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Larry Flynt has died

bbc.com

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Re: Larry Flynt has died

#131

Post by throwaway0a5e »

netsharc wrote: post #125
vinceguidry wrote: post #7

Guess Congress is going to have to start buying their own Hustlers. No way the company's going to continue that crusade. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/17/hustler-has...

> Hustler spokesman Arthur Sando told the Journal, “We assume, at this point, that staff members are either reading it or tossing it.” Hah, safe to assume Mr. Sando is not British ( https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tossing )

The PR person who made the statement and the journalist are both "professional languagers" so to speak. He almost certainly chose the words on purpose for the double meaning and the journalist almost certainly chose to quote it directly because he saw the double meaning.

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#132

Post by Person5478 »

krapp wrote: post #53
covidthrow3 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you call David Duke a free speech activist then? The word free speech activist kind of breaks down when its only one sided.

Someone can believe in free speech while choosing to censor their own platform - free speech doesn't mean every venue, platform and publisher must proliferate all speech. And as far as advocacy goes, I didn't see any mention of it on David Duke's Wikipedia page. Although nowadays every racist and anti-semite is a self-taught Constitutional scholar and friend of Voltaire. But advocacy is orthogonal to political belief…

> Someone can believe in free speech while choosing to censor their own platform

No, someone can __CLAIM__ to believe in free speech, but if they're not allowing it on their own platform then they really don't. There's a reason why the adage "actions speak louder than words" exists.

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#133

Post by mywittyname »

david38 wrote: post #99
eplanit wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid people now see it as an antiquated and outmoded perspective on free speech. His attitude was embraced by progressive people of the late 20th century. That said, he too had to own his own platform in order to exercise his rights.

Indeed. It’s now been reframed as “freedom from government prosecution”, not from organized canceling.

It's always been "freedom from government prosecution."

Flynt faced "organized canceling" from many groups. They just couldn't (continue to) use their influence in the government to punish him. He's in a wheelchair because of a failed "permanent cancellation" attempt.

Also, Democrats of the era didn't much liked him either. Could you imagine 90s-era Hillary Clinton ranting against language in rap music while simultaneously supporting this guy?

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#134

Post by throwaway0a5e »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #120
Const-me wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the southern "bastions of Free Speech" Historically, southern states were bastions of democratic party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Party_System

Yes. Most of the south flipped to the Republican party after the Democratic Party embraced the civil rights movement.

It's a lot more complex than that.

A good solid reputation runs for 10-20yr even after you stop doing whatever it was that got you the reputation.

Look how long it took the midwest to realize that the neoliberals they voted for were shipping their jobs to china. They were running on the good will of supporting unions in decades prior.

The south flipped because republicans figured out that adding a bunch of religious rhetoric to their platform got them easy votes. If it was just civil rights the south would have been voting blue well into the 1980s.

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#135

Post by krapp »

Person5478 wrote: post #132
krapp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone can believe in free speech while choosing to censor their own platform - free speech doesn't mean every venue, platform and publisher must proliferate all speech. And as far as advocacy goes, I didn't see any mention of it on David Duke's Wikipedia page. Although nowadays every racist and anti-semite is a self-taught Constitutional scholar and friend of Voltaire. But advocacy is orthogonal to political belief…

> Someone can believe in free speech while choosing to censor their own platform No, someone can __CLAIM__ to believe in free speech, but if they're not allowing it on their own platform then they really don't. There's a reason why the adage "actions speak louder than words" exists.

That's odd, given that literally every platform I've seen proclaimed as pro free-speech moderates content to some degree or another, which implies no platform owner believes in free speech. And given that some editorial decisions must have been made WRT Hustler at some point (they didn't publish literally everything and anything,) I guess Larry Flynt never really believed in free speech either.

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#136

Post by Person5478 »

soheil wrote: post #40
teh_klev wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're so intent on being offended by imagined offence taken by someone else that you're ignoring them telling you first hand that you've misunderstood them. The irony is astounding... Oh jesus, the classic "no you're offended" weak defence. I am in a round-about-way pointing out how historically illiterate (younger) people are these days. Especially when, particularly on HN, free software, free speech etc is the d…

You're preaching to the choir, I'm all for free speech, fighting hard battles, etc. but why are you lashing out on me for a simple grammatical issue I took with the title of this post? If you believe the avg HN user should know more about "major recent SC cases" rather than startup founders and them being "hustlers", I think you may be hanging around the wrong community.

Because it's both unnecessary and distracting.

When I misunderstand titles and then realize my mistake I don't start complaining about it.

Can it be read either way? Yes. Does it really matter? No. Language is often ambiguous without context.

But even with that, it really isn't confusing. The ones who don't know who Larry Flint are may choose not to click on it whether they take the word Hustler as a verb or a noun. And the ones who do click will be disabused of their potential confusion almost immediately.

IOW, it's a huge nothingburger.

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#137

Post by rayiner »

k__ wrote: post #123
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Most of the south flipped to the Republican party after the Democratic Party embraced the civil rights movement.

I find this rather interesting. People are always touting how Lincoln was a republican, but when I read a bit about history it seemed that the parties switched sides after the war in terms of left/right alignment.

Maybe read more about history. Lincoln’s Republican Party was a coalition of religious fundamentalists (abolitionists) and big business. That’s still basically the modern Republican Party. Meanwhile, FDR’s Democratic Party was recognizably the modern Democratic Party. It was a coalition of labor, immigrants, northern progressives, Black people, and agricultural southern whites. George Wallace was a committed New Dealer. During FDR’s time, the whole south was relatively poorer than Mississippi was today. They had half the GDP per capita of the Midwest. These poor southerners were democrats because they wanted New Deal government programs (so long as Black people were denied access), and were opposed to big business, who supported things like tariffs that were bad for southern farmers but good for northern industry. The New Deal coalition persisted into the 1990s with Bill Clinton, even though Democrats had dropped their opposition to civil rights in 1965.

There was a realignment that happened due to economic development in the south in the 1970s and 1980. Industrial development in the south created the prosperous suburbs similar to the ones that politicians like Reagan relied on to win traditionally Republican states like Arizona. The economies of places like Georgia became reliant on low taxes and low regulation to get business to move there. You can see this even in the Democratic Party. Southern Democrats like Mark Warner and Keisha Lance Bottom are the most pro-business in the party. Lance-Bottoms (the Democratic mayor of Atlanta) and Brian Kemp (the Republican governor of Georgia) have more in common on economic issues than either do with anti-business northern Democrats like Jenny Durkin.

Nixon and Reagan’s appeal to the south is always denounced by democrats as being akin to adopting the pre-1965 Democratic support for segregation. Of course that’s ridiculous. In Congress and as Vice President Nixon had been a leading civil rights advocate, helping get through the 1957 civil rights act. (He was a racist, but he was strongly opposed to de jure discrimination.) By the time of Reagan and Nixon, the issue landscape had changed. People weren’t arguing about segregation, they were arguing about affirmative action and racial quotas. The natural conservative position on those is going to be different than on Jim Crow.

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#138

Post by tinalumfoil »

bdcravens wrote: post #84
krapp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how much porn there is on the internet I don't think that many people have an issue with the Larry Flynts of the world.

Larry Flynt was someone pushing the boundaries of his day, even in the world of pornography (Hustler was more explicit than Playboy, for example). Today's random pornographer is not a "Larry Flynt". Flynt is more akin to Snowden or Assange, or even Parler, in boldness. (not comparing content, just free speech boldness)

To say Larry Flynt was politically correct by today's standards is completely false.

Just look at Wikipedia. He called Sandra Day O'Connor "a token cunt". He wore the American flag as a diaper. Hustler regularly published Chester the Molester, a comic strip, even after the author was convicted of molestation (which later got overturned).

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#139

Post by rayiner »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #134
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Most of the south flipped to the Republican party after the Democratic Party embraced the civil rights movement.

It's a lot more complex than that. A good solid reputation runs for 10-20yr even after you stop doing whatever it was that got you the reputation. Look how long it took the midwest to realize that the neoliberals they voted for were shipping their jobs to china. They were running on the good will of supporting unions in decades prior. The south flipped because republicans figured out that adding a bunch of religious…

> The south flipped because republicans figured out that adding a bunch of religious rhetoric to their platform got them easy votes.

That’s kind of true, but also oversimplified. Republicans have always been the party of religious evangelicals. In the time of Lincoln, abolition was in large part an evangelical Christian movement. After 1965, when both parties had embraced the civil rights acts, social and religious issues took on more importance.

Apart from that, you’re overlooking the economy. Southern states were poor and agrarian during the New Deal era. The wanted government support, they opposed tariffs, they supported a weak currency. All that places them at odds with big business, which was the other leg of the Republican Party. In 1930, the median income in the south was just half of that in the Midwest. After 1960, that changed dramatically due to southern industrialization. Newly minted middle class suburbanites started voting for low taxes and low regulation, just like in the rest of the country.

Re: Larry Flynt has died

#140

Post by postalrat »

CerealFounder wrote: post #95
eplanit wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid people now see it as an antiquated and outmoded perspective on free speech. His attitude was embraced by progressive people of the late 20th century. That said, he too had to own his own platform in order to exercise his rights.

Your comment is confusing. Flynt fought the government, people who are complaining about cancel culture are complaining about people not liking their spicy takes.

How cute and simplistic.
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