Complex Numbers

Revisited: "Larry Flynt is a Better Man than I Am"

It's Wayback Day again, so let's see what the past has in store for us today.

Reaching deep into the bowels of the past, I plucked out something from May 16, 2007: "Larry Flynt is a Better Man than I Am." 

This was so bloody long ago that it might as well be a different planet. The link in the article is, unsurprisingly, broken; I had to dig around a bit more for context, and the context is that Jerry Falwell had kicked the bucket the day before. I really should mark May 15 on my calendar as an annual day of rejoicing and merriment.

My mother told me never to speak ill of the dead, something ingrained in me from an early age, so yesterday's blog entry was rather difficult for me to write.

"Yesterday's blog entry" was a celebratory post announcing the death of that smarmy subhuman trash. At this point, I can't remember if it had actually been difficult for me to write, but I rarely outright lie in these entries; certainly, I've since overcome my reluctance to speak ill of the dead, if the deceased in question was a pox on the ass of society.

As for the title of the entry in question here, a quote from the now-defunct article, which in turn quotes pornographer Larry Flynt:

I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.

Flynt himself bought the farm in early 2021, having outlived Falwell by well over a decade. I don't remember any obituaries about him at the time; I just now looked that up.

I wrote then:

And that's what it comes down to for me, folks. Whatever you may think of the porn industry, it doesn't try to hide behind some nebulous concept of greater good or try to justify its actions on shaky moral grounds. Lots of people want porn, and people like Flynt sell it. Period. Everyone involved, from the producers to the talent to the consumers, are completely aware, every step of the way, that it's all about selling the illusion of sex (or intimacy, as I would argue) in return for money. There's no "it's good for you;" there's no "buy our porn and all your sins will be forgiven."

Reading between the lines here, I think that was a statement against hypocrisy. While we're all hypocrites, and an examination of anyone's life or words will reveal contradictions, some hypocrisy is more blatant than others.

As I recall, that slimy fool's son was also caught in a massive hypocrisy a few years ago. Some sort of sex scandal involving pool boys or some such. Look, I honestly don't give a shit what antics you get up to in private, so long as everyone involved is, at least, consenting adults. But if you rail against extramarital sex and then turn around and indulge in it, the rest of us are absolutely right to call you out on it.

I should emphasize that none of this is actually meant to praise Larry Flynt, who did his own share of damage to the world. But my long-ago entry title stands: he was, at least in this instance, a better person than I was.

As for why I bothered with this in the first place, well, Lynchburg is only about an hour's drive from here, through some of the most beautiful countryside in Virginia. I have friends there, and, at the time, had even more. One of my friends there is in a same-sex marriage, which, again, I don't care—except to the extent that it would make Falwell spin in his grave. Attach a dynamo to it and you could power half of Lynchburg.

I think, though, my last line was a sick burn:

And if you want to know who was the better American, well... consider that Falwell's business never had to pay taxes.