Congress gets Hustler magazine
WASHINGTON - The porn magazine arrives every month at your congressman's office.
Tucked in a conservative-looking manila envelope, the latest edition of Hustler goes to all 535 members of Congress. Free of charge.
Not that most members want it. It usually gets thrown in the circular file marked “trash.”
But like clockwork, it keeps coming, despite efforts to have it stop.
The spokesman for Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, recently tried to halt the mailing. Nope.
Several members of Congress have sued to make it stop, only to lose. Something about the public being able to seek redress from Congress means they have to take it, apparently. But that doesn't mean they have to be happy about it.
“It's a disgusting abuse of the system,” Cannon says. “It's a nasty, tricky little thing to do by a person with no conscience.”
The magazines have been coming for more than a decade at least. Publisher Larry Flynt says he started sending them as soon as his magazine began publication in 1974, but an Associated Press story from 1983 has Flynt initiating the mailings that year.
Either way, he's not going to stop mailing Congress.
“I felt that they should be informed with what's going on in the rest of the world,” Flynt says, deadpanning during an interview: “Some of them didn't appreciate it much.”
But, “I haven't had any plans to quit.”
It doesn't surprise him much that some members don't want the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based publication, which he describes as a “humor magazine” and one that deals with “a lot of political and social satire.”
“I would never force a subscription on someone who didn't want it,” Flynt says, except for members of Congress who are public servants.
Read the complete article at the Salt Lake Tribune
Tucked in a conservative-looking manila envelope, the latest edition of Hustler goes to all 535 members of Congress. Free of charge.
Not that most members want it. It usually gets thrown in the circular file marked “trash.”
But like clockwork, it keeps coming, despite efforts to have it stop.
The spokesman for Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, recently tried to halt the mailing. Nope.
Several members of Congress have sued to make it stop, only to lose. Something about the public being able to seek redress from Congress means they have to take it, apparently. But that doesn't mean they have to be happy about it.
“It's a disgusting abuse of the system,” Cannon says. “It's a nasty, tricky little thing to do by a person with no conscience.”
The magazines have been coming for more than a decade at least. Publisher Larry Flynt says he started sending them as soon as his magazine began publication in 1974, but an Associated Press story from 1983 has Flynt initiating the mailings that year.
Either way, he's not going to stop mailing Congress.
“I felt that they should be informed with what's going on in the rest of the world,” Flynt says, deadpanning during an interview: “Some of them didn't appreciate it much.”
But, “I haven't had any plans to quit.”
It doesn't surprise him much that some members don't want the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based publication, which he describes as a “humor magazine” and one that deals with “a lot of political and social satire.”
“I would never force a subscription on someone who didn't want it,” Flynt says, except for members of Congress who are public servants.
Read the complete article at the Salt Lake Tribune
posted by Ray at 10:57 AM
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