When I was a kid growing up in the 1940s, my older brother was selling nude photos of Hollywood stars like Rita Hayworth and Burt Lancaster for 75 cents apiece.

   “But what's it for?” I asked.

   “To give you a hard-on,” he said. “But it's against the law.”

   I instinctively understood that the government should have no right to interfere with anybody's pleasure where nobody got hurt.

   In 1958, pornography was on its way to becoming legal gradually, but at that stage of the game, the Supreme Court was unwilling to allow 1st Amendment protection of 'hard-core pornography' — as opposed, I assumed, to “soft-core pornography” — a term I made up.

   Soft-core was obviously more respectable than hard-core, but it seemed sort of sneaky, pretending to be squeaky clean. So I decided to satirize the concept with a new feature in The Realist: “Soft-Core Pornography of the Month.”

   Phallic symbolism in magazines was a key ingredient of soft-core porn. A close-up of a stickshift in a Volkswagen ad was accompanied by the question, “Does the stickshift scare your wife?”

   Another ad showed the face of a woman with an ecstatic expression. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open. In her hand was a penis-shaped bottle of Lavoris Oral Spray which she was spraying into her mouth. It sure appeared that she was giving somebody a blow job.

   A blatant example of soft-core porn was an ad for the MG, a British sports car, performing 69 with the owner underneath, and the warning, “Please don't drink the suspension system.”

   Another ad depicted one car mounted on another car — a vivid example of auto-eroticism — and the agency's art director told me that he had done it on purpose.

   Folks in the advertising business often tried to see what they could get away with. An ad for 3M featured a photo of gooey white stuff leaking from an ice cream sundae onto somebody's knee. One account executive approved an ad where, if you looked carefully, you'd notice that a male model had an erection under his trousers.

   Soft-core porn could also be found in comic strips. In Batman, Robin angrily shouts, “Girls?!? What fun is this case going to be!?!” In Mary Worth, a beautiful woman's face, eyes closed, mouthing a peeled banana, says, “He doesn't know it yet, but he's my new boyfriend.” And in Smilin' Jack, our hero is strapped to a vibrating lounge chair. The sultry villainess kisses him, sits on his vibrating lap and says, “See, just agree to help the Chinese Reds develop their atomic bomb and life will be beautiful!”

   Just to add to the confusion of such cold-war hysteria, I published and distributed a popular poster with red-white-and-blue lettering that screamed, FUCK COMMUNISM! Post Office officials tried to prevent me from sending it through the mails, but backed off when I accused them of being Commie sympathizers.

   My patriotic slogan soon began to take on a life of its own. In a book by former congresswoman Pat Schroeder, 24 Years of House Work... and the Place Is Still a Mess: My Life in Politics, she writes that conservative actor John Wayne once offered her a cigarette lighter engraved with the inscription, “Fuck Communism — John Wayne.” She declined the gift.

   Merely by reprinting certain publicity photos in The Realist, I robbed them of their innocence: Lady Bird Johnson with Lassie's snout burrowed in her crotch; Ronald Reagan clutching a young boy's head to his crotch; Jack Benny giving a funny look behind him to Ed Sullivan as they both ride on the same merry-go-round horse; Jimmy Durante standing behind a disabled little girl, apparently dry-humping her.

   I was taken to task for that one by Joe Pyne, whose syndicated TV show was the forerunner of in-your-face interviewers. A transcript of our dialogue was included in my CIA file.

   Although readers of The Realist continue to send me examples of soft-core pornography, that TV appearance was the only time I've ever been publicly credited for inventing the term. It has since become part of the language, but it now refers to limited sexuality — from daytime soap operas to hotel-room videos that feature jiggling tits but no open vaginas, fucking scenes but no visible penetration — that's soft-core.

   “But what's it for?”

   “To give you a soft-on. And it's not against the law.”