Larry Flynt, All-American

A notorious pornographer brings the political and media establishment to its hypocritical knees

Politics by Dan Kennedy

In the hallway by the study, the President and Ms. Lewinsky kissed. On this occasion, according to Ms. Lewinsky, "he focused on me pretty exclusively," kissing her bare breasts and fondling her genitals. At one point, the President inserted a cigar into Ms. Lewinsky's vagina, then put the cigar in his mouth and said: "It tastes good."

-- The Starr report

It's not a question of sex. Sexual misconduct and adultery are private acts and are none of Congress's business.

-- House Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Hyde

God bless Larry Flynt. Following a year in which Republican extremism -- allowed to run unchecked by a pious, handwringing media -- has produced a constitutional crisis, it has fallen to this self-proclaimed scumbag to expose the underlying hypocrisy for what it is.

There is, in fact, no logical connection between independent counsel Ken Starr's pornographic report and Hyde's self-righteous contention that it was presidential perjury, not sex, that brought Bill Clinton to the brink of removal from office. Yes, Clinton probably perjured himself and obstructed justice, and yes, he did so in response to the very sort of sexual-harassment suit that feminist organizations, a key part of his coalition, have long championed. But it's the sex itself -- sleazy, reckless, exploitive -- that has kept Clinton's Republican enemies fired up long after a majority of the public ceased to care.

Yet over the past week, the tone of the debate has shifted dramatically. On Sunday, two Republican senators -- Missouri's John Ashcroft, a presidential pretender who's a favorite of the Christian right, and Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum -- appeared on This Week to proclaim that they would not stand in the way of a censure deal. Ashcroft even suggested that the process has already gone as far as it needs to go, referring to the House impeachment resolution as "the most profound and strongest censure the Constitution allows." (The thought that they're losing Ashcroft may have accounted for George Will's and Bill Kristol's grumpiness later in the program.) On Monday, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today all reported that the Senate appears to be moving toward a quick trial, followed by censure.

What happened? Could it be the holiday spirit of forgiveness? Unlikely. Is it that Senate Republicans have been walking upright longer than their House brethren, and in any case don't have enough votes actually to remove Clinton from office? No doubt that has something to do with it.

But the crucial difference between now and three weeks ago is that Larry Flynt, the wheelchair-bound pornographer who founded raunchy, misogynistic Hustler magazine a quarter-century ago, brought down Representative Bob Livingston before he could even be sworn in as House Speaker, and is threatening to expose the sexual dalliances of about 10 other members of Congress as well. Ashcroft told Sam Donaldson that Flynt's intimidation tactics aren't working, but all that means is that Flynt doesn't have anything on Ashcroft. The plain truth is that there is nothing more likely to focus the mind of a Clinton-bashing, Bible-spouting Republican more clearly than the prospect of finding his mug shot on Hustler's Web site.

"Henry Hyde got in the mud first. I just decided to jump in there with him," Flynt told Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air last week. "I only wanted to expose the hypocrisy in Washington. If they're going to sit in judgment of the president, then they shouldn't have any skeletons in their own closet."

George Stephanopoulos has suggested that maybe if we ignore Flynt, he'll go away. Fat chance. Flynt's escapades have made him the man of the moment. He's been denounced by politicians. He's been vilified by the New York Times editorial page and analyzed by the Washington Post's nationally influential media reporter, Howard Kurtz. The Boston Globe even flew its media critic, Mark Jurkowitz, out to Beverly Hills for an audience. Suddenly, Flynt is a Face to Watch in 1999, a Muckraker Who'll Matter in the year ahead.

And though the mainstream expresses shock and revulsion, what, precisely, is the problem? As Times columnist Frank Rich has pointed out, it was that moralizing self-promoter William Bennett who said that marital fidelity should be a precondition for the Republican presidential nomination, and it was a band of right-wing House members who warned Livingston that his support was crumbling. Obviously there is a constituency that believes information about politicians' sex lives is as relevant and important as information about their stands on Social Security reform and education funding. Perhaps the Christian Coalition will include reprints from Hustler the next time it publishes one of its voters' guides.

Of course, the fact that some Republicans have their own sexual indiscretions to hide does not absolve Clinton's actions. If Clinton had any sense of honor or decency, he would have resigned months ago, realizing he could no longer be an effective leader with the world mocking him and questioning the motives behind every presidential action. (Witness the widespread, and well-deserved, skepticism that greeted his decision to bomb Iraq on the eve of the impeachment vote.) Then, too, with Clinton out of the way, we could have begun a long, hard examination of the process that allowed Starr to trample over people's civil liberties and, after striking out on Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, and other sundry alleged scandals, embark on an eight-month quest for a semen-stained dress.

But there's a big difference between Clinton's leaving voluntarily in order to preserve his dignity (not to mention Lewinsky's, a thought that probably never crossed his self-absorbed mind) and allowing his Republican enemies to cast his lies about sex as an impeachable offense right up there with "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." With the Republicans determined to pursue a scorched-earth policy, why shouldn't Clinton's defenders do the same?

Flynt was not the first on the scene. Last fall, the online magazine Salon revealed that Henry Hyde carried on an affair with a married woman some 30 years ago. Salon's editor, David Talbot, was roundly criticized for his public announcement that "ugly times call for ugly tactics," a statement that cast him as a hopeless Clinton partisan. That was a fair observation, but Talbot's detractors never explained why Clinton's sex life was relevant and Hyde's wasn't. Later, hometown papers exposed adulterous affairs carried on by two other harsh critics of Clinton's morals, Representatives Dan Burton (R-Indiana) and Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho).

Flynt's campaign, though, has been by far the most attention-getting. In October, Flynt placed a full-page ad in the Washington Post, offering $1 million to anyone who could prove a member of Congress had had an adulterous affair. He hit pay dirt in mid-December, when the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call learned that Flynt was about to out Livingston, and Livingston responded by announcing it himself. Livingston received a standing ovation from his Republican colleagues, although it's not clear whether that was a reaction to his candor or a tribute to his success in seducing what is rumored to have been as many as a dozen women. Flynt says Hustler is now working on about 10 other leads. Exposure, he has suggested, could come any day.

Let it be stipulated for the record that Larry Flynt is a pig. Let it also be stipulated that a news organization with any pretension to respectability simply couldn't do what he's doing. Still, it's fascinating to witness the outrage over Flynt's tactics, outrage that was almost entirely absent last summer, when Starr was reporting in irrelevant, voyeuristic detail that Lewinsky once stopped Clinton from going down on her because she had her period. "Ms. Lewinsky did perform oral sex on him," the report added helpfully.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who detests Clinton but detests Starr even more, appears to detest Flynt most of all, writing last week, "Now Larry Flynt, Matt Drudge and Salon are running the show, dishing the dirt, while the rest of us try to figure out where that slippery little line between private and public is." (Responded Drudge: "Maureen? Your hair is melting . . . I learned it from you!")

Time magazine's Margaret Carlson, in a particularly nonsensical swipe at the news media, told Howard Kurtz, "We've been tabloid-launderers for years. Now we're Flynt-launderers. Maybe we're reaching the point where we're so sickened by all this that we stop." (Earth to Carlson: Clinton was exposed by an overzealous prosecutor; Livingston was exposed by the publisher of a porno rag. Other than acting as stenographers, the news media had precisely nothing to do with either.)

Clinton's fiercest enemies accuse Flynt of working in league with the White House -- an accusation that went up from the House floor almost as soon as Livingston had finished apologizing for his serial swordsmanship. Boston Globe columnist John Ellis, who's been calling for Clinton's head all year, recently charged that Flynt's operation is part of the "Doomsday Machine" the White House has established to bring down Clinton's enemies. "They have become partners in politics with Larry Flynt," Ellis fulminated. "They are burning the village in order to save it."

Ellis might be right. Earlier this week MSNBC asked Flynt to respond to rumors that he had placed Clinton operative Terry Lenzer on his payroll. Flynt's response: "I'm not answering that question." (Lenzer has denied it.) And a notoriously rabid Clinton defender, James Carville, is buddies with Flynt; Carville even played a prosecutor in the 1996 movie The People vs. Larry Flynt, with Flynt himself doing a cameo as the judge. But if some presidential partisans are feeding dirt to Flynt, what of it? Is Clinton supposed to be destroyed over his sex life without fighting back?

There's a great scene in The People vs. Larry Flynt in which Flynt (Woody Harrelson) confronts his lawyer, Alan Isaacman (Edward Norton). Flynt, in trouble for refusing to reveal who gave him a videotape that showed automaker John DeLorean being entrapped in an FBI cocaine sting, is being wheeled onto a jet, in defiance of a court order that he not leave the state of California. Isaacman pleads with Flynt not to go. "I got money," Flynt responds sneeringly. "I got money, and that gives me the power to shake up this system."

It is a profoundly cynical, but true, observation. In a smug editorial last week, the New York Times professed outrage that Flynt "is actually paying for at least some of the dirt kicked up by his offer." But what about the $40 million in taxpayers' money that Ken Starr has spent in a desperate attempt to get something, anything, on Clinton? At least Flynt's money was given to him freely by a willing public. The way he has chosen to spend that money may make him one of 1999's biggest media players, whether Times editorial-page editor Howell Raines likes it or not.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com.