War & Peace Quote by Al Goldstein

Goldstein casts himself as a necessary villain-hero: the guy willing to take punches so polite institutions can keep their hands clean. The line works because it’s both a dare and a complaint. He’s telling you the mainstream press won’t "fight", not because it can’t, but because it won’t risk its access, reputation, or advertisers on the kind of ugly, litigated, taboo-driven brawls he made his brand.

The specific intent is self-legitimation. A porn publisher and provocateur doesn’t get to claim civic virtue on the usual terms, so Goldstein reframes the playing field: the fight isn’t about decorum, it’s about force. His sentence turns "fighter" into a moral category. If the Times and Post represent institutional credibility, he represents institutional immunity to shame. That’s not modesty; it’s an argument that the messy edges of free expression require people who can’t be credibly threatened with respectability.

The subtext is also defensive. "Frankly" signals he expects skepticism; naming elite outlets is a way to borrow their authority while accusing them of cowardice. It’s an outsider’s power move: elevate your enemy, then claim they’re too compromised to do what you do.

Context matters: late-20th-century American culture wars over obscenity, censorship, and First Amendment boundaries, plus a media ecosystem where prestige papers practiced restraint as strategy. Goldstein is selling a crude but enduring idea: that some truths only surface when someone stops caring whether they’ll be invited back into the room.