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I bet religious zealots think Larry being paralyzed from the waist down is some kind of fitting "punishment from God."
I think that if God had anything to do with it, it would be to use Larry Flynt as a weapon on the side of good. He has been fighting for our rights since before he was shot, and continued on afterwards. Maybe if he hadn't been shot, he would have quit as soon as he won and we wouldn't have the great book which I'm currently reading, "Sex, Lies, and Politics."
That said, I'm not superstitious and have stopped looking for meaning in random, senseless events. Whoever shot Mr. Flint, though, should know they achieved the exact opposite effect than that which they probably hoped for.
He's probably dead, by now:
Larry Flynt's Assailant Has Left a Trail of Bigotry and Murder
In the movie ''The People vs. Larry Flynt,'' an epilogue notes that the sniper who shot Mr. Flynt and his lawyer in 1978, during Mr. Flynt's pornography trial in Georgia, has not been brought to justice.
That is true, but justice has had its hands full.
Joseph Paul Franklin has been indicted in the attack, and law-enforcement officials say he has confessed to the shooting. Mr. Franklin, however, is already serving life sentences for four murders and may soon pay the ultimate penalty for a fifth, so no trial in the attack on Mr. Flynt is planned.
Those killings were among 15 attacks that he has admitted or is suspected of carrying out between 1977 and 1980 because of his hatred of blacks and Jews.
Last month, Mr. Franklin, 46, was convicted of murdering a man outside a suburban St. Louis synagogue in 1977. He asked jurors to recommend that he get the death penalty. They did, and a judge is expected to sentence him to death on Feb. 27.
In July 1974, Flynt first published Hustler as a step forward from the Hustler Newsletter, which was advertising for his businesses. The magazine struggled for the first year, partly because many distributors and wholesalers refused to handle it as its nude photos became increasingly graphic. It targeted working-class men and grew from a shaky start to a peak circulation of around three million (current[when?] circulation is below 500,000). In November 1974, it showed the first "pink-shots," photos of open vulvas. The publication of nude paparazzi pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in August 1975 was a major coup.Hustler has often featured more explicit photographs than comparable magazines and has contained depictions of women that some find demeaning, such as a naked woman in a meat grinder or presented as a dog on a leash — though Flynt later said that the meat grinder image was a criticism of the pornography industry itself.
Flynt created his privately held company Larry Flynt Publications (LFP) in 1976. LFP published several other magazines. It also included a distribution business, something that may have angered the Mafia, which traditionally organized the distribution of porn.
Other ventures either wholly owned by or licensed by Flynt or LFP, Inc. include the Hustler Clubs and the Hustler Hollywood Store. LFP also publishes Barely Legal, a pornographic magazine featuring young women who have recently turned 18, the minimum age for a pornographic or erotic model.
Flynt has been embroiled in many legal battles regarding the regulation of pornography and free speech within the United States, especially attacking the Miller v. California(1973) obscenity exception to the First Amendment. He was first prosecuted on obscenity and organized crime charges in Cincinnati in 1976 by Simon Leis, who headed a local anti-pornography committee. He was sentenced to seven to 25 years and served six days; the sentence was overturned on a technicality. One argument resulting from this case was reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981.]
During the proceedings in Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Flynt reportedly shouted "Fuck this court!" and called the justices "nothing but eight assholes and a token cunt" (referring to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor).[29] Chief Justice Warren E. Burger had him arrested for contempt of court, but the charge was later dismissed.
Also in 1983, he leaked an FBI surveillance tape to the media regarding John DeLorean. In the videos, when arresting DeLorean, the FBI is shown asking him whether he would rather defend himself or have "his daughter's head smashed in."[30] During the subsequent trial, Flynt wore an American flag as a diaper and was jailed for six months for desecration of the flag.
In 1988, Flynt won an important Supreme Court decision, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, after being sued by Reverend Jerry Falwell in 1983, over an offensive ad parody inHustler that suggested that Falwell's first sexual encounter was with his mother in an out-house. Falwell sued Flynt, citing emotional distress caused by the ad. The decision clarified that public figures cannot recover damages for "intentional infliction of emotional distress" based on parodies. After Falwell's death, Flynt stated that despite their differences, he and Falwell had become friends over the years, adding, "I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling."[33]
Politics
Flynt is a Democrat, though he once attempted a presidential run as a Republican. He is a staunch critic of the Warren Commission and offered $1 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the assassin of John F. Kennedy. He once tried to link the attempt on his own life to the Kennedy assassination. In 2003, Flynt was a candidate in the recall election of California governor Gray Davis, calling himself a "smut peddler who cares".[36] He finished 7th in a field of 135 candidates.
Flynt has repeatedly weighed in on public debates by trying to expose conservative or Republican politicians with sexual scandals. He did so during the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton in 1998, offering $1 million for evidence and publishing the results in The Flynt Report. These publications led to the resignation of incoming House Speaker Bob Livingston. In 2007, Flynt repeated his $1 million offer and also wrote the foreword to Joseph Minton Amann and Tom Breuer's The Brotherhood of Disappearing Pants: A Field Guide to Conservative Sex Scandals, which contained some cases published by Flynt.[37] In 2003, he also purchased nude photographs ofPrivate Jessica Lynch, who was captured by Iraqi forces, rescued from an Iraqi hospital by US troops and celebrated as a hero by the media. Flynt stated he would never show any of the photographs, calling Lynch a "good kid" who became "a pawn for the government".
Flynt has supported activist groups opposed to the war in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, and is also a strong supporter of gay rights and gay marriage.
Why was Larry Flint shot?
"In a recent jailhouse interview here, Mr. Franklin said that meditating on the Bible had led him to have a change of heart.
''I was totally immersed in Nazi philosophy at the time, and I was obsessed with race-mixing,'' said Mr. Franklin, a drifter who once belonged to the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party.
He said he had shot Mr. Flynt after becoming incensed by seeing a picture in Hustler magazine, which Mr. Flynt publishes, of a white woman and a black man having sex.
''I have nothing in my heart but love for Larry now,'' said Mr. Franklin, a tall slender man with dyed red hair and a goatee. ''I really regret what happened. Larry has some faults, but I don't hate him anymore. It's the only shooting I've committed that I've ever cried about.''
Mr. Franklin said he no longer hated blacks and Jews and thought that he might have been a Jew in a former lifetime.
Mr. Franklin has been in jail since he was arrested in 1980 in the fatal shootings that year of two black men who were jogging with two white women in Salt Lake City. "
Fucking psycho! Okay, death penalty would work here! WTF? Every two bit black alleged criminal that looks like somebody else who might have committed a crime, once, is fried to a crisp and this asshole gets to sit out two full lifetimes in jail? Seriously? What is wrong with the people in charge of our country?
"He was convicted and given two life sentences. In 1982, Mr. Franklin was acquitted of shooting Vernon E. Jordan Jr., the head of the National Urban League and now a powerful Washington lawyer, in 1980. He later confessed to the shooting.
In 1984, he was convicted of bombing a synagogue in Chattanooga, Tenn., in 1977; in 1986, he was convicted in the murders of an interracial couple in Madison, Wis., in 1977. He received two life sentences for the murders. The bombing conviction was overturned.
He is suspected in the slayings of 10 people in Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.
Mr. Franklin is in jail here, the county seat of St. Louis County, awaiting sentencing in the murder of Gerald Gordon, 42, who was shot and killed in the parking lot of a Richmond Heights, Mo., synagogue after a bar mitzvah in 1977, while his two young daughters stood nearby."
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