Rina Thomas | The pornographer's pet peeve

A war is being waged on hypocrisy. Statesmen will fall, and political empires will crumble. But the adult entertainment industry will live on.

Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, is billing himself as a crusader in the fight for public integrity.

In June this year, he ran a full-page ad in the Washington Post, offering up to $1 million cash to anyone who could "provide documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with a Congressperson, Senator or other prominent official."

"It is not a question of muckraking and exposing the perverts," Flynt proclaimed in a press conference last Tuesday. "It's more than that. It is trying to maintain some honesty in the government."

Right.

Even if we take Flynt's assertions at face value, we need to question if it's even possible to wage a war on hypocrisy.

It's understandable why people try. Hypocrisy is repugnant. It stinks worse than the high-rise trash chutes. It provokes more outrage than the bad food at Commons. It evokes dishonesty, treachery, cowardliness and all the other Slytherinesque qualities. And hypocrisy becomes infinitely more irritating when we find it in elected officials who try to tell us what to do.

Flynt has set his sights on politicians who preach family values on Capitol Hill but consort with call girls on the weekends. He has his minions combing through the phone records of a Washington, D.C., escort service in an effort to link numbers back to the biggest hypocrites.

Republican senator David Vitter of Louisiana was one of the summer's biggest catches. His name was uncovered in the phone records, and a prostitute named Wendy Ellis went public about their alleged relationship. Flynt bought the rights to her story which will appear later this year in Hustler, along with a suitably salacious spread.

Our first impulse may be to applaud these developments. The truth will come out, the truth will set us free, etc. But are these revelations particularly useful to anyone? Not toeing the moral line has always been and will always be a risky proposition in politics, even long after Flynt decides to abandon his witch hunt. Public denunciations may embarrass a few but won't overcome the average politician's proclivity to lie.

Just look at Vitter's case. He should have known better, considering he first ascended to the seat from which Representative Bob Livingston was ejected. Livingston resigned after Flynt's investigators went baying for his blood in 1999.

Incriminating information about a government leader should usually not be withheld, but there is no reason to seek it out either. Flynt is doing more harm than good. Yes, the downfall of someone who has lied to the public is just. However, those who elected the liar are unfairly penalized.

A state whose senator is forced to step down from shame mid-term may suffer through a messy political transition and national embarrassment. When Vitter was first exposed, he spent a week in hiding before reappearing in the Senate. This is a problem since Louisiana, still reeling in the aftermath of Katrina, is desperately dependent on national opinion and funding.

Flynt is clearly not representing the interests of society. With Republicans not exactly big fans of the porn industry, he's just protecting his own business.

Why do we even listen to the muckrakers like him? It's the rubber-necking phenomenon - it's hard to look away from a train wreck. The media goes crazy for a few days or even months, analyzing all the juicy details ad nauseam.

As the YouTube generation, we help feed the furor by replaying these videotaped human disasters. When it comes to Britney or Paris, it's just mindless entertainment. When it comes to members of government, our attention is diverted from matters of actual import. After all, the morality, not the efficacy, of the officeholder is under attack.

Town-square denunciations should have gone out of style with the Salem witch trials. We should combat hypocrisy by taking moralizing and overly ideological candidates with a grain of salt. As the 2008 presidential race picks up steam, we can try to look past the images presented to us and instead focus on personal ability and the proposed solutions.

We should also remember that granting so much attention, and therefore power, to a self-interested individual wielding a large bank account is ridiculous.

Even LarryFlynt.com acknowledges, "It is a supremely ironic state of affairs when a pornographer - Larry Flynt - has become America's watchdog of morality."

Congrats to the PR flunkies. This is probably the only useful thing they've said during the entire affair.

Rina Thomas is a Wharton and College senior from New Orleans. Her e-mail address is thomas@dailypennsylvanian.com. The Gospel According to Thomas appears on Thursdays.

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