TELEVISIONLAND—Renowned newsman Larry King has had a storied career as a celebrity/newsmaker interviewer, most recently as the host of PoliticKING with Larry King on Russia TV, and on Wednesday, he brought to the show an old friend from his CNN days, Larry Flynt, president of LFP, Inc., for a wide-ranging discussion—beginning with why Flynt recently publicly endorsed Hillry Clinton for president.
"I think it's important that we have a moderate or liberal in the White House because we've had a right-leaning Supreme Court for the past half century and those 5-4 decisions out of the Supreme Court are very bad," Flynt responded when asked why a "self-described peddler of smut" was "so wild about Hillary." "The Supreme Court has emerged as a new legislative body because they make the decisions that we live by, not Congress, because Congress has shrugged their responsibilities.
"I think the most important thing the next president will do is the appointments to the Supreme Court," he continued. "It's conceivable that whoever is elected will appoint two, possibly three justices to the Supreme Court. That's my reason for supporting Hillary ... we have tilted to the right and you have mainly conservative opinions coming out of the Court, and I don't think they're good for the country."
Flynt also stated that the First Amendment was "the one thing that Scalia and Thomas and that crowd haven't screwed with."
However, Flynt appeared to betray a bit of naivete when King suggested that the right wing would use Flynt's endorsement of Clinton against her, opining that, "I don't see how they could use it against her if someone's endorsing her that she doesn't particularly want their support. I can understand how the Gloria Steinems of the world would be very upset about me endorsing Hillary."
Flynt was stumped when King asked if there were a Republican politician that Flynt thought he could support for president, describing the current pool of candidates as "a double-tiered clown car."
During a brief discussion of the United States' nearly unique position in the world regarding free speech, with few countries having anything approaching our Constitution's First Amendment, Flynt importantly noted, "You know, the First Amendment is only important if it's offensive. If you're not going to offend anybody, you don't need the protection of the First Amendment. That's what people don't understand: If it's not offensive, you don't need the law to protect you, and that's why it's important that we have unfettered free speech."
Flynt also noted that he has no problem with the Second Amendment either, as long as the guns are used for "self-defense or for gaming purposes," but added that, "I think that we don't need assault weapons as part of our society"—in part because he opined, in response to another King question, that, "To be a policeman in just about any police force in this nation, you have to have a certain mentality and unfortunately, that mentality incorporates racism. ... Policemen, many of them harbor racist tendencies. I'm not saying that all policemen are racist. I'm just saying that this is just a fact of being a part of a police department."
Turning to a discussion of Flynt's relationship with the late evangelist Jerry Falwell, whose victory in his lawsuit against Hustler magazine was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, Flynt noted, "I got a call from him one day and he wanted me to debate him at the University of Miami. Well, I went down and I did it and that's how we made contact. We started debating in different venues around the country and I got to know him very well, and I realized he was a lot like me. He knew what he was selling and I knew what I was selling."
The subject then broadened to include religion in general, and King, an apparent atheist, wondered if Flynt had any thoughts on the topic.
"It's time that we remind the flock that the Bible is a fable," Flynt pointed out. "It's a nice story but it should be considered in a historic context. ... We should be allowed to believe whatever we want to believe as long as we're not believing in something that's harmful to other people, and that's how I see it. Because you're never going to abolish religion, and even if you could, if you could eliminate religion from the face of the earth, which I happen to feel has caused more problems than any other idea since the beginning of time, but if you could eliminate it, it would immediately come back within a year. You're never going to get rid of religion."
King then questioned Flynt as to why he describes himself as a feminist, and Flynt was ready with the answer: "How someone can say that I'm not a feminist, I don't really understand. I worship women and when they say, 'Well, you exploit them,' well, yeah, I exploit sex like Sports Illustrated exploits sports. ... I don't demean women. Women are a sexual object and they always will be. They are part of our fascination, and I don 't know of any man that loves women more than I do or appreciates their beauty more than I do."
Still, under further questioning, Flynt admitted that female LFP employees may not be paid as much as their male counterparts, but that as soon as the government sets some equal pay guidelines, he'd be ready to implement them.
Surprisingly, the interview was nearly half over before King questioned Flynt about porn, first asking about Flynt's reaction to Michael Weinstein's mandatory condom ballot initiative.
"First of all, people who watch porno films don't want to see the actors using condoms; there's just no market for them; it's just that simple," Flynt stated. "I don't think that the state has a right to go tell these actresses they have to use condoms or not. I happen to know the individual behind this initiative, and this is more an effort to close down the porn industry than it is to get actors to wear condoms."
In response to further questions, Flynt noted that today's porn viewer sees quality of material as "more important than ever before," and later noted that, "About a quarter of a century ago, we started diversifying and including the internet, DVD production and casino gaming, so ... now you've got the Hustler Hollywood stores; our average customer there is female, 56 [years old]. It's amazing ... 30 years ago, 90 percent of my profits came from publishing. Now less than 5 percent comes from publishing. The other is gaming and internet and retail."
This led to a discussion of how adult entertainment has changed since Flynt started Hustler, and the magnate had some firm ideas on the subject.
"It all started changing about 35 years ago, there was a complete revolution," Flynt said. "I think it had a lot to do with sexual attitudes changing in general. Sex has become a lot more important to people, and they went out of their way to see that they weren't missing anything."
Flynt also said that he doesn't intend to renew his offer of a $1 million reward for information about politicians' secret sex lives: "We've outed dozens of politicians, including Livingston, speaker-elect of the house when Clinton was impeached, and that was one of the big ones that we got. But you could bring down a politician with an affair 20, 30 years ago. You can't today. Vitter, the senator from New Orleans, we had him visiting a brothel in New Orleans and dating the D.C. Madam in Washington and he still got reelected to the Senate and now he's running for governor.
"It's not a big deal for a politician to have an affair in this day and time," he added, "and you need more than just the affair to bring him—you need some kind of complicity with government funds or travel or something like that."
Finally, King broached the subject of the now 72-year-old Flynt being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and the entrepreneur's answer bordered on the inspirational.
"You know what? I don't dwell on things I can't do anything about," he said. "I don't even think about being in a wheelchair until somebody mentions it to me because life is still too short. You've got to move on, you've got to live your life, you've gotta have fun, do the things that you enjoy doing and not feel sorry for yourself."
All in all, it was a hell of an interview, the entirety of which can be seen here.
