> > I agree with you that the "Hustling the Left" article was over-
> the- top
> > and counterproductive. I simply wish to make a point that we
> shouldn't
> > rush to make Hustler seem a lot better than what it is, out of
> reaction
> > to a one-sided perspective that makes it out to be far worse
> than what it
> > is. The way some LBO-talk contributors talked about Hustler in
> reaction
> > to that article, you'd think that the reason you write for
> Hustler is to
> > reach out to GIs and the reason you read Hustler is to seek
> intellectual
> > satisfaction and political enlightenment. Let's get back down
> to earth
> > for a change: the main reason for men and women to write for
> Hustler is
> > to get paid, and the main reason for men to read it is to get
> off on its
> > pix when they can't get laid.
>
> Yes & no. Jerking off is paramount, but Flynt's concept is larger
> than that. Shit, he hired Paul Krassner to edit the mag at one
> point, and I doubt that someone who's soley interested in getting
> rich from porn would bring in a serious political satirist who
> worked with Lenny Bruce and wrote for the early-National Lampoon
> (and of course, there's The Realist). Flynt clearly has had other
> things in mind, regardless of his manias. If it takes raw pussy to
> get this across, well okay. At least you'll have a captive audience.
I'd concede that Larry Flynt may have once intended Hustler as part of counter culture, so to speak. But those were the days when even more mainstream publications than Hustler made perhaps more adventurous (as well as queerer) editorial decisions than it did. E.g., in 1968, Esquire commissioned Jean Genet (!), as well as William S. Burroughs (!) and Terry Southern, to cover the Democratic National Convention.
(Click on Genet's photo at <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/index250805.html>, and you can download a longish excerpt from Robert Sandarg, "Jean Genet in Chicago," Romance Quarterly 38.1, February 1991.)
Today, neither Hustler nor Esquire is what it once was or at least what it once aspired to be.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>