THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 20, 1997 TAG: 9701180021
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: By CHRIS LAMB
LENGTH: 78 lines
Larry Flynt, the hero of the movie ``The People vs. Larry Flynt,'' is a repulsive cretin, a scurvy misogynist, an amoral smut peddler and a tasteless scumbag. He's the scum that other scum scrape off their boots.
If the movie were just about Flynt, it would have about as much redeeming social value as his Hustler magazine. Fortunately, the movie includes an eloquent defense of the First Amendment - though it is sometimes obscured in all of its ineloquent debauchery.
As Flynt himself puts it in the movie: ``If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, then it will protect all of you. Because I'm the worst.'' So he's not exactly Thomas Jefferson, but that's irrelevant; his point is a valid one.
A democracy isn't served by merely protecting the profound; it also must protect the profane. We don't have a First Amendment so we can say the politically fashionable or socially acceptable. We have one so that the free exchange of ideas, all ideas, is not only encouraged but ensured. Free speech means never having to say you're sorry.
In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in New York Times vs. Sullivan that our tradition of free press meant that our commitment to robust speech may include caustic attacks.
A decade later in Gertz vs. Welch, the court said, ``Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas.''
Before a plaintiff can win a libel suit, he or she must prove that the alleged libel was published, that he or she was identified, that the published material was false, that it was published negligently and that the plaintiff's reputation was damaged. If the alleged libel cannot be believed, a person's reputation cannot be damaged; therefore, there can be no libel.
Hustler magazine published an advertisement parody that said evangelist Jerry Falwell lost his virginity with his mother in an outhouse. Falwell sued for libel, invasion of privacy and the intentional infliction of emotional distress. An appeals court ruled against him on the counts of privacy and libel but said he had suffered from emotional distress - or that the magazine's parody had been so outrageous as to cause severe mental anguish.
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously recognized that the appellate court's ``emotional distress'' ruling represented an end run to the First Amendment's protection for libel and overturned the decision. Writing the opinion, Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that the Hustler parody was tasteless but constitutionally protected opinion.
If it were possible to make a distinction between the Hustler parody and other forms of satiric commentary, the court said it would have ruled against the magazine, but doubted if such a standard existed. A contrary opinion would have chilled satirists and political cartoonists who, by definition, aim to distress.
Our constitutional guarantee of free expression isn't something that can be taken away and then restored in its entirety. Too many people believe in the First Amendment only when it's convenient or when it benefits them. One can certainly question Flynt's sincerity. But the court couldn't have ruled against him without diminishing the First Amendment.
Throughout this century, the right-wing conservatives have frequently abandoned the First Amendment when it became inconvenient. This includes the federal sedition law passed during World War I, the McCarthyism of the 1950s and, more recently, the flag-desecration bill and the sordid actions of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his minions.
But left-wing liberals, who are so quick to defend Flynt and condemn Gingrich, are no better, and arguably worse, than the right wing of free-speech issues. This is especially true on college campuses, where speech codes have been instituted to prohibit opinions that are critical of women, gays and racial minorities. The left - not the right - gave us ``political correctness.''
Every time the First Amendment is compromised, no matter how well-intentioned the reason, it is weakened. The greater good is always served in the long run by an inhibited exchange of opinions. That's the lesson of ``The People vs. Larry Flynt'' - a lesson worth seeing. MEMO: Chris Lamb is an assistant professor of journalism at Old Dominion
University in Norfolk. His Ph.D., dissertation was on the limits of
editorial cartooning in the United States.