Larry Flynt: Freedom fighter, pornographer, monster? A recent interview with the founder of Hustler Magazine

Who belongs on the margin? Larry Flynt. What does it say about the United States that he's not?

The Larry Flynt we're more or less aware of:

"I don't know how many different ways I can say this – the First Amendment gives me the right to be offensive. If you're not going to offend somebody you don't need the First Amendment."

You could make the case, as Flynt has, that Hustler has done the united states a service by forcing the Supreme Court to relax the limits of the first amendment. I mean, free speech is absolutely good.

Or that Flynt has as much sway as the next guy in our increasingly "direct" democracy may make you doubt any faith you ever had in a dispassionate judiciary:

"I try to explain that I absolutely support his right to free speech – but find the way he has chosen to use his free speech in Hustler despicable. I describe some of Hustler's most notorious photoshoots to him. "Dirty Pool" depicted a woman being gang-raped on a pool table. A few months after it was published, a woman was gang-raped on a pool table in a town called New Bedford – and Hustler responded to the criticism suggesting they may have inspired the assault by publishing postcards of another woman being gang-raped on a pool table with the greeting: "Greetings from New Bedford, Gang Rape Capital of America." 

Then I describe "The Naked and the Dead", a Hustler spread in which a woman is forcibly shaved, raped, and apparently killed in a concentration camp. Who, I ask, finds that sexy? "That is satire. That's what I went to the United States supreme court for. It was a landmark judgment. It was a unanimous decision. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, one of the most conservative justices, said sometimes things are done under the name of the First Amendment that are less than admirable but that doesn't give the government the right to suppress it." 

I'm not arguing it should be suppressed, I explain. I support your right to say it – just as I have a right to respond by saying it's vile and asking you why you did it. "It's satire," he says, testily. But what's it satirising? "What?" he says. What's it satirising? "It's satirising the whole idea of a pretty girl being executed." But how is that a concept that needs satirising? How is that even a concept at all? "It wasn't done as any kind of statement," he says. But you just said it was a statement – a satirical one. "There wasn't any malice in it," he says. Really? It's a non-malicious concentration camp?"

That's the least of it. Here's the full-article.