Checking in With Larry Flynt
Since announcing late last year that he would reveal the names of up to a dozen Clinton critics guilty of sexual indiscretions, Hustler millionaire and self-styled porn martyr Larry Flynt has been getting as many as 150 calls a day from the press. But he hasn’t granted too many interviews. Today he is making an exception in order to join an old foe and new friend, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, on a call-in television show. The camera-friendly Baptist minister, who is currently beaming at Flynt through a monitor, is the same person who filed a 1985 libel lawsuit against Flynt over a Hustler picture that jokingly implied the preacher lost his virginity to his mother. Falwell took his suit all the way to the Supreme Court before being defeated.
“I used to hate his guts in the Eighties, when we had that lawsuit going on,” Flynt says. “But since I got to know him, I really kind of like him.”
“It’s all about money with Jerry,” smirks Flynt’s brother and business partner, Jimmy. “He gets a lot of publicity from hanging out with Larry, claiming to be his pastor. You should see them together — they have a lot of fun.”
Today, at least, that seems to be true. Flynt is enthroned in his gold-plated wheelchair in a Los Angeles studio, sparring with Falwell, who’s in Lynchburg, Virginia.
“I think, one day, Larry will be a truly committed Christian,” the right reverend predicts, “and we’ll know that by the fact that he closes down Hustler magazine. Then he’ll move to Lynchburg and join Thomas Road Church. And I pray for him every day.”
A lopsided smile breaks across Larry’s face, and a phlegmy chuckle rises from his throat. “Jerry’s promised me a job if I clean up my act,” he says.
“That’s a promise,” says Falwell.
The show, called Take Action America, assumes the Manichaean character of a World Wrestling Federation match. Flynt, representing the force of darkness, as an atheist, is roundly attacked from all sides.
Voices of the callers tremble with anger, as does that of the program’s host, Blanquita Cullum, a fun-house-mirror version of Diane Sawyer who tries to goad Flynt into revealing names on his list of Republican sinners.
“You’ve been postponing it for so long, people are saying this is baloney,” she prods.
“I have not been postponing it,” Flynt growls cantankerously. “I have to employ the same type of journalistic standards as the mainstream media do, otherwise I’ll be dismissed by someone saying, ‘Consider the source.'”
“But they dismiss you anyway, by viewing you as a pornographer,” she barks at him.
Flynt thrives on conflict, especially when he thinks he’s right, and now — leaning forward in his chair — he delivers his knockout blow. “I may not decide who the next speaker of the House is going to be,” he begins, raising his voice, “but I sure as hell decided who it was not going to be.”
Few argue this point. “But for Larry Flynt, Bob Livingston would be speaker — that is a fact,” echoes Democratic strategist James Carville in a separate interview. And all it took was money. In October, Flynt spent $85,000 for a full-page ad in the Washington Post, offering up to $1 million to anyone able to provide evidence of “illicit sexual relations with a congressman, senator or other prominent officeholder.” He received 2,000 responses. Within a week, the two private investigators he had hired narrowed the pool down to forty-eight and then, a month later, to twelve lucky finalists, whose stories were well-documented enough to pursue.
But even before Flynt played his hand, one of his most formidable targets folded. On December 18th, Livingston, the Louisiana Republican who was about to become speaker of the House and second in line to the presidency, announced that he would resign his seat. Making a vague admission of “marital infidelity,” Livingston complained about having been “Larry Flynted,” but a full-on Flynting promises to be a far more excruciating experience — one supported by embarrassingly specific evidence for which Flynt is paying nicely. The week after the Falwell taping, Flynt held a press conference to charge that in 1983, Georgia Rep. Bob Barr — a Republican who is an avid abortion opponent and a member of the pro-life caucus — drove his then-wife to and from an abortion clinic and paid the doctor’s bill. To support the claim, Flynt produced a signed affidavit from Barr’s ex-wife, Gail Vogel Barr, and a clinic receipt. Immediately after Flynt’s announcement, Barr released a statement saying that he “never suggested, urged, forced or encouraged anyone, including my ex-wife, to have an abortion.” But Barr, a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the first House member to call for Clinton’s impeachment, would not address specific questions as to whether he’d paid the bill.
Though Flynt is in the midst of assembling cases against more Republicans, he says Livingston will be spared. (So will Newt Gingrich, who was under Flynt’s microscope before stepping down as speaker.) “I spoke with Livingston’s wife last week,” Flynt says. “She was a very nice lady. She said she didn’t want the details of the investigation published. The suffering was already done. The guy retired, so what’s the point?”
He stops the interview tape to talk further about Livingston and then starts it again, adding, “He’s a sick fucker.”
And coming from Flynt…
There are few people who really know Larry Flynt, a self-made man who dropped out of high school and ran away from his family’s Kentucky farm when he was thirteen. Most of those who do are family, and many of them stick close by — a brother, one or two of his daughters, a son and Flynt’s fifth wife, Liz, a petite, diamond-encrusted Mexican-American who used to be his nurse and acts like she still is. Some see him as a pervert saint, sacrificing his freedom for our liberty; others, like his estranged daughter, Tonya Flynt-Vega — who claims that Flynt molested her as a child — see him as a monster. For the record, Flynt has steadfastly denied her accusations and claims to have taken a polygraph test that proves his innocence.
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