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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_biscuit who wrote (29855)	1/25/1999 7:52:00 PM
From: John Lacelle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Dipy, I thought that Larry "The Truthseeker" Flynt was going to publish "The Flynt Report" today. I'll have to drop by my local liquor store, grab some lotto tickets, the Febuary editon of "Hustler", a six-pack, and the Flynt Report. Is this a great country, or what? -John

To: sea_biscuit who wrote (29855)	1/26/1999 12:52:00 AM
From: Borzou Daragahi	Respond to of 67261

Dipy, Larry got out of the hospital Friday after a bout with pneumonia. Maybe his near-death experience will make him a Jesus-freak again. He'll repent. He'll put an image of a Bob Barr wearing no underwear on the cover of Hustler to signal that the end of the politics of personal destruction. Anyway, check out the following piece. It looks like Johannes is correct, and we are a nation of whores. Well at least 40 percent of us are. God Bless the Whores. Hooray for Larry Flynt? washingtonpost.com By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, January 25, 1999; Page C01 In ordinary times, one might expect the public to take a dim view of a flamboyant pornographer paying six-figure sums for sexual dirt on prominent politicians. These are clearly not ordinary times. In a Washington Post survey, four in 10 of those questioned said they approved of what Larry Flynt is doing in revealing extramarital affairs by Republicans. Fifty-seven percent said they disapproved of the Hustler publisher's efforts. As for the role of the press, nearly half -- 46 percent -- said that news organizations should report the names of members of Congress who are found by Flynt to have had affairs. Fifty-two percent said they should not. The findings are striking because many Americans often accuse the press of unfairly invading the privacy of public officials, and are often suspicious of those who pay for salacious information. But the Clinton scandal has been so polarizing that the usual knee-jerk responses appear to be scrambled by feelings about the impeachment process. Respondents were told that Flynt "has revealed the names of some Republicans in Congress who have had extramarital affairs, saying they deserve such scrutiny because of their investigation of President Clinton's conduct in the Lewinsky matter. Do you approve or disapprove of what Flynt is doing?" The demographic breakdown is interesting. Women disapproved of Flynt's conduct by an almost 2-to-1 margin, 64 percent to 34 percent. But men were almost evenly split, with 48 percent approving and 50 percent disapproving. Age is also a factor; seven in 10 of those over 50 were disapproving of Flynt's campaign. More predictably, those surveyed divided along partisan lines. Democrats narrowly approved of Flynt's approach, 51 percent to 46 percent. Republicans disapproved by a whopping 76 percent to 22 percent. Similarly, 56 percent of the Democrats said the press should publish the names of those accused of adultery, while 65 percent of the Republicans disagreed. (The survey of 1,010 people was conducted Jan. 15-19, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.) Some of those rooting for Flynt are passionately in his corner, if a recent stream of letters and e-mails to a Post reporter is any indication. "Hooray for him!! I am so glad he is exposing the hypocrisy of the Republicans!" wrote a Woodland, Calif., woman. "He is doing the job the mainstream media should be doing -- exposing the hypocrisy of elected officials. . . . Thank God for Larry Flynt," said Leeor Bar-Haim of Washington. "Without his tactics we may not know about the antics of the arrogant congressmen passing judgment on others," said Bob Cosby of Fort Worth. "As Larry Flynt has just proven, who amongst us is clean enough to cast stones or judge the color of a rival party's laundry?" said Guillermo Ruggiero of North Providence, R.I. Republican National Committee spokesman Clifford May called the poll findings "disturbing," saying that Flynt "is trying to intimidate members of Congress, to get them to change their vote on an investigation, by threatening to embarrass them if they speak their mind." He accused journalists of "a striking deterioration in standards from the time the press didn't want to cover the Gennifer Flowers story because it was published in a tabloid newspaper." At the very least, Flynt has seized the limelight. In a Pew Research Center poll, 48 percent could name Flynt as the publisher paying for information on infidelities by members of Congress -- compared with 19 percent who could name Chief Justice William Rehnquist as the man presiding over the Senate impeachment trial.