Flynt, publisher and activist, dead at 78
LOS ANGELES — “Hustler” magazine publisher Larry Flynt Jr., the self-described “smut peddler” who used his pornography empire and flair for the outrageous to push the limits of free speech and good taste, died on Wednesday at the age of 78, his publicist said.
Flynt, suffering from a variety of health problems since a 1978 assassination attempt that left him a paraplegic, died “from the recent onset of a sudden illness,” according to Minda Gowen, spokeswoman for Larry Flynt Publications, which runs the adult entertainment business he founded.
Flynt died in his sleep at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, with his wife, Liz, and daughter, Theresa, at his bedside, Gowen said in a statement.
Celebrated by some as a free-speech provocateur and reviled by others as a profiteer of sexual exploitation and misogyny, Flynt was renowned for taunting critics with such outlandish stunts as appearing in court wearing a diaper made from an American flag.
In the most famous of numerous legal battles in which he was embroiled, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a landmark ruling in favor of Flynt in a libel lawsuit brought against him by evangelist Jerry Falwell.
Flynt had published a fake ad in “Hustler” which depicted Falwell saying his first sexual encounter had been with his mother in an outhouse. Falwell sued for US$50 million and won a lower-court ruling, but in 1988 the Supreme Court held that the ad was a parody and protected by the First Amendment.
In his heyday, Flynt lived a lifestyle that could have made Caligula blush. He wrote in his autobiography that his first sexual experience was with a chicken and told of having sex every four or five hours during a workday.