Flynt Nixes Nude Lynch Pics
Larry Flynt's doing his own version of Saving Jessica Lynch.
The Hustler mastermind claims to have purchased nude photos of the world's most famous POW but says that, after a change of heart, he won't be publishing the pics in his skin mag.
Flynt says in a press release that he was offered the revealing shots by two soldiers who served with Lynch and who wanted to show that media darling is not as sweet as her public image purports her to be.
But, feeling noble, Flynt ultimately decided against running the unauthorized pictorial because, he says, he felt sorry for Lynch being used as an unwitting propaganda tool.
"If Jessica Lynch wants to join the Army and see the world, and if she wants to have a good time while she's at it, I'm not here to judge her," Flynt says. "To the government, though, she has always been a pawn in the cynical attempt to create a 'hero' who can 'sell' the war to the American people.
""Unfortunately, the media has gone along with the administration's attempt to force feed us this Joan of Arc...She is a victim of the media and the Government, co-conspirators, desperate to justify the war in Iraq."
According to published reports, the pics featured the 20-year-old former supply clerk cavorting around topless with male soldiers while stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, before the war. However, Flynt's camp has said Lynch was naked in the shots--in other words, the ex-private was showing off her, um, privates.
The porn peddler and recent California gubernatorial candidate, who has always portrayed himself as a staunch defender of the Constitution (as depicted in the 1996 film The People vs. Larry Flynt), declined to say how much he paid for the photos, but he said they would remain locked in a vault.
While Lynch has refused to address the photos, her lawyer, Stephen Goodwin, released a statement saying "it's incredulous that anyone would think it appropriate in any way to attempt to publish unauthorized photos of Jessica--photos taken before she was deployed to Iraq and before her capture and rescue."
According to Paul Bogaards of Alfred Knopf Publishers, which on Tuesday released Lynch's memoir, I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story, Flynt is just attempting to piggyback on the hype surrounding Lynch.
"Leave it to Larry Flynt to do something like this," Bogaards said in the New York Daily News. "Jessica Lynch was left for dead and left as a prisoner of war. If she can survive that, she can survive anything. It's unspeakable that someone would stoop to these levels."
Although Lynch isn't talking about the photos, she has been making the rounds to promote her book.
Aside from NBC's unauthorized docudrama Saving Private Lynch, which attracted nearly 15 million viewers Sunday, Lynch was on the cover of the latest Parade and Time magazines and was on hand Monday for Glamour magazine's 2003 Women of the Year party in New York, where she was honored along with fellow rescued POW Shoshana Johnson and popster Britney Spears, among others.
The suddenly omnipresent Lynch sits down Tuesday night with Diane Sawyer for a chat about her experience and her book on ABC's Primetime. She's scheduled to drop by NBC's Today Show on Wednesday followed by stops on CBS' The Late Show with David Letterman on Friday and CNN's Larry King Live on Monday.
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