Reporting: Search Beyond Sadism

The Republican National Convention, decided Russell Baker of the New York Times, had been "planned weeks in advance by six bores and a sadist." How else would you explain, asked Baker, such yawn-inducing acts as the "presentation of the orangewood gavel to the chairman of the Republican National Committee by O. D. Huff Jr., chairman of the Florida Citrus Commission," or Tony Martin singing a "few hit tunes of the Alf Landon era?"

Understandably, some of the 1,500 reporters started looking elsewhere for stories. Most enterprising were those from the Miami Herald, who obviously took a proprietary pride in covering their home town. Herald reporters dogged Richard Nixon's footsteps. And where they could not follow, a tape recorder did. A helpful delegate carried one in his pocket to Nixon's meeting with some Southern delegations. The results made the biggest scoop of the week. Nixon assured the Dixie politicians that he had given only grudging support to the federal open-housing law, and felt such matters ought to be left to local decision. He would appoint "strict constitutionalists" to the U.S. Supreme Court. The thrust of his remarks seemed to indicate that he had made a shift to the right.

Longhair Publicity. Joseph McGinniss, columnist of the Philadelphia Inquirer, pursued John Wayne from his "inspirational reading" at the convention to the Poodle Lounge at the Hotel Fontainebleau. In the boozy gloom, Wayne reviewed his speech. "What the hell did I say? I have no idea what the hell I said." Then he remembered a little. "Permissiveness is the biggest problem we have. The people in these colleges and these ghettos and these goddam longhair punks." And it's all the fault of the press, he said. "Nothing is ever any different from how it ever was except all these punks get publicity." Maybe it had something to do with the books they were reading, suggested the Duke. "When I grew up, we read about people like Ivanhoe and Henry VIII, people like that."

While other correspondents were counting delegates, Chicago Daily News Columnist Mike Royko was tallying the prostitutes. Despite the Republican Party's dedication to law and order, said Royko, only one of the girls had been pinched, legally. Said an aide to the Miami Beach police chief: "We have not had a single complaint, so their service must be satisfactory." Agnes Ash of Women's Wear Daily noted the plight of Ben Novack, owner of the Hotel Fontainebleau. "The Republicans aren't spending any money," he groused. "I'm not making a dime out of this convention." Outfitted in his "double-breasted blue flannel blazer, yachting cap and white duck pants," wrote Agnes Ash, "Novack continued to prowl the lobby, restlessly looking in vain for a big spender."