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Larry Flynt has died
- soheil 6y agoThe word Hustler being the first word of the sentence is unfortunate.
- ggm 6y agowould "Hustler" (ie quoted) be better? What specifically about this did you dislike? The idea of a generalised hustler type, as a founder (somebody who founds, and hustles) or .. ?
- abiogenesis 6y ago"The founder of Hustler" would be less confusing.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoThat seems exceedingly nitpicky given the way headlines get meaningfully edited to say different things here all the time. The words are the same in a different order but grammatically identical.
- abiogenesis 6y agoI disagree. It might be confusing for someone who doesn't know Hustler (the magazine). It sounds unlikely but I'm not sure if younger generation know about those print magazines.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoBelieve it or not, Hustler has a bustling web presence.
- abiogenesis 6y agoNot trying to keep arguing but I wouldn't call it "bustling" with an Alexa rank of 261,156. I don't think anybody who doesn't know the print magazine would know about their web presence.
- ggm 6y agoOne might call it un-bustling, one imagines less clothes not more, but perhaps a bustle being underwear is more de rigeur
- p1necone 6y agoIt's just confusing if you don't know who he is. It's easy to misread it as "(Hustler), (founder) and (free-speech activist)" instead of "(Hustler founder) and (free-speech activist)". Of course reading TFA alleviates that confusion pretty quickly.
- dragonwriter 6y agoHustler would be better; italics (or underlining) is conventional for periodical titles, quotations for article titles within the periodical.
- ggm 6y agonot wishing to experiment in the commons, can we "do" markup tricks in the title?
- eyelidlessness 6y agoEdit on top because I don’t want to improperly malign the parent commenter or get undue upvotes. I misunderstood the intent of parent comment and my response was to a criticism of sex work/publication of such, not to a criticism of the ways the title might be misread. Leaving my original comment below for posterity/accountability, and for anyone else who comes along and does think it’s inappropriate to discuss sex work. No it’s not. Besides being a free speech advocate he helped normalize sex work. I doubt his properties have been especially safe and kind to sex workers, but the general population seeing sex work as “normal but maybe icky to some” has certainly made workers’ lives safer and their work overall less likely to be fraudulently exploited. I’m not a particular champion of Hustler or Larry Flint, but I definitely think sex work generally deserves to be a part of the social contract and not a whisper and a wink.
- ladberg 6y agoI'm assuming OP meant it as a grammatical ambiguity for someone who doesn't know "Hustler" is a magazine (because as the first word it's capitalized regardless).
- eyelidlessness 6y agoYou have a more charitable assumption than I do. We shall see. Edit: your interpretation was right! And I’m glad for that.
- soheil 6y agoNot sure where you're going with this, but I was just referring to the ambiguity in the title since there are a lot of stories on HN about SV founders who are viewed as hustlers. Quotes or moving the word would work, not a big deal obviously.
- slibhb 6y agoThe previous poster misunderstood your comment because "hustler" is also used to refer to a male prostitute. Therefore your post was "insufficiently sex-work-positive"...or something
- teh_klev 6y agoDo we really have to censor or edit titles to suite a bunch of potentially "offended" people? Oh the irony. We all know what Hustler is. And if you're a gormless startup founder picking that as a name for your app or product, well that's your fault, learn you some history and watch "The People vs Larry Flint"[0]. Flint's case in the Supreme Court was hugely important, despite being a "purveyor of filth", and strengthened free speech rights in the US, in particular Hustler Magazine vs Jerry Falwell[1]. [0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117318/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117318/ [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt#Legal_battles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt#Legal_battles
- p1necone 6y agoI don't think this person is complaining about the title being offensive, just grammatically confusing. If you don't recognize who he is it's hard to tell whether the title is saying that he's "a hustler and a founder" or "the founder of Hustler".
- teh_klev 6y ago> just grammatically confusing. I disagree, it says "Hustler founder". Replace "Hustler" with <anycompany> and you have many a title on HN any day of the week that is "<anycompany> founder...." with no confusion. The parent to my post said "The word Hustler being the first word of the sentence is unfortunate.". I'm guessing this is because of the nature and business of the company, i.e. hardcore porn, not due to a grammatical misunderstanding.
- p1necone 6y agoOf course replacing "hustler" with the name of another company wouldn't produce the same confusion, because most other companies names are not also adjectives commonly used to describe people in the tech world. 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...
- dragonwriter 6y agoOnly in that the lack of typographic options for HN titles prevents the clearer Hustler from being used in the title, which might suggest he's a mere “hustler founder”.
- asxd 6y agoNot sure why this light hearted comment seemed to be so upsetting to some. I understood the title but can grasp how some may misconstrue it as “a founder who is a hustler”. I saw this as at least a slightly humorous observation.
- richrichardsson 6y ago> how some may misconstrue Only people who lived under a rock for the last 50 years. I'm afraid to say that in the context of the whole headline you'd have to be an actual idiot to not comprehend that Hustler is a company or product if you did not know that already.
- aliljet 6y agoFree-speech activist. That's what I love. Here's raging into the night.
- covidthrow3 6y agoMaybe a leftist free speech activist. He would never publish right wing free speech material.
- krapp 6y agoSo? Implicit to free speech is the freedom to choose what speech to publish, and what not. Just as freedom of religion also includes the freedom to be an atheist or agnostic, and freedom of association is also freedom of disassociation.
- covidthrow3 6y agoWould you call David Duke a free speech activist then? The word free speech activist kind of breaks down when its only one sided.
- mcosta 6y agoNon central fallacy
- krapp 6y agoSomeone 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, and plenty of people advocate free speech as a proxy for their own unspoken views. Ben Franklin certainly believed in free speech, but he also wouldn't publish content he considered libelous and slanderous in his newspaper, rather he would tell people to take such stories elsewhere.
- gogopuppygogo 6y agoAndrew Torba is following the footsteps of folks who pushed the boundaries like Larry.
- gkoberger 6y agoNo, Andrew Torba is a racist asshole who uses the guise of "free speech" to peddle hate. And I say this as someone who knew him many years ago during YC.
- another_sock 6y agoSo, free speech.
- lightgreen 6y agoDo you have any evidence of Torba being racist except your own words?
- toiletfuneral 6y agoabsolutely not, Torba just wants to profit from neo-nazis
- vinceguidry 6y agoGuess 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-sent-monthly-porno-mags-every-congress/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/17/hustler-has...
- netsharc 6y ago> 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 https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tossing )
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoThe 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.
- marcodiego 6y agoTime to watch The People vs. Larry Flint. It's been in my list to watch for a long time but never watched it.
- teh_klev 6y agoIt's a great movie, I can highly recommend. Especially seeing Falwell getting put in his place (fictionally of course).
- bouncycastle 6y agoSecond that. When I watched it as a young adult back in the time when it came out, I was thinking "great, a film about porn". However, it was actually thought provoking and ended up shaping my views about censorship in general.
- RichardCA 6y agoThis is good too. It's a PBS Frontline episode from 2002. If you look at the part starting at 41 minutes in, you see Larry Flynt functioning as the voice of reason and restraint. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/showsporn/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/showsporn/
- at_a_remove 6y agoIt's a fine film. It made people recognize Woody Harrelson as a serious actor and also featured a great performance from Courtney Love.
- f430 6y agohttps://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/11/20/246297720/white-supremacist-murderer-who-shot-larry-flynt-is-executed https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/11/20/246297720... TIL interracial porn got Larry shot.
- anonu 6y agoWow, great find here. Got Larry shot and paralyzed for life...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 6y agoSo you mean the southern "bastions of Free Speech" are not happy with some free speech they disagree with?
- Const-me 6y ago> the southern "bastions of Free Speech" Historically, southern states were bastions of democratic party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Party_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Party_System
- raverbashing 6y agoThen why Trump supporters walk with the Confederate flag in hand?
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoYes. Most of the south flipped to the Republican party after the Democratic Party embraced the civil rights movement.
- k__ 6y agoI 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.
- kstrauser 6y agoHe did an unknown amount of sketchy and questionable stuff, but when it came to defending our right to say things the government disapproves of, Flynt was an absolute hero. Thanks for everything you did for us, Larry. You’ve done good.
- annoyingnoob 6y agoLarry has an interesting take, especially given the current environment. "You know, a free press is not freedom for the thought you love, but rather for the thought you hate the most. People need to tolerate the Larry Flynts of the world so they can be free." -Larry Flynt
- eplanit 6y agoI'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.
- krapp 6y agoGiven 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.
- mbg721 6y agoNot anymore, but it was a huge deal a few decades ago. Not that porn was ever lacking an audience, but openly accepting it as okay for polite society was a much less popular opinion in the 80s than it is now.
- kenneth 6y agoToday the thought people can't bear is no longer porn, it's anything remotely not woke. It's any opinion that even slightly diverges from their own.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- camjohnson26 6y agoI’m not sure a minimum wage is a good idea.
- jsrcout 6y ago"If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, it will protect all of you." -- Larry Flynt
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 6y agoWhat a bait and switch. Making the country safe for smut, but we need a “czar” to police political speech.
- FooHentai 6y agoI had a mandela moment where I thought he was already dead, then realized I was thinking of Hugh Hefner who died in 2017.
- bobcallme 6y agoI hope freedom of speech and expression does not die with him. He and many others were important in standing up against the fundies and various groups that wanted to the limit the rights that we take for granted today. If you have not seen it yet, I recommend watching “The People Vs. Larry Flynt”.
- mtnGoat 6y agoRest In Peace Larry, you old curmudgeon! I had the pleasure of working for Larry and can say that in some ways he was a hero of mine. Not because he was a pornographer, but simply because he did what he pleased and fought like hell to protect that right. He risked everything he had to prove his points because he knew if he failed he would have nothing. I didn't always agree with what we were publishing and producing, but I supported our right to do it. Larry on the other hand eternally supported others right to do the same without question. America IS a more free place because of Larry. Say what you will about the man, he would not have cared less!
- supr_strudl 6y ago>Not because he was a pornographer, but simply because he did what he pleased and fought like hell to protect that right. That's what's wrong with the "free" world. If something's legal doesn't mean it's moral. He did what he pleased for sure, but at what expense. Many would argue he contributed to objectifying women. There's always a flip side.
- lightgreen 6y agoSeems to be far fetched statement. Women (and men and everybody else) were objectified since the beginning of the history. But during 20th century this objectification took different forms because of general improvement of women rights and freedoms (basically, woman can be now “objectified” without high risks of being thrown to the streets by the family: women are much more independent now).
- simonh 6y agoSure, and that's a legitimate subject for debate as to where legality and morality should intersect. I think it's also reasonable to say that one group imposing their opinions on others without sufficient justification is immoral. So then we go to the merits of the justification.
- krageon 6y agoMoral arguments are in the west almost always made from a puritanical standpoint, of which this post is a good example. To anyone who isn't puritanical, it's not very interesting to say that because they've already decided they don't think like that. To someone who is, you're posting something they essentially already agree with. Both of those sides won't really produce interesting discourse, unless you're very invested in making people more (or less) puritanical.
- gcanyon 6y agoI have a friend who interviewed to be CTO of Larry Flynt Publications. She said that when she went in to interview, the first thing they did was sit her in a small office filled with examples of Hustler products and publications. They said, "We'll leave you here for a few minutes to look at what we do. If you decide you're not interested in working with us, you can just leave without checking in with anyone and we'll understand."
- unwind 6y agoSecond half of story missing, what did she decide?
- baobabKoodaa 6y ago...and then they all clapped?