Florida- Larry Flynt is a hustler, and we’re not just talking about his raunchy magazine of the same name. When Flynt gets riled up, nothing — not paralysis from a would-be assassin’s bullet, not the courts, not crusaders — dissuades him from spreading the gospel as he sees it.

And what Flynt has seen in America over the last six years or so disgusts him. His new book, Sex, Lies & Politics: The Naked Truth (Kensington; $24), broadsides the Bush administration, bashing Florida’s botched election in 2000; what he sees as the lies that got the nation embroiled in Iraq; the religious right’s influence over the presidency; the swelling deficit; and a president he calls “the most accomplished, bold-faced hypocrite ever to have come down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Flynt, 61, who will sign books in Coral Gables and Fort Lauderdale this week, is not what you might expect. Speaking from the road in Cincinnati, the creator of Hustler, beloved and reviled for its graphic nudes, filthy cartoons and ”A–hole of the Month” columns, appears to be polite and friendly. He’s hard to understand sometimes; his drawl flows out like a mile of unpaved highway. But he speaks his mind without hysteria, and he apologizes for missing a scheduled interview.

SLAMMING THE PRESS

He is not particularly polite to the press in his book, however. Major media outlets are to blame for the public’s apathy, Flynt believes, for fixating on such ephemeral pop stars as Britney Spears at the expense of the serious investigative journalism that once routed Richard Nixon from office. The book is sure to inflame readers of both political parties, but, says Flynt, “I can’t refrain from doing something I feel is important and based on fact because some might or might not take me as serious.”

What he sees behind the guarded gates and manicured lawns that protect Bush, Cheney and Co. is corruption, dishonesty and, worst of all, Flynt’s kryptonite: hypocrisy. Namely, he says, public officials who pontificate about an issue and then practice quite the opposite. “I don’t think the fat cats really want to help someone support a family.”

The book, which has inched onto The New York Times bestseller list, is a brisk, insightful and entertaining slice of modern history, an openly biased view, not unlike Michael Moore’s box-office hit Fahrenheit 9/11.

”I’m hoping to do some of what Moore did and illuminate some of the apathy I’ve seen,” Flynt says. “Bush was having a chilling effect on the whole country. People are afraid to criticize him, but that’s one of our basic rights, to dissent.”

Flynt — whose empire also includes his Hustler Hollywood chain, which sells sex toys, X-rated videos and refreshments — rolls his 14-karat gold wheelchair across the threshold of his newest store Tuesday night in Fort Lauderdale to discuss and sign his book. He admits that critics could easily call into question a pornographer’s credibility. To take Republicans to task for tax breaks that favor the rich when you are worth some $400 million, as Flynt is reputed to be, leaves him even more open for attack.

”That’s always a hurdle you have to get over when exposing some of the hypocrites in Washington,” says Flynt, who doesn’t believe in the Republican-based trickle-down theory of economics. “They tried to dismiss me as a pornographer, but it turned out I was telling the truth. There are no mistakes in my book because the press holds me to higher standards. I know I have to be right. I can have opinion in there but the facts have to be checked and rechecked.”

If one of Flynt’s revelations couldn’t be sourced and verified, it had to be removed. ”I wanted it to be good so I wasn’t fighting them . . . there’s no room for ego when you’re trying to market a book [like this,]” he says.

GETTING `FLYNTED’

Flynt delights in retelling how, in the fall of 1998, with Republican congressional leaders clamoring to impeach President Clinton over his dalliances with Monica Lewinsky, he ran an ad in The Washington Post offering up to $1 million for reliable information about adulterous legislators.

His net caught some frisky fish. House Speaker Bob Livingston resigned when his own affairs were exposed. All at once, Flynt’s surname turned into a verb. To be ”Flynted” became D.C.’s scarlet letter. Flynt also offered special prosecutor Kenneth Starr a job with Hustler since his Starr Report on Clinton contained more lurid sexual references than an average issue of Hustler, the publisher noted. And he knows: he counted.

Flynt gives himself some credit for saving Clinton’s presidency. Not surprisingly, Clinton does not thank Flynt in his current autobiography, My Life. Flynt doesn’t mind, even though he says he’d support the Democrat again. This is the price you pay when you are an unrepentant smut peddler, even a ”smut peddler who cares,” as he dubs himself in print. Accusations flew that Flynt was little more than ”a bottom-feeder,” at which he chuckles. ”True,” he says, “but look what I found when I got down there.”