Larry flint1/30/2024 He set out to be the world’s biggest sleaze vendor. "It's clear he doesn't think of women as living, breathing human beings."Ĭonservative culture warriors also took issue with Flynt's work. “He was just another sleaze vendor,” said Phil Burress, a long-time foe and leader of Citizens for Community Values in Cincinnati.īut Flynt was determined to be more than that. It was so distressing," said Toni Van Pelt, president of the National Organization for Women, in a 2018 interview with The Enquirer. "Being a woman, what he did frightened me. His most outspoken critics, including feminists and evangelical Christians, said Flynt’s magazine demeaned women and was an affront to basic decency. "People who buy these magazines want their porn to be porn." "Playboy taught you how to make a perfect martini or told you what kind of car you should drive," Flynt told The Enquirer in 2018. Hustler, by contrast, showed far more graphic depictions of sex and included raunchy jokes and crude, anti-establishment articles. He frequently mocked his rivals at Playboy and Penthouse for slick photo presentations of glamorous-looking women, who Flynt said were unattainable for average guys. He soon expanded the franchise to Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and other cities.įlynt used his newsletter for those clubs as a model for Hustler magazine, which he launched in 1974 as a publication “for the common man.” Together, they opened a few bars in the Dayton area, most notably Larry's Hillbilly Haven.įlynt found his calling in the late 1960s when he opened his first strip club in Dayton. His sister died as a child, and Flynt and his younger brother, Jimmy, were separated for a time when his parents split up.Īfter serving in the Navy, Flynt moved to Dayton, Ohio, with his mother. “They fed off each other.” Hustler makes fortune, outrages criticsīorn in Lakeville, a small Kentucky town in the heart of Appalachia, Flynt grew up in a poor and broken family. “The city and Flynt were going through all this together,” he said. The conservative Queen City and the vulgar pornographer have the reputations they do today at least in part because of the battles they once fought.Ī decade ago, former University of Cincinnati journalism instructor Jon Hughes, who’d studied Flynt’s time in Cincinnati, described the relationship this way: That was especially true in Cincinnati, where, for better or worse, his frequent tussles with the city’s establishment helped define the images of both the community and Flynt. Over the course of his career, Flynt made offending people a cornerstone of his business model. “If you’re not going to offend anybody, you don’t need the First Amendment.” “The First Amendment is supposed to protect offensive speech,” Flynt told the Enquirer in 1998. His magazine published racist jokes, sexually explicit photos, an illustration of a woman being run through a meat grinder and, most infamously, pictures of a nude Jackie Kennedy Onassis.įlynt never shied away from the nature of his business and frequently referred to himself as the “King of Smut.” But he also relished being in the spotlight for his court fights with prosecutors, anti-pornography activists and religious leaders. ![]() More: How 1968 helped Larry Flynt build a pornography empireįlynt embraced the mantle of civil libertarian even as his critics complained he was simply exploiting media attention to make money selling hard-core porn. His sexually explicit magazine trampled over boundaries set by competitors, such as Playboy, and set the stage for court battles over obscenity that redefined the meaning of "community standards" and made Flynt an unlikely champion of free speech. He was 78.Ī spokeswoman for the family said Flynt died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after a sudden, unspecified illness.Ĭrude, rude and outspoken, Flynt made his fortune in the early 1970s after he turned a racy newsletter for his strip clubs in Dayton and Cincinnati into Hustler magazine. Larry Flynt, the poor Kentucky boy who got rich and famous selling pornography, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. Watch Video: Larry Flynt, 'King of Smut' and free speech champion, dies at 78
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