SIX YEARS BEFORE Larry Flynt shocked America, Screw magazine blasted on to the scene, providing the foundation for all things hard core to come.

Al Goldstein, the scabrous publisher whose Screw magazine pushed hard-core pornography into the cultural mainstream, died on Thursday at a nursing home in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. He was 77. [“¦] The manifesto in Screw’s debut issue in 1968 was succinct. “We promise never to ink out a pubic hair or chalk out an organ,” it read. “We will apologize for nothing. We will uncover the entire world of sex. We will be the Consumer Reports of sex.” [New York Times]

Penn Jilette tweeted: “Today I visited my hero and friend Al Goldstein as he dies in the hospital, and tomorrow I celebrate Lou Reed’s life in NYC.

Jilette has been a fan of pornography, as well as the ladies who lure lads in, for as long as I’ve been aware of his comedy. Back in the ’90s, when a huge charity event was canceled due to drama, planned by the owner of the female-owned and operated soft-core fluff site where I was editor-in-chief, Jilette came to the party planned in lieu of the bash. He loved the models, a big fan of the strippers and X-rated stars.

In 1977 “” eleven years before the pivotal case of Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell “” Alabama Governor George Wallace sued Screw for $5 million for publishing that the governor had learned to do sexual acts from reading the magazine. The parties eventually settled for $12,500, and Screw agreed to print an apology. [source]

It was people like Goldstein, then Flynt, that provided Hugh Hefner a way through to big success. With Playboy used as the canvas to answer their raunchy proclivities, Hefner provided the girl next door image amid the trashy American erotica of the hard core purveyors.