Larry Flynt

From RationalWiki

Larry Flynt grew up in the backwoods of Kentucky, went into business in Ohio with a chain of strip bars, and parleyed the promotional newsletter for those strip bars into Hustler magazine, which prints some raunchy stuff some would characterize as pr0n.

The story probably would have ended there, were it not for some self-styled religious right crusaders trying to clean up Cincinnati of teh pr0n menace, led by Charles Keating (later better known for his criminal banking scandal). Trying to make an example out of Hustler they convinced the city of Cincinnati to press charges against Larry Flynt in 1976 for "pandering obscenity", and "organized crime".

Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for saner folks, they fucked with the wrong guy and Hustler is still going strong today. The court case and the founding of the infamous magazine was dramatised in a very idealised, hollywood-like manner in the 1996 flick "The People vs. Larry Flint", where he was touted as a defender of free speach.

He has since been a thorn in the side of hypocritical politicians and religious right fanatics everywhere, pwning them with amusing regularity. He once took Jerry Falwell all the way to the Supreme Court and won, over a free speech case involving a spoof liquor ad in which Fallwell confessed to having sex with his mother in an outhouse. In 1998 Flynt brought down the new Republican speaker of the House, Bob Livingston by exposing his extramarital affairs.

The city of Cincinnati, however, never got the message and has attempted to prosecute Larry Flynt twice since, in 1998 and 2003, both times for "pandering obscenity".