On February 10, 2021, the world said an ethically confused goodbye to Larry Flynt, the “King of Smut” founder of Hustler magazine, which at its peak in the mid-70s garnered no less than 2 million subscribers, as NPR tells us. Flynt, born in an actual log cabin in Kentucky, grew Hustler out of his collection of strip clubs as an alternative to his “highfalutin” pornographic competitors, Playboy and Penthouse, saying, “I felt guys wanted to see… more a girl next door,” and “I sensed that raw sex was what men wanted. And I was right.” He called the content of Hustler “tasteless and lowbrow and many times offensive, but it was the type of humor you hear and see in the workplace, the factories.” Besides Hustler’s arguably abusive and violent pornography, some of its regular bits were a comedic pedophile called Chester the Molester and “photographs literally showing women as pieces of meat.”

Naturally, as The Washington Post outlines, Flynt drew the ire of people such as feminist and legendary activist Gloria Steinem, while others joined Flynt’s self-branding as a hero of free speech. And indeed, Flynt was a complicated character. He supported same-sex marriage, opposed the war in Iraq following 9/11, and funded “research in spinal cord injuries, child abuse and youth violence.” He was left paralyzed from a gunshot wound in 1978, but insisted that his attacker not be executed because, as Flynt said, the “sole motivating factor behind the death penalty is vengeance, not justice,” per Business Insider.

Centimillionaire porn peddler turned free speech activist

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