Stay updated with breaking news from Peggy vega. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
Larry Flynt, who has died aged 78, was an American pornographer who picked wild legal fights in his efforts to protect freedom of speech - or to attract publicity for his magazines - and built a business empire of publications, strip clubs and adult shops worth $400m (€330m) in 2015. Much of his life was spent promoting Hustler, the magazine he founded in 1974. It pioneered a demotic brand of pornography and outsold Playboy and Penthouse. It was not enough for Flynt to shock people with pictorial content. I wanted to offend everyone on an equal-opportunity basis, he boasted. It was his muck-raking that got Flynt into the greatest trouble. His first visit to the Supreme Court was to appeal against a libel conviction - he had alleged that Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse, had given his girlfriend a venereal disease. ....
Larry Flynt, pornographer, provoker and scabrous champion of Americans’ right to free speech – obituary After his 1988 Supreme Court win Flynt said: ‘If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, then it will protect all of you’ Flynt, founder of Hustler magazine, giving a press conference in 2007 Credit: Gus Ruelas/REUTERS Larry Flynt, who has died aged 78, was an American pornographer who picked wild legal fights in his efforts to protect freedom of speech – or, depending on one’s point of view, to attract publicity for his magazines and himself – and built up a business empire of magazines, strip clubs and “adult” shops estimated to be worth $400 million in 2015. ....