As promised, my take on Larry Flynt:

I thought to understand his case, it was important to try to understand the man. Interestingly enough, he spent a portion of his childhood right here in Indiana. By the age of 10 or 12 he was basically on his own. He spent about 6 years in the military, including a year in the Army before they discovered he was too young (16). He then opened up several strip clubs before eventually starting Hustler.

Getting to the case, the basic question in Hustler v. Falwell was this: Are celebrities entitled to collect damages when they are made fun of.

Of course if you're even reading this post, you probably already know that the Court ruled in favor of Flynt and Hustler.

So here's my take:

By protecting a publisher's right to satire, the Court properly guaranteed 1st Amendment Freedom of Speech. While many of us may be offended by parodies of the nature of that found in a porno magazine, those parodies certainly have the right to exist. The idea that a celebrity has equal rights to protection from slander is also somewhat, for lack of a better expression, fucked up. Celebrities by their nature have to understand that they have given up their rights to "normal" life. They live under public scrutiny, and nothing is going to change that. Besides without publicly scrutinized celebrities, who would we have to make parodies of anyway?

Maybe you were looking for something more indepth, but I finished that paper like five weeks ago, and now I'm struggling to remember some of it. Sadly, I don't care enough to go back and look up what I wrote.

That's my take on the King of Porn's most important legal battle.