–Two controversial media giants recently died within a week of each other: Most recently conservative radio talk-show legend Rush Limbaugh lost his battle with lung cancer at the age of 70 on Feb.17, 2021. Although he did a brief stint on television, Limbaugh was best known for hosting “The Rush Limbaugh Show” on the radio from 1988 to the present. The epitome of arrogance, the ultra-conservative Limbaugh did his show sitting behind a golden microphone and proclaimed that he was broadcasting from “The Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.” He also often reminded his listeners known as “dittoheads” of his intellectual superiority by pontificating that he was talking “with half his brain tied behind his back just to make things fair.” Revered by many, and reviled by others, Limbaugh was merciless in his attacks on Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, to whom he referred as a “halfrican American.” One of his most despicably tasteless remarks was when he once said to a female African American caller: “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.” Oh yes, when Donald Trump was president, he bestowed on Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What’s that thing they say about “birds of a feather”?
–Larry Flynt, who died of heart failure at the age of 78 on Feb. 10, 2021, was a liberal entrepreneur who in 1974 launched Hustler,
a sex magazine to compete with Playboy and Penthouse. Flynt said his publication was more realistic than Playboy because, as he said in a 1911 interview with The Independent, “I dared to portray people’s real sexual fantasies, not somebody’s idea of what fantasies should be.” Thus, whereas Playboy’s photos often left something to the imagination, the pictures in Hustler graphically portrayed every bit of the anatomy, often at different angles. One year after Hustler hit the newsstands, Flynt blew his competition out of the water by publishing nude photos of Jacqueline Onassis. Flynt obtained the prints for $18,000 from a paparazzo who had taken the pictures without the subject’s knowledge or permission. That single issue of Hustler sold more than a million copies and established Flynt as a millionaire. Subsequently the sales of the magazine continued to increase to where at one point it was selling more than 3 million issues per month. In a 1977 interview with People magazine, Flynt explained his publication’s success: “It is what the people want. When I started Hustler, I wanted to deal with sex as I knew it — as a boy growing up on a farm, working in a factory, on the street — four-letter words and all. That’s the approach I’ve taken, and it cost me my freedom.” Predictably, Flynt became embroiled in an obscenity court case in Cincinnati, where he was sentenced from seven to 25 years in prison. However, he spent only six days in jail before being set free because of technicalities involving misconduct of the prosecution and a biased jury. Two years later he was back in court on obscenity charges in Georgia when he was shot outside the courthouse, and the bullet hit his spinal chord and condemned him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. The shooter never was caught, but a number of years later a white supremacist confessed. Oddly enough Flynt ultimately ended up in a court case that brought him a different kind of notoriety. Hustler Magazine vs. Falwell arose when the November 1983 issue of the magazine ran a parody of a popular ad for the liqueur Campari. That ad featured people telling about their first time drinking it, but the ad in Hustler had someone recounting a first sexual experience. Throughout the years televangelist Jerry Falwell had taken a number of shots at Flynt, who decided to return the favor. Thus, the parody depicted Falwell’s first sexual experience as being drunk in an outhouse with his equally inebriated mother. Falwell sued both the publication and Flynt’s distributing company for libel, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. In the initial findings, the court dropped the charges of invasion of privacy, but the remaining charges were divided. Flynt won the libel case, but the court found against him on infliction of emotional distress and imposed $150,000 in damages. Flynt appealed, and the case finally reached the United Supreme Court in 1988, and it delivered an 8-0 victory for Flynt, citing the First and 14th amendments. And Flynt suddenly was a champion for freedom of the press. In a strange epilogue Falwell reached out to Flynt 10 years later, and the two ended up going on tour where they led discussions on morality and the First Amendment. Flynt later wrote: “I’ll never admire him for his views or his opinions. 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. 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.”
–It’s a four-letter word, and it’s something that I loath with every fiber of my being. Oddly enough some people really like it. And what is even stranger is that many of those who like it often are nice and even reasonable people. It’s not loud or rude. In fact it’s completely silent. But it’s totally obnoxious. Some think it’s pretty, but any beauty it offers is ephemeral. It can be very dangerous by causing automobile accidents. It can be very cruel to people too by bringing about myriad sprains and broken legs to those who walk on sidewalks covered by it. Although it appears very clean when it first arrives, it soon morphs into ugly, black slush that covers the outside of your car and adheres to your shoes so that it turns the floor inside your car into a cold, watery mess. Weather forecasters like to call it “white stuff,” but whatever cute name you give it, in the end it’s still just plain, old snow. And I’ve had plenty of it this winter. The only good thing about it is that it eventually melts and disappears, and it’s high time for it to do just that.
–McConnell vs. Trump—After Donald Trump was acquitted in his second impeachment trial, McConnell, who voted for acquittal, said, “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes of their president. And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet earth.” And Trump responded, “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again. He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our country.” What’s next? My dad can beat up your dad.
–Ponder this: When the cannibal showed up late to the buffet, they gave him the cold shoulder.
