Larry Flynt

The impeachment of President Bill Clinton may well be as much about the media as it is about politics, lying or misbehavior. The process began when a conservative magazine, the American Spectator, failed to excise a name from a reporter’s draft and identified a woman named Paula as having had a sexual liaison with Clinton while he was governor. It ramped up to full bore when the news about Monica S. Lewinsky broke, not in the Washington Post or in Newsweek, but on the Internet’s Drudge Report.

In spite of dubious sources for stories that have little effect on official conduct, the mainstream media, though feeling shameful, reported it all. As the days oozed by, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s referral was rewritten to meet network broadcast standards and practices, and a series of congressional officials were “outed” for sexual affairs. Where will it end? wondered the president, pundits and politicians on both sides of the aisle. How do we stop the politics of personal destruction?

Would it be at all ironic, then, if it turns out the white knight in this current round of sexual McCarthyism is the pornographer Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, the anti-Christ of family values and member of that select few who’ve been immortalized in a biopic (“The People vs. Larry Flynt” in 1996)? In October, Flynt placed an ad in the Washington Post offering up to $1 million for anyone who could document an affair with a member of Congress. The response, he says, was overwhelming, and though he has yet to release any specific information, leaks from his ruse led the resignation of the House speaker-elect, Bob Livingston (R-La.), who was forced to admit he’d strayed from his marriage vows. Flynt, a Democrat, says he has evidence of sexual misconduct by a number of other Republicans, and he threatens to publish the details sometime after the new year.

Yet, if you believe him, Flynt would rather not publish the dirt he bought with his million-dollar reward. In fact, he says, his intent is to stop the prying and probing into private sex lives altogether by applying his own brand of mutually assured destruction. The 55-year-old eccentric, who has spent the last 20 years in a wheelchair as the result of a would-be assassin’s bullet, is adept at wrapping himself in the First Amendment and can be quite convincing as a patriot and exposer of hypocrisy.

Flynt’s personal office at the Flynt Publications offices in Beverly Hills is the size of a small ballroom. It’s decorated with large, 19th-century oil paintings, Tiffany lamps and brocade Victorian furniture. In a conversation there on Thursday, Flynt enjoyed a fine cigar while explaining that his true goal in inserting himself into the Capitol Hill miasma is to, once and for all, make sexual behavior off-limits as a political issue.

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Question: How would you characterize your recent foray into the political arena? Is it more about exposing hypocrisy or about derailing impeachment?

Answer: Both. I love Clinton. I voted for him in ’92. I voted for him in ’96. He’s a great president. I think the partisan approach being used to get him out of office is ridiculous. I’ll concede I’m partisan, as well--I’m a Democrat. When I ran the ad in the Washington Post offering money for women to come forward, I was doing it to expose the hypocrisy. If that has the effect of derailing the impeachment process, that will be fine with me.

Q: Why are you a Democrat? You’re a businessman, so you could be a Republican, although it seems like the Libertarians would be closest to your position on obscenity.

A: Although I agree with many of the positions of the Libertarian Party, we live in what is basically a two-party system. If I was to sum up why I’m a Democrat, it’s because, in this century, the gains in individual rights and civil liberty have been made in Democratic administrations, and not in Republican administrations.

Q: That’s defining it in terms of civil liberties. Does either party have the high ground in terms of morality?

A: You know, the conventional wisdom in Washington is that with Republicans it’s money, and with Democrats it’s sex. It appears to be the complete opposite. Of all the leaks we got--and we got many--only one concerned a Democrat.

Q: Why would that be?

A: Republicans are usually the arbiters of morality. That places them in an awkward situation when it comes to sexual appetite or persuasion.

Q: How much of this is about politics, and how much is just PR for your magazine?

A: Naturally, I want to sell my magazine, because I’m in that business. But I have the same feelings that any American has. I have strong feelings about the political process, and when something disturbs me, I take action. What bothers me most about this situation is the apathy on the part of the people. The majority of the people were against the House voting for impeachment, but at the same time, they were not willing to stand up and be counted.

Q: So we have a new Silent Majority?

A: I don’t know, but apathy is the biggest single threat to democracy. It’s like free speech--we’ve had it so long we take it for granted. People don’t realize it can be lost. It doesn’t happen all at once, it happens magazine by magazine, and movie by movie. When Hitler first came to power, before he even started tormenting the Jews, he started censorship. He began burning books, starting with pornography and ending with Voltaire and Shakespeare. It’s not inconceivable that if the Henry Hydes and Trent Lotts and Pat Buchanans and Bill Bennetts of the world were running this country, that we could be living in a very different place.

I think we need to take a long look at history. The church has had its hand on our crotch for 2,000 years, and the government seems to be moving in that direction. If they can control our pleasure centers, they can control us. In the Victorian era, the rich and the privileged always had their leather-bound editions of pornography--but they kept them out of the hands of the poor. But today, with the advent of television, the Internet and wireless communication the elite can no longer control people by controlling information. I think the result of this is that everyone must reassess their values.

I believe every American would prefer their sex life to remain private. I know that sounds like a paradox, coming from a man who’s looking for the details of private sex lives of people in Washington. But desperate times require desperate measures. Somebody has to raise the white flag, and I think the burden falls on the Republicans, because they started all this.

The worst thing that could come out of all of this is that we’re not going to get good people to enter government. If all Americans, including politicians, would accept the fact that sexuality between consenting adults is a private matter, and make it a nonissue, then we could move on and get back to governing.

Q: Do you think politicians are more promiscuous, more likely to have extramarital affairs than the rest of us?

A: Most definitely. Henry Kissinger said that power was the ultimate aphrodisiac. Powerful men, politicians, CEOs are often highly sexual, more so than the average person. That’s why you see it playing itself out on Capitol Hill. And, of course, now that we have news 24 hours a day, once the cat gets out of the bag, it just grows and grows, and victims fall right and left.

Q: What’s the effect of that on our society and culture, seeing graphic descriptions of sexual acts in daily newspapers and on television newscasts?

A: I see this as being good for the culture as a whole. You know, for a quarter-century, I’ve been trying to expand the parameters of free speech. Then a guy like Ken Starr comes along and accomplishes more in a couple of months than I did in those 25 years. He made pornography available to a wider audience than I ever have--sending it to schools and libraries. It’s inadvertently having a positive effect because it’s helping to end the guilt associated with sex. If we’re able to overcome that kind of guilt and realize that sex is one of the most important assets we have, and the strongest single desire we have, except perhaps for survival, people will place less significance on sexual behavior, because they’re no longer tormented by guilt.

Q: Let me ask you about the now former speaker-elect. Were you surprised when he announced he was stepping down?

A: I didn’t think Bob Livingston should have resigned, simply because he admitted to the affairs. But I wasn’t surprised, because he put out a statement that none of the women worked for him, that he wasn’t involved with any of them in a professional capacity, and we knew better than that.

Q: You’ve denied that you had any connection with the White House in this. Yet, some members of the Washington press corps, including Cokie Roberts of ABC, have said they were approached by White House aides who were spreading rumors about Bob Livingston some weeks ago.

A: It wouldn’t surprise me if members of the mainstream media had some of the same information we uncovered on Congressman Livingston, because there were many affairs. As for the idea that this whole thing has been orchestrated by the White House, let’s face it: It’s not in the White House’s interest to align themselves with someone who publishes pornography. I think there may be some there who are taking some amount of glee in the fact that we got this information, but I’ve had no contact with them at all.

Q: When someone says the word, “morality,” what does that mean to you?

A: All of our laws are based on morality. It’s not right to kill, or to rob. But in the last 20 years, morality has become a buzzword, like “family values,” to indicate a specific kind of behavior.

I don’t have any problem with someone having moral values. Where we part company is when they begin to try to impose them on other people. I can say with confidence that the majority of Americans feel that they have a right to read or view whatever they want to in the privacy of their own homes. They do not want the government in their bedroom.

Pundits and politicians can talk until they’re blue in the face about perjury and obstruction of justice by Bill Clinton, but it all comes down to sex. The man had an affair, and he lied about it.

The real question is: How much should he be punished. [Former LAPD Det.] Mark Fuhrman committed perjury in the O.J. Simpson case and got probation. Now, I know the Republicans would like to crucify Clinton, but I think he’s been embarrassed and humiliated in front of the whole world, and that’s punishment enough.

Q: When did you have your personal political awakening?

A: When I first started Hustler, in 1974, I just wanted to make a lot of money and have a good time. I think I had to stand in a courtroom and listen to a judge sentence me to 25 years in prison before I realized that freedom of expression was something that could no longer be taken for granted. I realized then that sex was more political than almost anything. And that made me take a hard look at both the judicial system and the political process.

Q: You’ve had a number of difficulties in your life, and yet you’ve amassed a great deal of wealth, certainly enough to retire in more than mere comfort. And yet you continue with your business. Why?

A: I would like to see an end to all obscenity laws in my lifetime. I don’t know that it will happen, but it’s my goal. If I can leave any kind of legacy at all, it will be that I helped expand the parameters of free speech. To me that’s more important than what’s going on in Washington right now, because the First Amendment is the cornerstone of our democracy. You can’t have majority rule unless you have individual rights, just like you can’t have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper every night. We pay a price to live in a free society, and that price is toleration.

Q: So are there no limits to expression in your mind? What about, for instance, child pornography?

A: I’m an absolutist when it comes to the First Amendment. On the question of child pornography, everyone, including the judicial system, is looking at that the wrong way. When you use a child to produce pornography, you are violating the rights of someone who’s not old enough to speak or defend themselves. That is a crime, and it should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But the photographs themselves are constitutionally protected.

As far as obscenity goes, as [former Supreme Court] Justice [William O.] Douglas once said, it’s best left to the minds of man. What’s obscene to one may not offend another, so it’s basically just an interpretation.

Q: If, somehow, everyone in Washington were to agree that it’s time to put an end to government by sex scandal, and the Senate quickly resolves the impeachment issue, would you then hold back releasing the details you say you have about some of these elected officials?

A: I’ll tell you this. Bonnie Livingston, the congressman’s wife, contacted us and made a plea that we not publish the details of the investigation into her husband. And my inclination is to agree with her--he’s resigned, what’s the point? Sometimes, in the heat of battle, one tends to forget that a lot of innocent people can get hurt. I don’t think I would have paused to realize that unless his wife had contacted me.

Q: Does it surprise you that you are suddenly getting all this attention from the mainstream media, not so much for your magazine as for your political activities?

A: I don’t think the mainstream media relishes at all giving me credit for bringing down the speaker-elect of the House of Representatives. But let me say this: One of the greatest rights any nation can afford it’s citizens is the right to be alone. And I just want to leave you with that, because it is a very strong message. Leave Clinton alone. Leave Livingston alone. Leave everybody alone. And we’ll all be a lot better off.*