Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Porn king Larry Flynt has issued a new bounty. On Thursday, the Hustler magazine publisher, offered $1 million to anyone with proof of “an illicit sexual liaison” involving Republican presidential candidate, Rick Perry. Flynt is not too particular either, he’ll accept both gay and straight encounters.
Flynt justifies the bounty this way. “I’ve been doing this for 35 years,” Flynt said in a telephone interview with Reuters. “We’ve found running these ads were very successful in finding sources to come forward.” And Flint’s been effective. In 1999, in-coming Speaker of the House, Robert Livingston resigned when Flynt claimed to have obtained knowledge of an alleged extra-marital affair. Livingston had led the Republican fusilade against Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
The question becomes whether these bounties on the sex lives of public figures are desirable or harmful. Certainly, Flynt does it to generate publicity and hence sales. He claims to be an enemy of sexual hypocrisy and he has uncovered instances of it. But, it is an unseemly practice. The danger lies in the disincentive it provides to genuinely competent people to enter public service. Even without the sexual baggage who wants to subject themselves and their families to the indignities of claims made by persons with political axes to grind.
I am no fan of Rick Perry and his ilk, but it is beyond question he has the right to his publicly stated views — whether he actually believes them or not. Bounties like the ones offered by Flynt coarsen the political dialogue (as if it isn’t sack cloth already) and present a threat to democracy by denying it the persons most able to lead. Were we to cast out as “sinners” every politician with a sexual dalliance in their past we would scarcely have anyone left in Washington to turn the lights off.
Is Larry Flynt serving democracy by ferreting out hypocrites, or is this tawdry business a cancer on the republic? Or does it depend on whose ox is gored? What do you think?
Source: Yahoo News
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
You are not even entitled to your opinion…
It is much more important to Perry that he win the Florida straw poll today despite his poor debate performances than anything porn king Larry Flynt does.
Mike,
You’ll never be right….even if you are right you are still wrong… I am correct in saying that….
That was my point, Mike. Flynt could not dig the dirt on Bush and his character was flawed in any case. Clean is a term used in the recovering community to mean you are substance free. In the case of sexual addiction it would mean the same thing. Flynt and his rewards are not that important.
“Bush seemed pretty clean while he was president.”
SwM,
That is the problem that we face in this country allowing sexuality and sexual hypocrisy to define morality. Bush may not have been an adulterer
but his policies led to perhaps the deaths of a million people, the death and maiming of thousands of our troops and to an increasing downward spiral towards American attaining 3rd World Nation living conditions, while acting as Hessian’s for a Corporate-Run Empire.
I don’t care either. Like the rest of you who don’t care, I spent about a half hour googling to see what I could come up with. But really, none of this is any of our business. When these folks are fingering a crotch, that’s one less finger on the button. Well, sort of.
But Condoleezza Rice? That woman made brazen overtures / With a guilt-edged guarantee / She had a golden glint in her eye / And a silver voice with a counterfeit ring
Apropos of not much, but a favorite video:
@Swarthmore: Bush seemed pretty clean while he was president.
Sexual indiscretion-wise, I agree, but Bush had many other character flaws that made me despise him, while he was governor of Texas. Including his adolescent joking about prisoners he was putting to death, and his pre-governor corruption of “eminent domain” laws that ripped common people off by seizing their land under false pretenses and re-purposing it for his stadium and making his cronies millions.
Sexual indiscretion isn’t the only clue that a politician will give in to the temptation to abuse their power and enrich themselves or their friends.
Rumors are only rumors. The rumor has always been that Condeleezza Rice is gay. Don’t care like Blouise said.
Tony C.,
I agree with most of your post…I disagree with part of it as well…I am just trying to figure out exactly how to state rumors that Bush had a dalliance with Rice….The rest I’ll address later..
I don’t know about that, Tony c. Bush seemed pretty clean while he was president. Agree with Blouise. Blouise, it looks like you will be right about Romney. Perry is fading fast. There’s talk about Christy.
My own opinion is that sexual indiscretion, especially (but not only) by a sitting politician that knows the career ramifications of exposure, reveal a particularly weak sense of self control and an inability to resist personal gratification.
That is not a quality I want to see in a person with legal authority. It isn’t the sex. If the politician is single and dating and open about that while being elected, I would not withhold my vote. I do not expect them to be eunuchs. It is about their ability to resist temptation, which I think is going to be rampant in their official capacity.
Quite frankly, the legal sexual peccadilloes of anyone, including politicians, are of absolutely no interest to me. I find all the attention given to such matters as unseemly as the peccadilloes themselves are to others.
The only sexual matter that I will pay any attention to involves children. Then I want to know so that I may hop on any bandwagon dedicated to carrying the “guilty” perp to prison. (I stuck guilty in there with a bow to those who defend the innocent.)
Other than that … have a ball ladies and gents … your sexual persuasions have no impact on my vote.
Flynt has presented women in a very violent manner including women in meat grinders and on leashes like dogs. His newest magazine is called “Barely Legal” featuring very young women. It is free speech but I don’t have to like his demeaning violent view of women. Enough time wasted on him. Time to go for a bike ride.
Mike, Puzzling,
I echo your views. It would be kinda funny if a pretty, pretty boi came foward…and said they were just friends….
That is to be sung to “Hotel California.”….
I have to agree with Puzzling. Those politicians and preachers that use human sexuality as a means of demagoguery should have the cautionary possibility that the hypocrisy of their own acts can come to light. Flynt, a pornographer, has suffered at the hands of politicians, law enforcement, prosecutors and even an attempted assassination. He comes to his opposition to sexual hypocrisy through the filter of his own experiences and persecution. While his publications are artistically sub. par, they are permissible free speech and he should not have had to
deal with the opportunistic, publicity-seeking harassment that has cost him his legs. Obviously, he is seeking to expose the hypocrisy behind those using “family values” as a chimera to hide their real agendas as a
just revenge for his past treatment. I can’t blame him..
This has become an election cycle ritual for Flynt. Never really has had much impact. Don’t care if he does it or not.
“The danger lies in the disincentive it provides to genuinely competent people to enter public service.”
Maybe, but I don’t think so.
What it can do, is keep private, sexual issues out of the policy discussions for fear your own sordid past will come back to prove you a hypocrite and a liar.
Sounds great to me.
God speed, Larry Flynt.
Cheers.
If it reveals the true character of an individual running for public office then it should be encouraged.
If we knew the true character of George Bush and Dick Cheney would they still have been awarded two terms?
Maybe it would be good if politicians were worried about people snooping on them looking for dirt, it’s not like they don’t do the same.
Hypocrisy should always be outed.
Do we really have to debate that politicians who would use government power to marginalize, criminalize, and punish individuals for sexual actions of consenting adults should be called to account for these same acts?
Flynt is correct to do this, both morally and legally. What is the alternative? Your “desirable or harmful” balance test on political speech?
A Ron Paul supporter placed an ad in an Austin paper requesting the same information. The gay rumor has floated around but who knows if it is true. Austin is a small town and Perry is easily recognizable. Probably isn’t anything there. Flynt tried to get stuff on Bush but there wasn’t much there either. Flynt is a sleaze. Perry is sinking in the polls after his poor debate performance so maybe Flynt needs to turn his attention and money elsewhere.