Elections
Well that's gross
Supreme Court Told Trump PA Lawyers To Get Bent, And Amy Coney Barrett And Kegs Kavanaugh Helped!
And when the law is against you, let Clarence Thomas bang the table.
February 23, 2021 03:40 PM
It has been almost four months since the election, Joe Biden has been sworn in as the 46th president, and Donald Trump is just a sad old Florida man stewing in his own hate at Mar-a-Lago. But, of course, we are still dealing with the massive shitstorm he created with his election ratfucking bullshit.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court declined to hear Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Degraffenreid, one of the last remaining cases from that time Trump tried to throw a coup and overturn the election results in all of the swing states that went blue.
By the end, even the lawyers conceded that they weren't trying to change the results of the 2020 election. That's because they couldn't use that particular case to do that, even if they tried. Only around 10,000 mail-in ballots arrived after the Election Day deadline, Joe Biden won the state by 80,555 votes, and there were no allegations that any lower races were affected.
Oh, and there's the fact that Biden won by enough electoral votes that even without Pennsylvania, he still would have won the election. But Republicans aren't about to stop trying to screw over our democracy, so here we are.
Why did they keep fighting after the election was clearly over? They were hoping they could get the Supreme Court to say the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was wrong to extend the deadline for mail-in ballots in the midst of a deadly pandemic. The goal was to create precedent saying state supreme courts have no authority to make rulings based on their own state constitutions about federal elections, just in case some state supreme court tries to step in and guarantee the right to vote in future elections.
Well that's gross
<p>Here's what happened. In response to the ongoing pandemic, a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling extended the deadline for mail-in ballots by three days because of the pandemic and delays at USPS, relying on the state constitution. Republicans then lost their shit, because there's nothing they hate more than voting rights. (Except maybe people of color and women.) <br></p><p>Before the election, Republicans asked SCOTUS to stay the state supreme court's order and not count the votes that arrived after Election Day. The <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/scotus-ratf-cking-the-election" target="_blank">justices tied 4-4</a>, leaving the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling in place. A couple of weeks later, the Court decided not to hear the case on the merits before the election and sent it back down to the lower courts. <br></p><p>The Republicans just kept losing in this case, but they kept on fighting anyway. The lawyers trying to subvert democracy were, once again, from <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/trump-lawyers-learn-the-hard-way-that-cheetoh-stink-doesnt-wash-off" target="_blank">Jones Day</a>, the Republican Party's favorite go-to firm for screwing the people. While two other law firms succumbed to pressure after the election to not fuck with our democracy, Jones Day would not be deterred. Even after the insurrection, it continued to represent the GOP in its voter suppression cases.<br></p><p>Finally, the attempted ratfucking in Pennsylvania is over. We don't actually know why the Court declined to hear the case; it simply denied the cert petition without comment. But three of the worst justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, dissented from the decision. </p><p>And Alito and Thomas felt the need to cry for a combined 15 pages to show just how mad they were about the fact that Democrats managed to win a national election. (Gorsuch joined Alito's dissent.) It only would have taken the support of Justice Kegstand or Amy Coat Hanger for the Court to take up the case, as just four votes are needed to grant cert, but for whatever reason, neither decided to step in.</p><p>Endorsing Donald Trump's Big Lie about the election, Thomas in his dissent made up a bunch of bullshit about how "the risk of fraud is 'vastly more prevalent' for mail-in ballots." He also takes issue with "the corresponding safeguards that States put in place to ameliorate that heightened risk of fraud" despite the fact that mail-in ballots are <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/mail-ballot-security-features-primer" target="_blank">perfectly secure</a>. <br></p><p>Thomas ends his rant with a plea to his fellow justices to please let him screw over voters in the future:<br></p><blockquote>One wonders what this Court waits for. We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence. Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us. I respectfully dissent. </blockquote><p>Of course, that "shroud of doubt" was created by Trump, promising for almost a year before the election that it would be "rigged" and "stolen" from him, but please allow Justice Thomas to help exacerbate it!</p><p>It is not a new thing for state supreme courts to find that their state's constitution provides more protection for people's rights than the federal constitution. Before 2013's <em>US v. Windsor</em>, which was the <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/rachel-maddow-gleefully-giddy-about-gay-america-sad-scalia-video" target="_blank">catalyst</a> for all of the marriage equality cases that eventually led to the victory in <em>Obergefell</em>, states like Massachusetts and Iowa ruled that their state constitutions mandated recognition of same-sex marriages.</p><p>But in recent years, Republican lawyers have decided that a fun new way to destroy the democratic process would be to have the US Supreme Court tell state supreme courts that their state constitutions don't matter in voting rights cases, because fuck you if you want to vote and you're not a rich white person.<br></p><p>The Republican Party has been using the court system to suppress votes for years, but Trump put those efforts on steroids, trying to get courts all over the country to take up his whiny loser crybaby election cases. </p><p>The Court also took the opportunity yesterday to throw out, without comment or dissent, two Trump campaign cases trying to challenge the results in Pennsylvania and California, Sidney Powell's <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/the-krakhead-cometh" target="_blank">rotting squid cadaver</a> case in Michigan, <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/pro-trump-lawyer-lin-wood-wants-to-execute-pence-thinks-john-roberts-is-trafficking-kids" target="_blank">crazy</a> Lin Wood's <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/listen-to-this-very-smrt-trump-lawyer-georgia-do-not-vote-for-the-republicans-for-senate" target="_blank">Georgia suit</a>, and <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/chemtrail-kelli-wards-who-wanna-die-for-fascism-war-to-steal-arizona-for-trump-going-awesome" target="_blank">chemtrail</a> Kelli Ward's attempt to steal the election in Arizona.<br></p><p>With this latest loss, SCOTUS has just a few more opportunities to take up Trump's ratfucking cases, with some more of Powell's "kraken" cases and a Trump challenge to the results in Wisconsin still pending (but unlikely to be heard). </p><p>I don't know about you, but I, for one, am <em>absolutely shocked</em> that Donald Trump, who has been accused of rape and sexual assault by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations" target="_blank">like a million</a> different women and tried to stage a coup, doesn't know the meaning of the word no.</p><p>Here's the order and the dissents:<br></p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" data-aspect-ratio="null" data-auto-height="true" data-rm-shortcode-id="65e4bec3add76c1187ab7adebcd6f80f" frameborder="0" height="600" scrolling="no" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/495581103/content?start_page=1&show_recommendations=true" width="100%"></iframe><p><br></p><p><br></p><p></p><p><a href="https://amzn.to/33mKzZe" target="_blank">Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons</a>.</p><p></p><p>Wonkette loves you and wants you to be happy. 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Courts
Let's talk blue slip history
Democrats Decide Maaayyybe They Shouldn't Let Republicans Kill All Biden's Judge Noms
Is our Democrats learning???
February 19, 2021 01:27 PM
So. Judges.
Donald Trump appointed a record 234 judges, most of them young, unqualified rightwing Federalist Society hacks who will spend the next several decades doing everything they can to take rights away from people.
Putting sane, smart, qualified people on the federal bench needs to be a major priority for both the Biden administration and Senate Dems.
There is one Democrat in the Senate who holds more power than anyone else when it comes to judicial appointments, and it isn't Chuck Schumer. It's Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin of Illinois.
The Judiciary chair isn't just in charge of setting committee hearings for judicial nominees; he (and I use the word "he" intentionally, as the Senate Judiciary Chair has NEVER, NOT ONCE been anyone other than a white man) also is the sole decider of how seriously to take objections to nominees from home-state senators.
This week, we learned that Durbin intends to take a middle-of-the-road approach to "blue slips," which is the way senators show whether or not they approve of nominees from their states. It's a continuation of the policies Republican Judiciary chairs went with under Trump.
A Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee aide told Politico, "Chair Durbin has said on a number of occasions that there cannot be one set of rules for Republican nominees and another set of rules for Democratic nominees."
And that's great, really.
Just as long as you trust the party of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell to act in good faith and voluntarily choose to follow the same rules once they're back in power.
The same Democratic aide said, seemingly without irony, "It's our expectation that Republicans likewise act in good faith and work with the Biden administration to fill district court vacancies in red and purple states."
So all we have to do is put our faith in Republicans and everything will be just fine.
Let's talk blue slip history
This is really interesting, I swear!
<p>Blue slips <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44975.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">originated</a> in the 1910s, but until the '50s they were just used as an informal tool to gauge how senators felt about a nominee. The blue slip itself is a literal blue slip of paper the Judiciary Committee chair sends to senators from the nominee's home state. If the senators are okay with the nominee, they return the blue slip with a positive response; if not, they withhold the blue slip or return it with a negative response. </p><p>Senators view blue slips as an important part of the "advice and consent" of the Senate for judicial nominees. It also gives minority-party senators the chance to talk to the president about potential vacancies in their states.</p><p>Because blue slips are a courtesy and not codified as an actual rule, when — or whether — to respect them is entirely up to the Senate Judiciary Chair. This means the procedure can — and often does — change based not just on what party is in power but also who happens to be in charge of the committee.</p><p>Since 1979, blue slips have played a role in which nominees get hearings. Sometimes, a single withheld blue slip from a home-state senator indefinitely kills a nomination; sometimes, two blue slips are required; sometimes, they are considered on more of an <em>ad hoc</em> basis. <br></p><p>My personal favorite: When Joe Biden was Judiciary chair in the early '90s, he didn't let withheld blue slips stop him from holding hearings ... on Republican nominees. If that isn't peak Dem, I'm not sure what is.</p><p>For six years of his presidency, Obama had a Democratic Senate; but then-Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy decided that a strict interpretation of the blue slip rule was more important than confirming judges. And when Republicans took over the chamber in 2014, they had absolutely zero incentive to change that. As a result, a number of seats that should have been filled by Obama were instead filled by Trump.</p><div>Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham were the Judiciary chairs under Trump. Despite the strict adherence to blue slips under Obama, Grassley and Graham did away with that courtesy for appellate court vacancies. </div><div>Dick Durbin's plan mostly mirrors Republicans under Trump. And yay, we're maybe finally starting to learn some lessons! I was definitely worried that Durbin would pull a Leahy and allow Republicans to do exactly what they did for Obama's two terms. So this is a step in the right direction!<br></div><p>I just hope the Biden administration doesn't plan on appointing any new district judges in states like Wisconsin, Alabama, Texas, Missouri, Florida ...</p><h2>Norms, traditions, and unwritten rules<br></h2><p>The old, white men who have been in the Senate for decades love traditions and ceremony and norms. Dick Durbin has been in Congress forever and wants to go back to a time when senators were friends and norms mattered and US senators weren't defending violent insurrections.</p><p>And I get it, I do. </p><div>But I live here in reality (or hell or this simulation, still haven't quite figured that one out), where Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell just spent the last several years pissing all over our democratic norms — and basically getting exactly what they wanted. <br></div><p>In 2016, Mitch McConnell refused to hold a hearing on Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court for almost a year. This was huge fuckery and entirely unprecedented, but Republicans just made up a fake rule about not confirming SCOTUS judges during an election year. And then, of course, when RBG died, they rushed to put Amy Coat Hanger in her seat as soon as they possibly could.</p><p>That is who we're dealing with on the other side, and that is who we are expecting to put tradition over further entrenching their own power.<br></p><p>I'm happy Durbin isn't going back to the Leahy rule of letting a single senator kill <em>any</em> nominee from her state. And reasonable people can disagree on what the right thing to do actually is, here.</p><p>But, Dems, it's time for some reflection and lesson-learning.<br></p><p>The next time Republicans control the Senate, do you trust them to follow our lead and care about things like traditions?</p><p>I sure don't.<br></p><p>[ <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44975.pdf" target="_blank">Congressional Research Service</a> / <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/17/court-nominees-democrats-469500" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Politico</a> ]<br></p><p><em>Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/jamielynncrofts" target="_blank">Jamie</a> on Twitter! Because reasons!</em><br></p><p></p><p><a href="https://amzn.to/33mKzZe" target="_blank">Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons</a>.</p><p></p><p></p><form name="donation" method="post" class="donation-form"><p class="subheadline">How often would you like to donate?</p><div class="form-row row--plan"><label class="plan-type__label"><input type="radio" name="plan_type" value="once" class="plan-type" required="" checked> Just once
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Legal
NAACP Sues Trump For Violating Klan Act, And It Seems *Pretty Goddamn On Point*
Sounds about white.
February 17, 2021 04:04 PM
The NAACP suing Donald Trump under the Ku Klux Klan Act. Does it get much better than that?
Actually, it does! Just add in a Black congressman, Rudy Giuliani, Proud Boys, and Oath Keepers, and we have got ourselves a party! Except by "party," I mean federal lawsuit.
Representing Congressman Bennie Thompson, on Tuesday the NAACP filed Thompson v. Trump, suing the former president, his former lawyer, and the two Nazi-adjacent organizations for their parts in the January 6 insurrection and attack on the Capitol. (Side note: Did you know that the Proud Boys have registered as a fucking LLC? Yeah. "Proud Boys International, LLC." And the Oath Keepers are incorporated as a non-profit. So that's ... a real thing.)
Like the NAACP said when it filed the suit,
The coup attempt was a coordinated, months-long attempt to destroy democracy, to block the results of a fair and democratic election, and to disenfranchise millions of ballots that were legally cast by African-American voters.
Remember last weekend, when Mitch McConnell voted to acquit Donald Trump and then gave a long speech about how we should convict Donald Trump? (Have we said "fuck Mitch McConnell" yet today? Fuck Mitch McConnell.) One of McConnell's "points" was, "We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one."
But, as we all know too well, the American legal system works exactly in the way it was intended — to insulate powerful white men from accountability.
Here's our first post-presidency test balloon.
<h2>Here's the deal<br></h2><p>The <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1985" target="_blank">Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871</a>, 42 U.S.C. § 1985, is a Reconstruction-era law aimed at allowing federal intervention when southern state and local governments that were literally being run by the Klan orchestrated and/or turned blind eyes to things like civil rights violations and lynchings. After the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant used it to prosecute klansmen in federal court. Since the end of Reconstruction, it has rarely been used.<br></p><p>Under the KKK Act, people can't<br></p><blockquote>conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person [...] holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States [...] from discharging any duties thereof; or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave any [...] place[] where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or [...] to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties. </blockquote><p>Well all these years later, that seems pretty on-point! As described in the suit,<br></p><blockquote>Enacted as the "Ku Klux Klan Act" in 1871, Section 1985(1) was intended to protect against conspiracies, through violence and intimidation, that sought to prevent Members of Congress from discharging their official duties. The statute was enacted in response to violence and intimidation in which the Ku Klux Klan and other organizations were engaged during that time period. </blockquote><p>And the 150-year-old law is actually super relevant at this particular moment in history, since, you know, these assholes just tried to throw a racist coup. <a href="https://naacp.org/latest/naacp-files-federal-lawsuit-accusing-trump-and-giuliani-of-inciting-u-s-capitol-riot/" target="_blank">After all</a>,<br></p><blockquote>The insurrection was the result of a carefully orchestrated plan by Trump, Giuliani and extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, all of whom shared a common goal of employing intimidation, harassment and threats to stop the certification of the Electoral College. They succeeded in their plan. After witnessing Capitol police barricading the doors of the House chamber with furniture, Congressman Thompson and fellow lawmakers donned gas masks and were rushed into the Longworth House Office Building where they sheltered with more than 200 other representatives, staffers and family members.</blockquote><p>The complaint requests compensatory and punitive damages as well as a court order finding Trump, Giuliani, the Oath Keepers, and the Proud Boys violated the KKK Act and prohibiting them from doing the same thing again. (In December, the NAACP filed a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-news-live-election-challenge-congress-biden-b1777471.html" target="_blank">separate</a> suit accusing Trump and the Republican Party of a "coordinated conspiracy to disenfranchise Black voters" with all of their attempts at voter disenfranchisement after the 2020 election.)<br></p><p>Plaintiff Bennie Thompson, Mississippi's sole Democratic member of Congress, was on the House floor when the mob took over the Capitol. He "feared for his physical safety[,] [...] feared for his life[,] and worried that he might never see his family again." He heard rioters "pounding on the door of the House chamber" while he was inside "and saw security guards move furniture to blockade the door."</p><blockquote> He then heard the rioters trying to break into the chamber refer to Speaker Pelosi as a "bitch," saying they wanted to get their hands on her[.]</blockquote><p>Along with the other members of Congress who were terrorized by the mob, the congressman had to wear a gas mask, hide on the floor, and then escape through a tunnel out of the building. He then had to shelter in place with a few hundred other people, including his shithead colleagues who refuse to wear masks to prevent the spread of a deadly disease.<br></p><p>Congressman Thompson told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/us/politics/naacp-sues-trump-giuliani-proud-boys-capitol.html" target="_blank">NYT</a>:<br></p><blockquote>"I feared for my life," Mr. Thompson said. "Not a day passes that I don't think about this incident. I was committed to seeing justice brought to this situation."<br><br>He added: "This is me, and hopefully others, having our day in court to address the atrocities of Jan. 6. I trust the better judgment of the courts because obviously Republican members of the Senate could not do what the evidence overwhelmingly presented."</blockquote><p>Representatives Hank Johnson (D-GA) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) <a href="https://naacp.org/latest/naacp-files-federal-lawsuit-accusing-trump-and-giuliani-of-inciting-u-s-capitol-riot/" target="_blank">plan</a> to join the lawsuit as plaintiffs in the coming weeks.<br></p><h2>The quest for accountability<br></h2><p>This is the first lawsuit filed against the former president for his role in the January 6 insurrection, but it probably won't be the last. However, the NAACP will face some hurdles in its quest to hold the 45th president accountable.</p><p>It's all but certain that all of the defendants will use the First Amendment as a defense for their indefensible actions. Don and Rudy, to be sure, will be like, "We just said WORDS! FREE SPEECH! CANCEL CULTURE! dfsjaklewaio;rweajdfskl fjdsklf. MAGA!" </p><p>I'm sure we will hear more about <em><a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/395/444" target="_blank">Brandenburg v. Ohio</a></em>, which Trump's lawyers absolutely butchered at the impeachment trial.<br></p><p>For the record, <em>Brandenburg</em> actually does not say that the president is allowed to incite all the insurrections and stage all the coups he wants. Rather, it specified that, because of the First Amendment, people can't be criminally charged with incitement just for telling people to do illegal things UNLESS what they said was both directed to and likely to get people to break the law. Gee, doesn't that sound like something that recently happened?<br></p><p>Another legal issue that will be interesting to watch is what the court actually has to say about the law the NAACP is suing under. Because the KKK Act doesn't have much modern precedent to rely on, how it ends up being enforced is really anybody's guess.<br></p><p>Like Steve Vladeck <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/16/politics/capitol-lawsuit-trump-giuliani-proud-boys-oath-keepers/index.html" target="_blank">told CNN</a>, the KKK Act<br></p><blockquote>was specifically meant to provide federal civil remedies for federal officers who were prevented from performing their duties by two or more individuals, whether federal marshals in the post-Civil War South, federal judges in un-reconstructed lower courts; or federal legislators. [...] It's not at all hard to see how that provision maps onto what happened on January 6 — where, quite obviously, two or more people conspired to prevent the Joint Session of Congress from performing its constitutional function of certifying President Biden's Electoral College victory. The harder question is whether Trump himself can be connected to that conspiracy.</blockquote><p>Joe Sellers, a partner at Cohen Milstein, the firm the NAACP is partnering with for this case, said "[t]he fact that there's very little precedent [involving this section of the statute] is a reflection of how extraordinary the events were that give rise to this lawsuit."</p><p>Kim Gardner, St. Louis's first Black chief prosecutor, used this statute to <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/st-louis-top-prosecutor-kimberly-gardner-suing-everyone-for-balls-out-racism" target="_blank">sue her own police force</a> for all of its racist bullshit, but her suit was <a href="https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/federal-judge-dismisses-st-louis-prosecutors-lawsuit-alleging-racist-conspiracy-against-her/article_8c9dfbfa-6f20-5586-b902-a9c689fa2afc.html" target="_blank">dismissed</a> last fall.<br></p><p>This is going to be an uphill battle for the NAACP but is surely one they are prepared to fight. And if this case is allowed to proceed, the NAACP will get to conduct discovery, take depositions, and really dig into what Trump, Guiliani, the Oath Keepers, and the Proud Boys actually did on January 6 and the roles they played in the failed coup.</p><p>NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/us/politics/naacp-sues-trump-giuliani-proud-boys-capitol.html" target="_blank">told</a> the <em>New York Times</em> that the decision to request punitive damages was an intentional decision and "rooted in a history of tools that have worked to fight back against white supremacy."<br></p><blockquote>"The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit against the Ku Klux Klan that bankrupted a chapter," he said, referring to a 2008 judgment against a Kentucky-based Klan outfit that ordered the group to pay $2.5 million in damages. "This is very similar. If we do nothing, we can be ensured these groups will continue to spread and grow in their boldness. We must curb the spread of white supremacy."</blockquote><p>Godspeed and good luck!</p>
<p>Here's the full complaint:<br></p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" data-aspect-ratio="null" data-auto-height="true" data-rm-shortcode-id="cc85e81990daa6a4fa4e1c5160175339" frameborder="0" height="600" scrolling="no" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/494773963/content?start_page=1&show_recommendations=true" width="100%"></iframe><p>[ <a href="https://naacp.org/latest/naacp-files-federal-lawsuit-accusing-trump-and-giuliani-of-inciting-u-s-capitol-riot/" target="_blank">NAACP</a> / <a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20484428/show_temp.pdf" target="_blank">Complaint</a> / <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/us/politics/naacp-sues-trump-giuliani-proud-boys-capitol.html" target="_blank">NYT</a> ]<br></p><p><em>Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/jamielynncrofts" target="_blank">Jamie</a> on Twitter!</em><br></p><p></p><p><a href="https://amzn.to/33mKzZe" target="_blank">Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons</a>.</p><p></p><p></p><form name="donation" method="post" class="donation-form"><p class="subheadline">How often would you like to donate?</p><div class="form-row row--plan"><label class="plan-type__label"><input type="radio" name="plan_type" value="once" class="plan-type" required="" checked> Just once
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Feminininism
Larry Flynt Dead At 78, Will Be Wrapped In Kleenex, Tossed In Toilet
Not a hero. He just had the right enemies sometimes.
February 11, 2021 02:45 PM
Larry Flynt, the relentlessly self-promoting pornographer who liked to take credit for the entire First Amendment when he mostly just exploited it, died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 78. Jimmy Flynt, his brother, said he died of heart failure.
Flynt is mostly known for founding Hustler, the porn magazine that, unlike soft-focus predecessors like Playboy and Penthouse, made no pretensions to art, culture, or sophistication. Instead, Hustler was all about lurid, harshly lit, legs-spread photos of women, with gratuitous torture, rape, simulated snuff scenes, and full-on racism thrown in just in case simply being more explicit than other publications didn't manage to be shocking enough. Flynt liked to portray himself as a cultural rebel who opposed puritanism in all forms, and to be sure, he shocked plenty of puritanical souls. And if anyone pointed out that his magazine promoted contempt for and violence against women, he called those critics puritans too, and continued to be pleased with what a broad-minded guy he was.
<p>Flynt is being remembered<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/business/media/larry-flynt-dead-hustler-magazine.html" target="_blank"> in some predictable corners</a> (hello <em>New York Times</em>) as "an unlikely free speech hero," although his real talent was for pandering to the absolute basest tastes and then proclaiming himself a hero because, yes, the First Amendment really does protect even the most disgusting free expression that's at least not child porn, outright libel, or — worst of all in US America — copyright infringement. </p><p>The news of Flynt's death was met with a diversity of opinions, as this actual random pair of tweets illustrates: </p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTYzODc5MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MjI1Mzk3M30.N6ETmUUvtAhoRBv6Fjr4U0Mour5WhjJ7m9d-b9AtktU/img.jpg?width=980" id="d0f16" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="851cf405a3ed911346e59ade402078f2" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="598" data-height="629">
</p><p><br></p><p>Sometimes Flynt advanced causes adjacent to progressive ones, like <a href="https://newpittsburghcourier.com/2013/10/18/larry-flynt-doesn-t-want-avowed-racist-who-shot-him-executed/" target="_blank">opposing the death penalty</a> for Joseph Paul Franklin, the racist who'd tried to assassinate Flynt in 1978 after being angered by <em>Hustler's </em>pictorials depicting interracial sex. Franklin also bombed a synagogue, and had been sentenced to death for murdering five people, including a mixed-race couple. Despite Flynt's opposition, Franklin was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/larry-flynt-porn-king-and-self-styled-first-amendment-champion-dies-at-xxx/2021/02/10/5240626c-6bf0-11eb-ba56-d7e2c8defa31_story.html" target="_blank">executed</a> in 2013. Flynt was often lucky in being hated by people who managed to be even more awful than he was, which he pretended made him, if not a good guy, at least a scumbag who cared about important things, at least as long as they didn't get in the way of pandering to tastes that were several notches below the lowest common denominator. </p><p>You might want to leave aside the big news site obits and instead read <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/larry-flynt-the-trouble-with-larry-69825.html" target="_blank">this 2004 profile/interview</a> by Robert Chalmers in <em>The Independent,</em> which reminds us that the guy sometimes lionized as a Guardian of the First Amendment made his millions by selling a magazine that treated degrading women as some kind of sexual liberation, including a feature depicting "a woman being shaved, raped, and apparently killed, in concentration-camp style surroundings," as well as "pictures of naked women trussed like turkeys and squashed in giant burger buns, or a girl being fed head-first into a mincer." Not to mention the hilarious image of "a housewife's vagina being used as a makeshift roach trap." </p><p>See? He was edgy. </p><p>And let's also not forget <em>Hustler's </em>casual, omnipresent racism, from the cartoons (Black men have huge cocks and like raping white women; Black women are promiscuous welfare-addicted crack whores; both are relentlessly criminal and horny) to the photo shoots. A 1998 academic paper <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077801298004003003" target="_blank">argues </a>that <em>Hustler </em></p><blockquote>draws from past regimes of racial representation and articulates a more contemporary myth that Black masculinity, having been allowed to run amok in the post-civil rights era, has finally rendered White men impotent, both sexually and economically.</blockquote><p>Happily, there was no Twitter in 1998, so we'll assume there were <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/wingnuts-horrified-by-historian-pointing-out-pirates-were-bad-guys-demand-she-be-cancelled" target="_blank">relatively few death threats</a> sent to the lady professor who wrote it. </p><p>Still, plenty of people were happy to treat Flynt as a free speech crusader, even though his interests were more about making money from porn than in advancing civil liberties. You gotta have free speech to publish the kind of shit he did. When Flynt was prosecuted for obscenity in 1977, Chalmers <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/larry-flynt-the-trouble-with-larry-69825.html" target="_blank">notes</a>, a bunch of prominent liberals published a protest letter that literally compared Flynt to Soviet dissidents. The comparison wasn't entirely convincing to some. </p><blockquote>The great American satirist Lewis Lapham originally signed the joint letter, then saw a copy of <em>Hustler</em>. Lapham immediately withdrew his name, saying that "I'm not sure this was quite what Jefferson had in mind."</blockquote><p>Flynt's one concrete contribution to the cause of free speech resulted from a fake Campari ad in 1983, with a fake testimonial in which "Jerry Falwell" reminisced about losing his virginity to his mother in an outhouse, with very humorous copy like "We were drunk off our God-fearing asses on Campari, ginger ale and soda - that's called a Fire and Brimstone," and "Mom looked better than a Baptist whore with a $100 donation." <br></p><p>Falwell sued for defamation, and in 1988, the Supreme Court upheld Americans' right to publish even the most outrageous parodies and satire, which is pretty good law that applied equally to high quality jokes about vegan baby buttholes and to the shit Flynt liked to publish, too. That cleared the way for such other First Amendment triumphs as 2 Live Crew's <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/76606/time-supreme-court-ruled-favor-2-live-crew" target="_blank">beating a copyright infringement suit</a> for their Roy Orbison parody about a "big hairy woman." </p><p>Decades later, he was still quite proud of himself. In 2012, Flynt <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/24/hustler-magazine-sparks-rage-with-a-rude-image-of-pundit-s-e-cupp.html" target="_blank">explained</a> that a photoshopped image of TV pundit SE Cupp with a great big dick in her face was actually not sexist at all, because for one thing, it was part of a monthly series called "What Would <u>(celebrity)</u> Look Like with a Cock in Her/His Mouth," which had also featured some male celebrities, and it was clearly labeled as a fake parody. Also, he Flyntsplained, don't forget Larry Flynt is an outrageous flag-diapered First Amendment hero, you <em>puritans!</em></p><blockquote>"So critics, get a life," Flynt said. "Find another horse to beat. We don't know anything about Ms. Cupp's personal life, but we do know that oral sex is practiced by the majority of adult Americans, both male and female. The fact that the picture of Ms. Cupp has generated so much flap says more about the sexual repression of the American people than it does anything else. Oral sex is a normal and healthy practice."</blockquote><p>Bravo to Lindy West, who took Flynt's brave defense of free speech <a href="https://jezebel.com/epic-troll-larry-flynt-responds-to-allegations-of-sexis-5913433" target="_blank">exactly as seriously</a> as it deserved:</p><blockquote>Dude, you could have just yelled "FIRST AMENDMENT," farted theatrically, and then left it at that. No one needs your rhapsodizing about Bill Maher's purty mouth and how blowjobbery is woven into the fabric of America. I'm not even arguing with your argument. "First Amendment" is legit. You totally have the right to be terrible, and everyone else totally has <a href="https://jezebel.com/ever-classy-hustler-photoshops-dick-into-conservative-f-5912817" target="_blank">the right to be bothered by it</a>. Everybody wins. Jeez, go outside or something.</blockquote><p>So goodbye to a guy who made a career of creating a safe space for all the very worst speech, and pretended that was a virtue instead of just one of the things we put up with in a free society. May he eternally enjoy being a footnote in constitutional law. </p><p>[<a href="https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2021/02/10/larry-flynt-king-smut-unlikely-free-speech-champion-dead-at-78/566987002/" target="_blank">Cincinnati.com</a> / <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/larry-flynt-porn-king-and-self-styled-first-amendment-champion-dies-at-xxx/2021/02/10/5240626c-6bf0-11eb-ba56-d7e2c8defa31_story.html" target="_blank">WaPo </a>/ <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/10/media/larry-flynt-obituary/index.html" target="_blank">CNN </a>/ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/business/media/larry-flynt-dead-hustler-magazine.html" target="_blank">NYT </a>/ <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/larry-flynt-the-trouble-with-larry-69825.html" target="_blank">Independent </a>/ <a href="https://jezebel.com/epic-troll-larry-flynt-responds-to-allegations-of-sexis-5913433" target="_blank">Jezebel</a> / Photo by<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Larry_Flynt_2009.jpg" target="_blank"> Glenn Francis,</a> <a href="http://www.PacificProDigital.com" target="_blank">www.PacificProDigital.com</a> (cropped), Creative Commons license <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en" target="_blank">3.0</a>]</p><p>Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please donate $5 to $10 a month to support free speech that tries not to be fucking horrible. </p><p></p><p><a href="https://amzn.to/33mKzZe" target="_blank">Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons</a>.</p><p></p><p></p><form name="donation" method="post" class="donation-form"><p class="subheadline">How often would you like to donate?</p><div class="form-row row--plan"><label class="plan-type__label"><input type="radio" name="plan_type" value="once" class="plan-type" required="" checked> Just once
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