Psychology Today

Ralph Ginzburg's appeal of his libel conviction ended In January of 1970, when the Supreme Court refused to rehear his case. This is a tale of some of the events that occurred thereafter, including a seemingly never-ending cycle of judgment of Mr. Ginzburg's and others' characters.

In February of 1972, two years after the Fact magazine libel trial came to a close,  Mr. Ginzburg was picked up and brought to jail by a U.S. Marshal for a three-year sentence -- but his jail time was not a consequence of the libel trial.  Rather, Mr. Ginzburg was jailed for distributing pornographic material through the US mail. 

During the 1960s, Mr. Ginzburg was battling not one, but two legal actions. The Fact libel action that I described in my recent posts was initiated in response to Fact magazine's 1964 election issue.  A full year before the election issue of Fact magazine, however, Mr. Ginzburg was already involved in an equally high-profile legal case.

In 1963, Mr. Ginzburg had been convicted in the US District Court in Philadelphia of distributing pornographic materials through the mail.  The obscenity charges centered around a magazine named EROS that he published before Fact.  EROS was a hard-bound magazine that contained essays and articles by leading authors of the day and artwork such as its portraits of Marilyn Monroe, from Ginzburg's own photoshoot of the celebrity.  Many of its graphics were designed by the award-winning graphic designer Herb Lubalin.

US Attorney General Robert Kennedy had brought an obscenity suit against Mr. Ginzburg, and relied on the publisher's mail solicitations as the best opportunity for conviction.  So, throughout the 1960s -- during Mr. Ginzburg's legal battles over libel with Senator Goldwater -- Mr. Ginzburg had also fought government charges against him for obscenity.

Ultimately, the government won the obsenity case against Mr. Ginzburg, and prevailed on appeal -- although the Supreme Court was split 5-4. In February 1972, as Ginzburg described it in his memoir, Castrated: My Eight Months in Prison, "The ten-year ordeal of courtroom histrionics, legalistic double -talk and dashed hopes had ended at last."

Mr. Ginzburg spent 8 months in the minimum security prison at Allenwood, Pennsylvania, released on parole early for being a model prisoner, and after the intercession by his wife Shoshana before his Washington, DC parole board.

During his incarceration, Mr. Ginzburg held a series of pleasant jobs in the prison and was generally well treated by his own account, although, as he perceived it, prison life left him stripped him of his individuality, and during those times in prison that he was out of contact with his family, he became "Prisoner No. 38124-134." Mr. Ginzburg was not permitted some of the more difficult jobs in prison, he later reported, because he believed the government was concerned that he might try to organize labor unions among the prisoners.

From prison, Mr. Ginzburg ran a new, less-controversial magazine named Moneysworth as best he could with his wife's assistance, and although the magazine suffered during his absence, it revived somewhat after his release on parole after 8 months.

A several page excerpt of his prison memoir was published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine (which had editorialized in favor of Ginzburg's conviction on obscenity charges).

Writing to the letters section of the Times in response to the Ginzburg's article, Mr. Roy Lisker, Prisoner No. 76427-158, who was incarcerated in Allenwood at the time as Ginzburg, observed:

"We prisoners had hoped that, at the very least, Ginzburg would have used the opportunity available in your magazine to talk about the arbitrariness, inequity, and gross injustice of the United States Parole Baord; but perhaps nothing of that sort should have been expected from a man so appallingly ego-centered. He is much more interested in telling America about all the distinguished...friends he has...and how his wife did a nautch dance...to get him out of the 'living hell' of Allenwood."

Mr. Lisker was himself a historical figure of the time, having been imprisoned for burning his draft card. Today, he edits the on-line magazine Ferment.  Charging Mr. Ginzburg with being "...appalingly ego-centered...", seems to have been leveled because Mr. Ginzburg's memoir was more focused on detailing those who supported him, those who did not, the good works of his wife Shoshana, and his own state of mind, as opposed to any focus on the broader political issues of the time.

Mr. Ginzburg was not insensitive to politics, however.  His own political outlook was just different from that of Mr. Lisker's.  Referring to EROS, he concluded his article in the Times quoting himself at a press conference upon his release from prison:

"I tried to give the America its first beautiful, intellectual, emotionally mature, completely forthright magazine dealing with love and sex...I have fought this (pornography) case as a matter of principle right from the start, and I do not intend to give up now...I will be vindicated...in my new appeal, justice itself will be on trial. If the courts refuse to hear my plea, if they deem my case a dead issue, they will thereby be telling the American people that the Constitution itself is a dead letter, and that individual liberty no longer exists."

Judgments of character seemed to follow Mr. Ginzburg around: He judged others; he himself was judged.  There was a never-ending and hyperbolic cycle around his activities -- even as he was released from jail. 

One noticeable aspect of these judgments of personality is that at least a few of them seemed motivated not by considerations of pure character analysis but by other factors as well, notably, by politics.  Mr. Lisker's view that Mr. Ginzburg was egotistical seems, in retrospect, motivated in part by the politics of the moment.  The same might be said of Mr. Ginzburg's analysis of Mr. Goldwater, relative to the Fact libel trial of which I have been writing. 

For those interested in how people judge one another, the lesson is that judgments of personality may serve purposes far different than that of accuracy.

More on what happened to the trial participants next post...

Notes

Quotes from: Ginzburg, R. (Dec. 3, 1972). Castrated: My eight months in prison. New York Times,, pp. SM 38. (Sunday Magazine, p. 38 ff). "The 10-year ordeal..." p. 38; "I tried to give..." (concluding paragraphs).

Also from Lisker, Roy (No. 76427-158). (Jan 7th, 1973). Letters In the New York Times Sunday Magazine, p. 5-6.

Very light edits: May 18, 2010