Documentary looks at Hustler’s Flynt as 1st Amendment hero

“Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone” never disputes its subject’s image as a smut peddler. Nor does Flynt himself.

But viewers of this documentary will find a saga far less devoted to silicone than civics.

In abundant archival footage stretching through his long, turbulent career, Flynt makes a persuasive case for himself as a First Amendment champion. And, even more important, he argues passionately for his fellow citizens to defend their constitutional rights.

Early on, he paid dearly for his role as an advocate.

In 1978 in Georgia, during one of many trials for allegedly pandering obscenity, Flynt was shot and paralyzed by someone who didn’t like the magazine he published. He was left confined to a wheelchair. When health permitted, he was re-indicted and convicted.

In another brush with the law, Flynt and Hustler magazine were sued by the Rev. Jerry Falwell in a case eventually heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices’ unanimous decision in Flynt’s favor had far-reaching effects, protecting every citizen’s right to satirize public people.

“We figure that freedom of the press is only important if it’s offensive,” Flynt declares in the film. “If we’re not gonna offend anybody, we don’t need protection of the First Amendment.”

A bristling, sometimes disjointed film, “The Right to Be Left Alone” profiles a man you don’t have to like to find worth heeding. And a man you may like more than you might have expected.

Directed by Joan Brooker-Marks, it airs at 9 p.m. Thursday on the IFC channel.

Full circle

In 1989, Bob Woodruff was an attorney living in Beijing and teaching law to Chinese students. When the uprising in Tiananmen Square occurred, he signed on as a translator for the American networks. Then he caught the journalism bug.

Now, on the eve of the Olympics, he returns to the country where his career as a journalist began, to report “China Inside Out.”

This ABC News hour explores the global transformation taking place at the outset of what is already being called “The Chinese Century.”

While much of U.S. foreign policy has been focused on the global War on Terror, China is brimming with massive new wealth and exploding expectations as it reaches out to the rest of the world — and demonstrates its aim to strengthen ties with its neighbors.

“China Inside Out: Bob Woodruff Reports” airs at 10 p.m. Wednesday (check your listings) as a special edition of “Primetime.”