Why is Larry Flynt Offering a Million Dollars for Proof of a Government Sex Scandal?

Larry Flynt has done something unusual in the June 3, 2007 edition of the Washington Post. He paid for a full-page advertisement that asks for documented evidence of the sexual misconduct of government officials. In exchange for information that he can verify and later publish in the magazine that he owns, he promises to pay 1 million dollars.

While this sure is a lot of money to the common man, on the level of a publicity stunt, it seems like pennies. For example, the retail chain Target proudly advertises that it donates more than 2 million dollars every week to charitable causes.

3 Possible Aims

Therefore, it seems that this sum is arrived at by Flynt to accomplish at least 3 aims: to capture the imagination of any possible informants who might be waiting to tell about their secret encounters with government officials, to alarm any immoral government officials (and more importantly, probably, to get them to behave in a way that will be more suitable to Flynt's political aims), and finally to advertise Larry Flynt himself and the product that he sells.

Will this work?

Well, according to Flynt, it already has. In October 1998, Larry Flynt did exactly the same thing when he placed an ad of this same sort in the Washington Post, at the same time that Bill Clinton was under attack for his actions with Monica Lewinsky. Flynt explained that the times were desperate, and implied that officials in power were abusing their positions. He claims that his 1998 advertisment ultimately caused Rep. Bob Livingston to resign from office. Livingston was a Republican Congressman who had been involved in an affair, and who Flynt's investigation had focused on before he chose to resign.

The History of Larry Flynt

Larry Flynt himself has been no stranger to scandal and investigation. His battles for freedom of speech have been so intense as to engage the interest and judgement of the United States Supreme Court, and have also been the subject of the Milos Forman film The People Vs. Larry Flynt. But this is only the pretty side of the story. Flynt has also been accused by his daughter, Tonya Flynt-Vega, of sexually abusing her when she was a child, which he denies. Also, his political, business, and moral views have raised so much controversy over the years that he has been constantly attacked, sometimes even physically, as when he was shot by an attacker in 1978.

Desperate Times?

All of this leads a person to reason that Flynt's newest political stunt is just a jab at his political enemies. It seems like a proactive assault on the Powers that Be, but in reality it is really just reactive behavior. Flynt is reacting to events like a man who isn't sure of the future of his cause.

Of course, Flynt is about as leftist as you can get. So, what does his behavior say about his hopes for the leftist cause?

If anything, it seems like he must think that these are desperate times again.

Will his million dollars actually change the course of American political history?