The Press: Trapped in the Steel Cocoons

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A number of Ford campaign regulars have tried with varying success to clear that glaze. U.P.I.'s Dick Growald organizes venturesome forays into local restaurants and is official keeper of the campaign-plane mascot, "the beast," a stuffed toy buffalo with a Ford-Dole button pinned under its tail. Jim Naughton of the New York Times is credited with masterminding the "Peoria sheep caper." Encamped in that town after Ford addressed a group of farmers, Naughton persuaded one of the locals to lend him a sheep. Hours later, Newsweek's Tom DeFrank, an alumnus of Texas A. & M. University, discovered the animal in his hotel room. He was greatly surprised. So was the sheep, and DeFrank spent much of the night cleaning up the mess. At a Ford rally in San Diego, Naughton spotted a man in a chicken costume, bought the top half of the outfit for $100, and now wears it occasionally to press briefings. Says Naughton: "I guess I'll put it down on my expense account as 'chicken for White House staff.' "

The reporters who shadow Jimmy Carter are an equally irreverent bunch, though they live closer to their quarry. Carter travels with them aboard Peanut One and wanders back into the press area occasionally. When in Plains, he allows—indeed encourages—reporters to attend his Sunday Bible class. "We hope they derive some benefit from it," he quipped after the Oct. 24 class, "though I haven't seen much evidence of it so far. Maybe there's a long gestation period." Carter accepts reporters' cheekiness graciously. He does not complain when, as Peanut One is landing, reporters in the back of the plane roll beer cans past the collection of purloined hotel-room keys taped to the baggage rack (28 at last count) and into Carter's compartment, shouting, "Come out! We know you're in there!" On his 52nd birthday, Carter was serenaded by a number of regulars who rendered Lust in My Heart, a campaign ditty sung to the tune of Heart of My Heart ("Lust in my heart, I love adultery ... I would preach and sermonize. But oh how I would fantasize").