventually resets, and starts anew. I wonder how many times this process has repeated over the recorded, inferred, and unknown history of humanity.
You are assuming I never knew a woman who was drugged and misused by pornographers?
I assume nothing that specific.
I simply assume you have never known a woman.
Quaestor, I thought you were drugged up.
I think I get it now ----
you just feel overwhelming contempt in your heart.
Sad!
Reread, some day, the things I have said.
People like me have lots of good things to say.
You have no idea how lucky you are to live in the world you live in.
Sorry if someone who reminds you of me stole your fiancee from you, btw.
It wasn't me, bro.
I wonder how many times this process has repeated over the recorded, inferred, and unknown history of humanity.
Well, that the Hegelian dialectic, isn't it? However, as I interpret history, the resolution is rarely if ever a clear synthesis. Mostly it's barbarians all the way down rather than turtles. When a society gets too heterodox, orthodoxy is imposed, often by force.
Many years ago, Flynt planned to start a national news magazine. He offered the job of editor to a cousin of mine. My grandmother and great aunts were proud that Andy had been offered such a big job and horrified that it was for Larry Flynt. After he was shot, Flynt dropped the magazine idea.
You have no idea how lucky you are to live in the world you live in.
Oh, but I do. In the real world, I don't have to contend with the Rear Reverend Cooper's unctuous tartuffery. Only here, and only as long as it amuses me.
Other things to do now.
Tah!
Well, you may be gone, Quaestor, but the fact is you lied about a fellow human creature tonight, and showed no repentance for your vicious lies.
I can't imagine being a human being who wakes up in the morning and says to himself or herself, what I want to do today is say the most vicious lie I can say about someone I disagree with. That cannot be a good way to live!
Oh well, everyone who is alive today may easily be a better person tomorrow. That is what I hope for.
Seriously creepy dude.
His life and 'legacy' made the country worse - more degenerate, amoral, promiscuous, disrespectful, crude, undignified, etc.
Why is that so hard to admit. I'd love to hear arguments about how worse off the country would be w/o hardcore porn available.
Bring back judgement.
Matt says "Bring back judgement."
Who's stopping you from judging?
Narr
Or are you after something more kinetic?
Wince - look in the mirror. I figured you out a long time ago, you are full of hatred. Didn't think you supported lies and slander on top of that.
@Quaestor:
You're getting all Platonic on us, again, J. Farmer. As just another one shackled to the cave floor I can only say we have ample examples of what unfree societies look like, don't we?
Certainly. The workplace, for example, where people submit themselves to private masters who exercise dictatorial control over their appearance, dress, speech, social interactions, movement, activities and work product. Of course, if you do not agree with such restrictions, you're free to quit. That is, you're free to starve.
Was Larry a skinflint? Who gets his wealth?
Quaester: your deconstruction of the porn/prestige racket is hilarious. Utterly on the mark. The number of “feminists,” politicians, presidents and poets who graced the pages of Playboy and the Mansion itself is a who’s who of moral deformity and elite privilege. There’s a straight line from President of Sanctimony Jimmah wedged between titty shots and the double-standard gulag the Democrats are marching us off to today.
That’s one reason I think Flynt is interesting. In my fantasy tour, I’d start at the Flynt shooting site and end up at the Carter Center, and compare the two.
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