jackassworld

Despite appearances—not to mention all the other naughty crap we’d committed to print 43 issues prior—this may just have been the most publicly controversial issue of Big Brother ever. Touted as the “Kids” issue, the bulk of the magazine was dedicated to pint-size prodigies that were up and coming skateboarders at the time—kids like Ryan Sheckler, for instance, who is shown here on the cover at the popping young age of eight-years-old.

What happened is that Dr. Laura Schlessinger stopped into a skate shop one day in late 1998 to buy some fresh clothes for her brat. While doing so, she picked up this particular issue of Big Brother, apparently enchanted by the idea that it was all about kids. Well, most of our interviews with the little bastards consisted of questions like, “What’s your favorite cuss word?”, “Have you ever seen a girl naked?”, “Do you have pubic hair?”, and “How do you want to die: a) hanging; b) shark attack; c) drown in chocolate; or d) I don’t care, as long as I’m in the arms of a fireman?” Long story short: Dr. Laura looked at the publisher, realized it was Larry Flynt, tried to connect a few random dots in her frenzied brain, and came to the conclusion that he was insidiously attempting to indoctrinate kids to porn at a young age (never mind the fact she also had a XXX chip on her shoulder regarding the nude photos of her that Flynt had previously bought from an allegedly jilted former lover). In truth, Larry had no real clue what we were doing down there on the third floor…but he soon found out.

When Dr. Laura went on a public tirade about Big Brother, Larry Flynt just so happened to be doing a public appearance at his new Hustler store on Sunset Blvd. Fox News jumped on the story and then proceeded to ambush Flynt at the event on camera and point-blanked him on the issue. Larry’s an old pro at dealing with the press and handled it like a champ, but the next day we did get our collective pee-pee whacked by the tenth floor executive hammer. Oops!

The upside, though, was that the next several issues of Big Brother sold through the roof, upping our circulation numbers, advertisers, and page count, once again proving that the only good press is bad press. (We later thanked her on the cover of Big Brother #54 with the headline “Bigger Than Ever, Thanks Dr. Laura!” Okay, so we were a year late in doing so, but hey, better late than never.)

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