-Caveat Lector-
January 16, 1999
JOURNAL/ By FRANK RICH
Larry Flynt Stoned
We didn't need Larry Flynt to tell us that Bob Barr is a hypocrite. The
Georgia Congressman's sleazy marital history was already public back in '96
when he had the gall to champion an absurd bill called the Defense of Marriage
Act -- which that other proud defender of marriage, Bill Clinton, then signed
into law. But we may need Larry Flynt anyway -- not to expose any impeachment
manager's sex life but simply because his very presence exposes the
disingenuousness of everybody else, conservative and liberal, Republican and
Democrat, press and public, who inhabits the epic Bosch canvas that is
Monicagate. In the land of the pious hypocrite, the honest pornographer is
king.
After a year in which the President repeatedly told us he didn't have sex with
that woman, and his antagonists repeatedly told us that their case "is not
about sex," and the media constantly lamented how horribly sad they were to be
covering this sex-driven, albeit lucrative, story, Mr. Flynt's candor is
downright refreshing. In interviews, he refers to himself as a "smut
publisher" who wants "to sell [his] magazine," not a public-minded seeker of
truth. He openly declares his partisanship ("I love Clinton. He's a great
President.") and eagerly declares his hope to have "the effect of derailing
the impeachment process." The Hustler editor who serves as Mr. Flynt's
collaborator in tracking down Congressional trysts unabashedly describes their
enterprise as "vandalism," not journalism.
It is almost too delicious to watch Mr. Flynt throw his higher-minded
colleagues in the news business into conniptions. Washington's bloviator-in-
chief, David Broder, brooded on PBS about how "the mainstream press" is now
having its agenda set by "the bottom-feeders in our business" -- and yet he
works for the paper (The Washington Post) that first asked the adultery
question to a Presidential candidate (Gary Hart) and is a regular on "Meet the
Press," the first mainstream Sunday gabfest that made a panelist out of Matt
Drudge, the Clinton-haters' answer to Flynt (though not as factually
accurate).
Mr. Flynt's antics have similarly prompted many mainstream TV news outlets --
CNBC, ABC's "20/ 20," CNN, "CBS This Morning" -- to demonstrate yet again
that, for all their pious declarations to the contrary, the scandals they care
most about are those with sex.
The sexual allegations about Mr. Barr have received far more play than the
revelations of the Congressman's involvement with a white supremacist
organization -- much as TV pursued Monica rather than Clinton fund-raising and
wag-the-dog scandals, and largely ignored Henry Hyde's S.&L. shenanigans and
Dan Burton's campaign-finance chicanery to air their sexual histories instead.
The viewing audience, which tells pollsters it's had enough sex, exercises its
own hypocrisy by rewarding Mr. Flynt's appearance on "Rivera Live" with the
show's highest rating since the O. J. civil verdict.
The other hypocrites unmasked by Mr. Flynt's pranks could fill a cabinet
department. It's hard to stop laughing when Dick Morris, who sucked
prostitutes' toes while on the White House payroll, decries the publisher for
"degrading American politics." Jerry Falwell, a past Flynt legal foe, now goes
on TV to condemn his old adversary's tactics -- never mind that Mr. Falwell
himself marketed a video accusing the President of murder.
Conservative politicians and publications that happily feasted on a tabloid's
purchase of Gennifer Flowers's revelations and the recent Drudge-spread hoax
about an illegitimate Clinton son are now fuming about Mr. Flynt. Liberals and
feminists who vehemently attacked a Hollywood film for ostensibly sanitizing
the Hustler publisher's odious depiction of women are curiously silent about
his pursuit of Barr & Co. As for the President, his spokesman, Joe Lockhart,
says that his boss wants Mr. Flynt to "cease and desist." Oh, puh-leeze!
Larry Flynt is a bull in the china shop of false pieties, empty pretensions
and sexual sermonizing that have brought us to this low moment in American
history. On Thursday, alas, he checked into a Los Angeles hospital with
pneumonia. The networks that have been broadcasting soap operas rather than
the Senate trial their anchors keep telling us is "historic" can only pray
that Mr. Flynt, who has it in his power to make impeachment must-see TV again,
gets well soon.
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