Raunchy, flamboyant, self-serving and defiant, Flynt was fully enjoying his notoriety Friday just as he did more than 25 years ago when he leveraged a string of Ohio strip clubs into the start of a publishing empire that pushed -- and is still pushing -- the limits of sexual tolerance.
Flynt is taking credit for the disclosure by House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston that he had carried on adulterous affairs in his past. Apparently the disclosure was made after Livingston learned that Hustler was set to publish a story that says that the Republican lawmaker had the affairs with at least four different women. He has said he will publish it in January.
The ad was vintage Flynt. More than 20 years ago he placed a similar ad in The Post after two congressmen, Reps. Although Flynt has been fond of saying, "All I wanted to do was make some money and have some fun," his aspirations and obsessions have seemed a little deeper than that.
Jerry Falwell for "emotional distress" over a Hustler magazine parody that portrayed him as an incestuous drunk. The ruling broadly re-affirmed and extended the court's rules protecting criticism of public figures as free speech, even if the criticism was "outrageous" and offensive.
What has stamped Flynt's life and career was not only controversy -- and the outrageous style of "Hustler" -- but a virtual obsession with self-promotion and publicity. He has been in and out of court on obscenity trials. He even ran for president in Larry Flynt," the Milos Forman-directed film about the publisher, once said that when Flynt campaigned for the presidency, he "practically hijacked the front page of the daily newspapers.
