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A L S O+T O D A Y
The unhappiest allies Day Two: The airstrikes persist Outlaw nation? Verdict on Starr's witness
T A B L E+T A L K Don't ask, don't Teletubbie? Know of any other gay icons for children? Do tell in the Headlines area of Table Talk ___________________ Learn more about the legendary Larry Flynt at barnesandnoble.com
R E C E N T L Y The bombing begins The Kosovo myth Banned in Belgrade Where does Elizabeth Dole really stand on abortion? Susan McDougal's moment of truth - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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FINALLY, THE FLYNT REPORT | PAGE 1, 2
Whether the reader is relishing or retching over this crazed souvenir from the weirdest year in American politics, the mix of unsubstantiated rumors alongside fact-checked stories raises a credibility problem for the Flynt Report: What should the reader believe? Likewise, just what is news in the report is not immediately transparent. The cover features a trio of mug shots -- Livingston, Hyde and Barr, whose sins have already been exposed. Below that there's a tease, with smaller headshots: "Fresh Dirt on: Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Mary Bono, Governor Jeb Bush, Charles Canady and Tim Hutchinson." But a few pages into the magazine, in the "Statement of Intent," the report confesses: "We will prove our case with information that is already part of the public record, at the risk of disappointing those who are reading this report in the hope of finding new disclosures." So what's the truth -- is this information fresh or stale, old or new? "There's dynamite there, and I was a little surprised to hear about it," says Dan Moldea, the Washington reporter who oversaw the Flynt investigation from Nov. 23, 1998, to Jan. 22, 1999. "I'll be curious to see how it plays out in the report, and the firestorm that could result from it." Moldea refused to disclose which items were brand new, explaining that confidentiality agreements with informants might put him in an awkward legal and ethical position if he disclosed their information. Moldea left Flynt's investigation after "a friendly disagreement" about whether Flynt should continue to name new names. The day that he heard that Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., -- one of Clinton's sternest critics -- had announced that he was going to propose a resolution to dismiss the charges against the president, he quit. "At that moment I felt that we had won," he explained. But even before Byrd's announcement, Moldea had begun to question how far the investigation should go. In his account, three events shook his resolve. The first was Bonnie Livingston's call to Flynt, begging him not to publish details of her husband's adultery. When Flynt told Moldea to hold off investigating Livingston, Moldea protested, but he was moved by Flynt's change of heart. Later, on Jan. 11, Moldea received a call from a friend high up in the GOP who had a friend who believed he was the next to be outed. "She told me sobbing that he was going to commit suicide as soon as his name became public," he explained. "That was the moment that I was chilled." Finally, he lost all desire to expose more scandalous stories when, a few days later, one of the targeted politicians discovered the identity of an informant, and they began to worry about her safety. "I'm not interested in the sex lives of public figures," Moldea says. "If I had my way I would take all this material and throw it in the Potomac, but I have come to trust Larry's judgment." Larry Flynt himself contradicts his former investigator's claim that the report contains some bombshells. "There's nothing earth-shattering," he says. "It's just more comprehensive. If we had anything really big, we would have a press conference." When pressed to say whether all the report's information -- so much of it unsourced or attributed to hearsay -- is credible, Flynt insists he has multiple sources for everything published. Sometimes the investigation wasn't quite complete, he says, and sometimes the informants ended up wanting too much money. In the end, Flynt may have gotten to have his cake and eat it too, publishing as rumor things he knows to be true, without actually paying informants for their complete, published accounts. He can breezily attribute the stories to rumors, continue to keep his investigations open and hold onto his cash. And what if some of the rumors are not true? Flynt has given credence to them, and politicians wishing to counter his stories are faced with an uphill battle: to prove these scandals never happened. But if the rumor-mongering isn't bad enough -- and for many a skeptical reader, it will be -- there are sections in which Flynt's purely partisan motives undermine his own stated moral ground. In a gratuitous, vaguely racist anecdote contained in the profile of Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts, the great black hope of the Republican Party, the report recounts the misfortunes of his sister, known in Oklahoma City as "Chocolate," who was arrested on lewdness charges when entertainers in a strip club were allegedly caught trading dances for food stamps. What did she do to deserve this publicity? Likewise, when Newt Gingrich's unsavory moral character is in part pinned on his mother's mental illness and his half-sister's lesbianism, Flynt and family succumb to the same leering tone of intolerance that they criticize in the Republicans. Despite their protestations that this is all about "hypocrisy," their recourse to such personal detail is cruel and only seems relevant if you are a right-wing, homophobic family values crusader. But Dan Moldea defends Flynt, even though Flynt ignored his advice not to publish the report. "Since the beginning of his project Larry has demonstrated restraint and compassion. He demanded the highest standards of documentation and responsibility. I believe that he was effective. History will cite the resignation of Bob Livingston as well as Larry's role in that decision as the critical moment that diffused the entire impeachment process, and I'm proud to have been associated with him." Flynt himself is riding high on his contribution to history. "It's a historical document. No one else has published anything like it." In the end, he hopes the report's lesson is not that politicians are
loathsome, but that we shouldn't expect them to be perfect in the first
place. "We shouldn't put legislators on a pedestal," he says. "They suffer from the same frailties and foibles as the rest of us. They're all human beings."
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