Larry Flynt

CNN’s Don Lemon hosted pornographer Larry Flynt on Sunday’s Newsroom, ostensibly to talk about an upcoming Supreme Court case in which the 1988 case of Hustler Magazine v. Falwell is being cited as a precedent. But Lemon quickly turned to politics, asking the Hustler publisher to regurgitate tawdry details of Republican Senator David Vitter’s prostitution scandal (as if CNN wasn’t in the process of actively rehabilitating a Democratic politician caught in a similar scandal) and begging Flynt to reveal “tips” and “hints” about other politicians who might be exposed.

Showing greater restraint than the CNN anchor, Flynt replied, “I can’t do that.”

Larry Flynt, the outspoken publisher of the men's magazine "Hustler," is advocating equal rights for women.

Even better, the real punch line in his Huffington Post piece was that he blamed the failure of the 1970s Equal Rights Amendment on feminist stalwart Gloria Steinem.

Readers are strongly cautioned to keep fluids out of their mouths and away from their computers for the duration:

The new Congress has arrived in Washington with grand plans to spend a trillion dollars in an endless Christmas, a bailout for anyone in need, or in want, and in line. Now that America has seen how easy it was for the financial powerhouses to walk away with hundreds of billions, one segment of the population after another is getting into the queue.

The auto industry drove itself into the ground and wants billions. The mayors mismanaged their cities and they want billions. It was only a matter of time before the governors would raise their "me too!" voices, with California’s being the loudest and most obnoxious.

But only in America, and only during this period when we’ve taken a leave of our national senses in the belief that there’s a tooth fairy and her name is "Paulson," would we see materialize that no one could possibly have predicted: the porn industry wants a bailout, too.

I can just imagine the newsreels fifty years from now: "Back in 2009, America was reeling. During those tough times, poor Joe and Mary could hardly afford to put food on the table and porn on the DVD."

It took pornography to hear some economic sense from CNN on the issue of bailouts.

"American Morning" reported on Jan. 8 that Larry Flynt, of Hustler magazine, and Joe Francis, of Girls Gone Wild, sent out a press release  Jan. 7 asking for $5 billion of the federal bailout action.

CNN's Kiran Chetry and correspondent Ted Rowlands reacted with skepticism. Rowlands said, "This seems to many like just another Larry Flynt publicity stunt."

Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, and Joe Francis, the CEO of Girls Gone Wild, are asking Congress for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.

According to them, during bad economic times "Americans turn to entertainment for relief." Since "Congress seems willing to help shore up our nation's most important businesses, we feel we deserve the same consideration."

I kid you not.

The following is their press release posted at PR Newswire:

Contrary to what was written and said in the liberal media Jerry Falwell held political beliefs that were actually quite "middle of the road" with regard to key cultural questions such as abortion, birth control, school prayer and homosexuality, according to a new biography written by his widow.

"While he opposed abortion, Jerry would have accepted legislation that allowed it in the case of rape, incest or if the mother's life was in danger," Macel Falwell tells readers in her new book "Jerry Falwell: His Life and Legacy." Moreover, Falwell believed the civil rights of homosexuals should be safeguarded, despite harboring moral objections to the homosexual lifestyle, she explains.

The prominent televangelist and evangelical Christian pastor, who co-founded the "Moral Majority" in the late 1970s, was a congenial, likable man many steps removed from the "bizarre public persona" incorporated into media portraits, Falwell observes in one of her earlier chapters.

CNN correspondent Carol Costello, in a report on Monday’s "The Situation Room," tried to put the Eliot Spitzer scandal into a better light by focusing entirely on past Republican scandals, and only mentioned two examples of Democrats caught in scandal -- Bill Clinton and Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank -- in passing.

Other than Idaho Senator Larry Craig, Costello brought up Republicans who had been accused of misbehavior by pornographer Larry Flynt. She only mentioned Spitzer at the very beginning of her report, and then immediately went to her first example, Louisiana Senator David Vitter. "Maybe Larry Flynt would say of Eliot Spitzer, there will soon be one less known hypocrite in government. That's how he described Louisiana Senator David Vitter. Flynt accused him of having been a client of the alleged D.C. madam, Deborah Palfrey, after the senator's number was discovered in her phone records."

Costello then turned back the clock ten years, and instead of focusing on Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky affair, she brought up the Republicans that had been caught by Flynt.