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In a section of her 2014 book
Men: An Ongoing Investigation, Laura Kipnis gleefully describes Larry Flynt who died yesterday of heart failure at the age of 78 as a “scumbag pornographer,” and subsequently condemns the major motion picture based on his life. Said motion picture, written by Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander and directed by Milos Forman, was of course 1996’s “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” and Kipnis’ argument against it is an interesting one.
Accusing the picture of “class condescension,” she sees its story of Flynt’s ostensible evolution into a First Amendment activist as one in which the Kentucky-born, unapologetically redneck strip-club owner turned magazine publisher (played by Woody Harrelson) becomes enlightened by more ostensibly acceptable members of society, including his Ivy-League-educated attorney Alan Isaacman (Edward Norton). The film’s scheme, Kipnis writes, means to reassure refined middle-class viewers that their own prejudices