I think there’s just a tad bit of false equivalence when the right treats notorious pornographer and misogynist Larry Flynt as the left’s answer to Rush Limbaugh. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the porn industry is aware that Larry Flynt pioneered the degradation of women in his Hustler magazine. I think some conservatives are confused about how the left feels about Mr. Flynt. On the one hand, anyone who cares about civil liberties is grateful that Larry Flynt fought and won his case against Jerry Falwell. I think a lot of people were grateful when he rose to the defense of Bill Clinton during l’affaire Lewinsky. But that’s about as far as it goes in the Larry Flynt admiration department. His work product has been deplorable from the beginning. I don’t know anyone on the left who would rise to the defense of Hustler, other than to the limited degree that Flynt has a right to publish it and we have a right to buy it.
I don’t know why every liberal in the country is supposed to be particularly offended by Flynt’s latest example of outrageous misogyny when he’s made a career out of it. But, yes, his treatment of conservative commentator S.E. Cupp is no more acceptable than Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Flake a “slut.” Indeed, it is less so. Now let’s see how many Democrats appear in Hustler compared to how many Republicans suck up to Rush Limbaugh.
As for the claim that the National Organization for Women doesn’t care about Larry Flynt’s antics, I found this in the Wayback Machine:
February 22, 1997|By Cathy Young
There are times when one finds it difficult to root for either side in a debate. The controversy over The People vs. Larry Flynt, the Milos Forman film, which received Oscar nominations for best director and best actor, is a case in point.
On one side is the usual strange-bedfellow antiporn coalition of conservatives and feminists. The National Organization for Women has waged a campaign to keep the film from getting an Oscar. On Crossfire, Lynn Cheney, the conservative commentator and former National Endowment for the Humanities director, joined NOW activist Anne Conners in deploring the film as a celebration of Flynt’s “barbaric and repulsive view of women.”
Of course, the film was not a celebration of Flynt’s barbaric and repulsive view of women. But that’s not the point. The point is that NOW has never seen Larry Flynt as an ally of any kind. Quite the opposite, in fact. They successfully lobbied against the Oscar nominations of director Milos Forman and actor Woody Harrelson, neither of whom were awarded the prize. On the other hand, they have better things to do than condemn Larry Flynt every time he prints a new issue of his magazine. He’s a pornographer, not a political entertainer or activist.
