The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics have ended, for better or worse. In terms of international opinion, the results of the Games were mixed. On one hand, Western critics made themselves look partisan and petty with their steady stream of kvetching about the quality of the snow, the hotel accommodations, and the security. On the other hand, Russia’s reputation for repression was hardly eased by the testimonials of persecuted gays in that country, by riot police roughing up demonstrators, or by the outbreak of violence in Ukraine, where a Moscow-backed leader authorized deadly force against protestors. So in that sense, Americans were reminded, even if their athletes didn’t win as many gold medals as they’d hoped, of the strength of our democracy.
That’s a fitting historical theme for this date in history: On Feb. 24, 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the right to freedom of expression—even involving the most unsavory form of satire, in this case aimed at televangelist Jerry Falwell.
The person doing the aiming was Larry Flynt. In the 1970s, he emerged as a pornographer and social critic who, in his own words, was intent on “pushing the envelope of taste” in the pages of Hustler, his unapologetically raunchy magazine.
In this aim, he did not fail. His publication stood apart, even within its genre, for its misogyny, gynecological treatments of the female form, racial stereotypes, bathroom humor, vicious political satire—usually aimed at Republicans—and reflexive irreverence.
Hustler featured a regular running cartoon of a pedophile named “Chester the Molester,” published a photograph of Jackie Kennedy Onassis sunbathing nude on a yacht, and made fun of first lady Betty Ford’s mastectomy. (The latter was the only one for which Flynt ever expressed remorse.)
Sometimes the material was there for its shock value; some of it was to titillate readers; some was there, well, just because Flynt could do it. After a woman was raped by several men on a pool table at a bar in New Bedford, Mass., Hustler produced a mock civic billboard, “Welcome to New Bedford, the Portuguese Gang Rape Capital of the World.”
But beneath the crudity was a political message—one embracing a socially libertine lifestyle. When “Deep Throat” star Linda Lovelace became an anti-porn crusader who said she’d been forced into X-rated films by her husband at the point of a gun, Hustler ran a bestiality snapshot of her from an earlier porn movie with the snarky caption, “Notice the gun in Fido’s paw.”
His publication came to the attention of various cultural traditionalists, not excluding a televangelist from Virginia who was making his own name in the new media culture. Larry Flynt wasn’t a fellow to turn the other cheek, however, and he fired back at Jerry Falwell: Inside the front cover of the November 1983 issue was a parody of Jerry Falwell talking about his “first time.” It was modeled after actual Campari liqueur ads that included interviews with various celebrities about their “first” times—ostensibly tasting Campari, but with an obvious sexual double entendre.
In the telling of Hustler’s editors, Falwell’s “first time” was a drunken incestuous rendezvous with his own mother in an outhouse. Falwell wasn’t a subscriber to the magazine, but a news reporter informed him of the parody. As it happens, Falwell’s mother had recently died. Incensed, he sued in state court for libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
At the trial, a jury ruled that a reasonable person wouldn’t believe that Hustler was really claiming these outrages were true—but they sided with the pastor on the emotional distress part of the tort. A federal judge upheld the verdict, as did the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. So the Supreme Court took the case, and its February 24, 1988 ruling surprised many — including Flynt.
“This case presents us with a novel question involving First Amendment limitations upon a state’s authority to protect its citizens from the intentional infliction of emotional distress,” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote in an 8-0 decision.
“We must decide whether a public figure may recover damages for emotional harm caused by the publication of an ad parody offensive to him, and doubtless gross and repugnant in the eyes of most,” he added. “[Falwell] would have us find that a state’s interest in protecting public figures from emotional distress is sufficient to deny First Amendment protection to speech that is patently offensive and is intended to inflict emotional injury, even when that speech could not reasonably have been interpreted as stating actual facts about the public figure involved. This we decline to do.”
To decide otherwise, the eight justices reasoned, would effectively outlaw political cartooning. This, too, the high court ruled, would be an unwise and unconstitutional decision to render. Rehnquist quoted approvingly from the words of a cartoonist:
“The political cartoon is a weapon of attack, of scorn and ridicule and satire; it is least effective when it tries to pat some politician on the back. It is usually as welcome as a bee sting, and is always controversial in some quarters.”
The Falwell-Flynt saga had another twist as well. It came in 1997, nearly 15 years after their feud began. Flynt’s autobiography had just been published, and a movie, “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” had also been released, which is how Flynt found himself seated with Falwell on “Larry King Live.” Or, to be more precise, found himself in a bear hug from the affable pastor.
“I disagreed with Falwell on absolutely everything he preached, and he looked at me as symbolic of all the social ills that a society can possibly have,” Flynt would write 10 years later, on the occasion of Falwell’s death. “But I’d do anything to sell the book and the film, and Falwell would do anything to preach, so King’s audience of 8 million viewers was all the incentive either of us needed to bring us together.
The two men hadn’t seen each other since they faced off in court in the early 1980s—and their differences over politics, religion, and public comportment hadn’t eased in the meantime—so Flynt figured Falwell hated him, an emotion he was only too glad to reciprocate. But Jerry Falwell, despite his fire-and-brimstone theology and his antediluvian views on gay rights, wasn’t much of a hater. His affectionate hug of Flynt clearly caught the pornographer off-guard. Moreover, he discovered that he kind of liked Falwell. He was even more impressed when the evangelist showed up unannounced at Hustler’s Beverly Hills office and proposed that the two men go around the country debating the First Amendment, which they did.
“To this day, I’m not sure if his television embrace was meant to mend fences, to show himself to the public as a generous and forgiving preacher or merely to make me uneasy,” Flynt wrote in 2007. “But the ultimate result was one I never expected and was just as shocking a turn to me as was winning that famous Supreme Court case: We became friends.”
Flynt & Falwell: A First Amendment Odd Couple
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