Thx.

Of course, he’d just served six months for desecrating the flag, because he wore one as a diaper to his hearing on why he wouldn’t reveal the source of tapes embarrassing to the FBI, and got himself arrested for contempt of court at the Supreme Court, at the order of Warren Burger, himself.

Flynt is, deep down, an idealist. A weird, extremely rich idealist, but one, nonetheless. He may just be doing it because he can.

http://www.fact-archive.com/encyclopedia/Larry_Flynt

But he loves to punk the media. Interestingly, Thom Hartmann has been writing political pieces in HUSTLER.

Remember Jean Shepherd well — and not just from “A Christmas Story” which is from the collection IN GOD WE TRUST, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH.

Since we’re speaking about media hoaxes:

I actually have a copy of I, Libertine, which was ghost-written by Theodore Sturgeon after a late night session on Shepherd’s radio show, where the subject was how the best-seller charts were rigged.

Shepherd suggested an experiment. They would request a book that didn’t exist and see it show up on the best-seller charts.

He had his “night people” (“Excelsior!”) go into bookstores and ask for a book whose specifics they made up that night on the air, and then they came up with a Kiplingesque author, Frederick R. Ewing:

“During the war Mr. Ewing served with the Royal Navy and was retired in 1946 with the rank of Commander. He saw much action with the North Atlantic Fleet, serving aboard several minesweepers. He resumed his career as a civil servant, and while stationed in Rhodesia, Ewing completed work on I, LIBERTINE.”

The whole “scandal” the broke internationally (evidently nobody at any major bookstores listened to the program).

Ian Ballantine (Ballantine Books) noticed that there were so many requests for the book that he signed Sturgeon and Shepherd, and they quick-like put OUT the actual paperback, with a Kelly Freas cover:

35¢
Turbulent! Turgid! Tempestuous!

“Gadzooks!” quoth I, “but here’s a saucy bawd!”

The back cover reads:

I, LIBERTINE, first volume in a projected trilogy, is the initial major work of F.R. Ewing. Mr. Ewing, an Oxford graduate, was known prior to World War II for his many scholarly contributions to British publications and for his well-remembered series of broadcasts for the B.B.C. on “Erotica of the 18th Century.” [Then the outrageous World War Two stuff quoted above].

All a bunch of hooey, of course, heaped on with a giant ladle, but, seemingly, all the much more believable to a willing public for its extravagant claims. (The BBC obviously had no such show, but Americans wouldn’t know that). And a lesson in manipulating the media, and how much of what we see is outright fiction, but the book was created and published ANYWAY.

The upshot was that Shepherd was moved to the day shift, became a hugely popular radio host in NYC and a beloved figure to millions of PLAYBOY readers who’d finished with the pictures.

And Larry Flynt is, well, Larry Flynt.

Oh, yeah, and I agree with you about Twain’s humor. Still, you’ve got to give some pretty high marks for humor to the late Jean Shepherd (I knew there was a reason why I’ve held onto those old Playboy Magazines all these years), whose humorous stories I’m due to reread any day now.

As for Coulter and Malkin, they’re a waste of . . . well, just about everything.

Courage indeed.