In the early 1060s, publisher Ralph Ginzburg, whose publications all dealt heavily in sex, became briefly a celebrity of the shady sort, especially when he was taken to court and charged with violating the Comstock Law.
Ginzburg, a former journalism student and Korean War vet, had worked for Esquire, Reader's Digest, Colliers and Look magazines before striking out on his own as a publisher.
He observed the success of Hugh Hefner's Playboy magazine, which appealed mainly to younger men, and decided to produce periodicals and other printed matter to appeal mainly to older Americans.
His hardbound quarterly, Eros, lasted for only four issues, interrupted by his court action. It, his newsletter, Liaison, and the remarkably titled Housewife's Guide to Selective Promiscuity got Ginzburg charged with sending obscene matter through the mail.
When the U.S. Supreme Court examined his case, their conclusion in 1966 was that the material itself was not legally obscene, but that he was guilty of "the sordid business of pandering," in other words, promoting his products in a sleazy way to appeal to people's prurient interest.
What had casued the court's hackles to rise was that Ginzburg had attempted to have his products mailed out of Intercourse or Blueball, PA, but had settled for mailing out of Middlesex, NJ.
Pandering had never been a criterion in earlier pornography/obscenity actions. Its creation showed a Supreme Court fast on its feet.
Ginzburg was fined and sentenced to five years, of which he served only eight months, thereby proving the truth of the pre-revolutionary Russian proverb: "Be righteous before God; be wealthy before a judge."
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