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.”

It was only natural that reporters should investigate the grooming of the conventioners. Maxine Cheshire of the Washington Post reported that Miami’s hairdressers were tearing their hair over the fact that none of the leading candidates’ wives had patronized their establishments. If they brought along their own stylists, the Miamians fumed, they could be in trouble with the law because Florida forbids hairdressers to operate without a state license. Thomas Winship, editor of the Boston Globe, visited a makeup specialist who discussed the candidates’ facial difficulties. Nixon, she said, had the most. “He has a hairline problem, greying sideburns, heavy shadows in the eye sockets, a black beard. Let’s face it, he hasn’t much going for him.”

Craig Claiborne, New York Times food critic, made the rounds of Miami’s restaurants and found their cuisine good for laughs but not for digestion. Affronting his gourmet tastes at one restaurant was a mousse au chocolat crowned with whipped cream and as a final insult, perhaps, a maraschino cherry. At another establishment, Claiborne complained that a wedge of Camembert cheese had been served cold. The waiter offered to “run it under the broiler.” “Now I ask you,” wrote the exasperated critic, “isn’t that worth the price of the meal?”

Mailer’s Dread. One paper made a habit of covering the quirks of the convention. The Manhattan Tribune is a weekly that is due to appear regularly in New York in September, hopes to be staffed largely by Negro and Puerto Rican reporters; its editors decided that convention week was an ideal time to get started. It was edited for the occasion by Dick Tuck, an incorrigible prankster who delights in bedeviling Republican presidential candidates.* The Trib reported that the only “swinging” convention in town was being held by Negro morticians. Robert Miller, who had just been named Mortician of the Year, had a ready explanation. Unlike the Republicans, he said, “We got a lot of real work to do. We just can’t be making up a lot of words that don’t mean a thing.”

The Trib also ran a description of the convention as it might have been written by Norman Mailer, who was covering the event for Harper’s. “Mailer,” began the Tribune in the third-person style of the author’s The Armies of the Night, “came to Miami Beach with a great sense of Dread. He saw John Lindsay right away and that gave him a sharper sense of guilt because his article had elected Lindsay mayor in 1965, and Lindsay had turned out to be an adequate square. He had no existential dimension. By then it was time to go to Convention Hall. So Mailer slipped his .38 caliber under his vest and went down town for the final existential test of wits with the Secret Service. If Mailer was successful, he will have altered the trajectory of history. The nation could be different, somehow, better, more alive, more in touch with its essence, free to choose its fate—if he punched Eric Sevareid in the nose.”

*In 1960, he had a sweet old lady greet Nixon at the Boston airport after his first debate with John Kennedy. “Don’t worry, son,” she cooed. “Kennedy won last night, but you’ll do better next time.” In 1964, when he spotted Goldwater billboards carrying the slogan “In Your Heart, You Know He’s Right,” Tuck added the additional phrase: “Yes, Extremely Right.” He also sneaked a shapely brunette aboard the Goldwater campaign train to hand out anti-Goldwater literature.