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Larry Flynt’s Beverly Hills office shows off the pornography mogul’s extreme wealth a

Larry Flynt’s office looks as gaudy and flashy as you would expect of a porn king – but the mahogany desks are real wood, and the gold leaf isn’t spray-painted yellow. Flynt has made a lot of money selling smut, but he is also a serious critic of the political and media elite. He has used his fame and money to fight hypocritical leaders and limits placed on the First Amendment. His new book, “Sex, Lies and Politics,” takes a hard look at the Bush administration. Incidentally, he would also like to take a look at the Bush twins – he made a $10 million dollar offer for nude photos of them. To promote the book, Flynt will have a signing today at 7:30 p.m. at the Borders in Westwood.

dB Magazine: Why did you write the book, and will it be important to read regardless of who wins Nov. 2?

Larry Flynt: Well, I’m modest, but I think it’s the most comprehensive book that’s been written about the Bush administration. We don’t pull any punches, and we are a lot more thorough than the national media. It’s an important book for people who really want to understand the so-called Bush doctrine.

dB: Both you and Princeton economist Paul Krugman point out that Bush’s “average” $1,000 tax cut in fact gives only $100 to the median American family. Does that make you really smart, or everyone else just dumb?

LF: It’s all semantics. I can’t believe the debates were allowed to be conducted in the fashion they were – where the candidates shouldn’t question one another or respond. It’s not fuzzy math. You know they bury everything in the deficit. Many young people can’t understand today when you tell them they’re going to have to pay the deficit down. They can’t relate to that. Some time people are going to wake up and realize that they really got shafted.

dB: You mention in your book that hypocrisy is one of the worst things in American politics. Why is it such a threat?

LF: Any time you take a public position contrary to the way you live your private life, you are espousing a form of hypocrisy that really tears at our very fiber. I’ll give you a good example of that: Congressman Bob Barr, who we dealt with in our investigation of the impeachment hearings. Here is a guy who was head of the Republican pro-life caucus, and he would go out on the floor of Congress and say that abortion was equivalent to murder. On one occasion, he went home and drove his wife to the hospital to have an abortion. He paid for that with his own personal check, which we have a copy of.

dB: What can the media do to keep politicians honest and better cover important issues?

LF: The media definitely are more concerned with who gets the next interview with George and Laura Bush than asking serious questions about what’s going on in Iraq. But as far as the media itself – in the last two decades they’ve really gone astray. They are lazy and incompetent to a great degree. And 70 percent of the major news outlets in the United States are owned by major multi-nationals. So you may be a good reporter that’s moderate to liberal who can do a good job, but if you have any ambitions to climb that ivory tower, your attitude is going to have to change because those guys are all conservative Republicans.

dB: Have conservatives changed much in the last 50 years?

LF: The line was more defined. Republicans were honest about their positions, but then they realized when (Richard) Nixon came along that they had to start selling the big lie. You tell people something over and over again and pretty soon people are going to believe it. The Southern strategy, which later on turned into the religious right, was basically formulated and started by Richard Nixon. So the Republicans and Democrats spent more time fighting than supporting our country, and that’s really sad.

dB: As you’ve alluded to in your book, do you think part of the problem is that conservatives are too sexually repressed to be compassionate or truthful?

LF: Absolutely. It’s true more than ever. If you’re from a conservative family, when you decide to leave the nest, you’re going to be a conservative. And your sexual attitudes are going to be conservative. And what all conservative Republicans face is they don’t have a great deal of control over their sexual attitudes. So they just keep some stuff in the closet. That’s why its a lot easier to catch them than the Democrats because the Democrats just wear that stuff on their sleeves.

dB: You ran for governor in the recall election. Do you think Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is doing a good job? Has he been hypocritical?

LF: Schwarzenegger’s been doing a good job, and I always felt he would because anything would be an improvement on Grey Davis. But as they say in politics, the honeymoon will come to an end. He’s got to tightly control a Democratic majority in Sacramento, and without their cooperation, he’s not going to be able to do anything. So when the gridlock comes, you’re going to see what Arnold’s made of.

dB: What do you want people to get out of your book at the end of the day?

LF: One thing that came out of the book – that I wasn’t looking for when I started it – I was amazed at the amount of cronyism. Everyone that worked on the Bush campaign either has a job in the White House or out in Iraq. I mean, it couldn’t be more sleazy.

dB: What do you think is the future of the Internet, porn and free speech?

LF: That’s a big question. Back in 1973, the Supreme Court in Miller v. California, ruled to allow individual communities to set their own standards and judge obscenity. But I don’t think people on the high court had the Internet in mind, much less cable TV. I also don’t think they were aware that in San Francisco or New York, something is not offensive that is offensive in Mississippi or Texas. So they have produced publishers trying to second guess viewing habits. But there is going to be a very important obscenity case that will go to the U.S. Supreme Court in the next two to three years. And it will be interesting to see because if communities are defined by what materials are available, then any hotel you check into and you can order a XXX video to your room, and you can get anything you want to on the Internet ... that kind of blows the community standard theory. Either the Supreme Court is going to have to define obscenity or are going to have to rule that it’s not obscene as long as it takes place between consenting adults.

dB: What are your views on copyright? As a pornographer, do you mind when you hear about college students downloading your stuff?

LF: No. I don’t care.

dB: How would you like to be remembered 100 years from now: more as a porn king or a politician?

LF: I’d like to be remembered as someone that’s spent the majority of his life expanding the parameters of free speech. Without our basic freedoms, democracy means nothing, and so many people take their freedoms for granted. The case I won in 1988 is taught in law schools, and I’ve had professors write me and say “The People v. Larry Flynt” is required viewing, and that’s encouraging.

dB: Is there anything else you want people to know?

LF: Ask me what I’ve learned in 30 years of the porn business: You’ll never know why a man loves his dog or his woman because you always see a man with two you wouldn’t have neither one of.