First Amendment Advocate and Hustler Founder Larry Flynt Has Died

This Man Made So Many Things Possible

First Amendment advocate/beloved and reviled pornographer Larry Flynt died yesterday after an ongoing illness at a Los Angeles hospital of undisclosed causes. He was 78 years old.

Flynt had lived in a wheelchair after being partially paralyzed due to bullet wounds in a 1978 murder attempt by white supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin who objected to interracial sex being featured in Hustler magazine.

Flynt was a strip club owner who created Hustler magazine to promote his clubs. That magazine and those clubs made his porn empire possible which consists of a porn video production company, multiple magazines, two Los Angeles area casinos and a very successful retail store chain. He was a hardworking and reportedly occasionally vicious businessman who worked as hard as he could to make himself and the Hustler brand as successful as he could.

Flynt famously battled for the right to parody public figures and his legal case where he was sued by scam artist preacher Jerry Falwell for a parody ad in Hustler made it all the way to the Supreme Court in 1983. In the parody ad, Falwell was said to have lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse.

Flynt played a judge in the excellent 1996 bio-pic about his life The People Vs. Larry Flynt where actor Woody Harrelson portrayed Flynt.

Flynt ran to become the governor of the state of California in 2003 and in 2017, he offered $10 million dollars to anyone who would produce information that would lead to the impeachment of former United States president Donald Trump.

If you love porn, comedy or parody in your entertainment, Flynt is partially responsible for making it possible for you to enjoy those things. I hope that his leaving this planet was peaceful and easy. So much love to his family and friends.

This statement was released on Flynt's Twitter feed.