 |
A L S O+T O D A Y
Rush to defeat
T A B L E+T A L K Are we overharvesting our oceans? Weigh in on the environmental impact of overfishing in the Science and Nature area of Table Talk
R E C E N T L Y The ugliest story yet Sex and the single intern A new racial era for San Francisco schools Fear of fluoride Bull's-eye - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Browse the - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|
 ![[ 21st: A Republican's lessons in spam ]](/news/1999/02/src/23newslinks.gif) |
||
 |
FLYNT'S REVENGE | PAGE 1, 2, 3, 4
Do you feel that the public's growing acceptance and consumption of pornography had an effect on how they responded to the Clinton scandal? Like, "What's the big deal, I saw that on a movie last week"? Do you think the public would have been so open 25 years ago? Probably not as much. I think an awful lot of people viewed the scandal in this manner, that it was just about sex. Do you think pornography has changed people's attitudes toward sex? I think it's helped. I think we've come a long way. I think people have been desensitized to a large degree. I think that's good. I think that's healthy. Getting back to that Post thing you mentioned, you know the New York Times would never have run that ad. And the Post would never have run that ad. And there's an interesting story behind all of that. In 1976, after the Wayne Hayes-Liz Ray debacle, where he had this girl on the payroll who didn't know how to type or answer the phones, and then Wilbur Mills with Fannie Foxe in the Tidal Basin, I submitted a similar ad to the one I ran in the Post in October. I submitted it and they rejected it. So I asked a friend of mine named Rudy Maxa, who was working for the Post at the time, to go talk to Ben Bradlee and see if he would reconsider running the ad. Bradlee just ran him out of his office, he said, "I'm not doing nothing for Larry Flynt." So I wrote a letter to [Post publisher] Katharine Graham, saying, This is what the First Amendment is all about, guarantees and everything. And after Watergate, how can you in good conscience refuse to run an ad which is clearly about the First Amendment. So I got a handwritten note back from her --I've still got it to this day -- saying, Mr. Flynt, please resubmit your ad. So I resubmitted the ad and they ran it. Now when we were preparing the ad that ran this year, my lawyer said, the Post is not going to run this ad. Because it makes it look like they're sort of endorsing what you're doing. And I said well, we'll see. And they ran the ad, and I know the reason why they ran the ad is that there were still some people at the Post that were there in 1976 when I went over Bradlee's head and got the ad ran. Has this episode whetted your appetite for more kinds of political investigation? Or are you ready to return to your business? I need to return to my business. What a lot of people are not aware of is I have 16 foreign editions of Hustler, and a lot of my other magazines have been published in foreign countries as well. So I travel a lot as a result of that. We have just opened our new store, Hustler Hollywood [a sex emporium and gourmet coffee bar] over here on Sunset, and they're doing phenomenally well. It makes women as well as men feel comfortable shopping there. They don't feel like they're going into a sleazy little shack with blacked-out windows and all the peep shows and all that. It's a totally different atmosphere. We intend to open a new one every three months across the country. My plate's full. I'm opening a casino. I'm launching a new fashion magazine in May called Code. It's a fashion magazine for black males, the GQ for a black man. And there's not one on the market in the United States. We think that we're tapping into something really, really good there, because black men are much more fashion-conscious than white men are. So we have really high hopes for it. I've had 32 different magazines now. Each year we'll come out with approximately three new magazines. And if one is a success, we're happy, because the mortality rate is really high in magazine publishing. One of our new magazines, Taboo [about fetish culture], is doing very well. What's your worst fear about America's future? What concerns me most about America today is the apathy that exists, especially among young people. We as a nation only respond to crises. We never deal with our problems, whether it be the Vietnam War or civil rights or anything else, we never deal with them until they're ready to explode. And that's why as I speak at college campuses around the country I make an attempt to get young people to start thinking about how much harm apathy can really do. There seems to be a polarization between one part of America, which is increasingly liberal and open about sex, and another part, an increasingly vocal and politically powerful minority of Republicans. It's a tension that has existed in our culture for a long time. How do you think it'll be resolved? I can't believe that even though they're in the minority, these are the agents that are driving the chaos. Roughly about 30 percent of people in this country are Clinton haters. They want his head on a platter. They're uptight, anal-retentive. I call them the Falwellians of the world. And when I think of the prospect of somebody like Ralph Reed and Pat Buchanan running the country, I just thank my lucky stars every day that these people are in the minority. Although I'm disturbed that they're 30 percent. People ask me why I'm a Democrat. In this century, all our individual liberties, the civil rights that we've gained, have come under Democratic administrations, not Republican administrations. So I find it very difficult to see why anyone would be a Republican. They're so callous and bigoted and insensitive to both race and gender. I hope there's no increase in their popularity. I read your comment in Esquire that women are smarter and harder workers and more caring than men. If that's the case, why do you think that men still have more power in our society? Well, things were worse before. A century ago, women didn't even have the right to vote and were really second-class citizens. And women, having been repressed, used and manipulated by men, wind up learning how to function in a man's world. If women understand what they're up against in the corporate and political structure, out of pure shrewdness they can make their way through it. Men are often just straight ahead, take no prisoners. Women have to be a little bit more cunning. N E X T+P A G E+| One thing Flynt would do differently
|
||
