SEX, LIES AND POLITICS

From “a smut peddler who cares,” a vigorous broadside against American hypocrisy.

“They call me a bottom feeder, and it’s true, but look what I found at the bottom,” declares Hustler magazine publisher Flynt. What he found—and backs up with the best checkbook journalism—is a pit of sexual, political, and ethical hypocrisy in which the guardians of our moral purity can often enough be found egregiously transgressing, from Bob Livingston to Henry Hyde, Bob Barr to Dan Burton to independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Flynt made his boodle in the sex trade, so he is open to conflict-of-interest charges when he spouts such comments as, “People who have a nice, healthy connection to their crotch have a better connection between the head and their heart,” or, “in a land of sexually healthy people we'd have less crime, less poverty, less divorce, less drug use—and fewer right-wing Republicans,” but he is spot-on when he points out that tirades about sexual depravity have drawn attention away from the politics of vested interests to the folderol of George Bush’s tax cuts. Readers don’t have to subscribe to Flynt’s lifestyle to appreciate that his money can dig up the dirt on the hypocrites. The author comes across as a well-read citizen, as adroit in damning and praising the New York Times as he is in dismissing more obvious targets like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. His thoughts on the incompetence of intelligence agencies were written long before the recent revelations, and he is equally astute on the crony capitalism saturating the war in Iraq and the make-believe politics of the Bush presidency, which started with a make-believe election and has brought us the make-believe liberation of a nation.

Flynt’s rude, but he’s got the goods.