The Nation: In or Out?

Just check the Green Book

Washington’s predatory hostesses may low relax. This year’s arbiter of who’s who in the capital’s political and social life—complete with 5,000 names of the chosen—has arrived.

The 1978 edition of The Social List of Washington, D.C.—dubbed the Green Book—sells for $30 and offers about 600 new names worthy of invitations to In cocktail and dinner parties around town. Up there with the bluebloods, the powerbrokers and the smart setters are Hamilton Jordan, Jody Powell and all the other country types. Off the list are Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller, who have left town entirely; but Henry and Nancy Kissinger are still based in Washington—and are still in the book.

Accommodating the Carter crowd has posed some delicate problems for the Green Book’s new publisher, Jean Shaw Murray, 50, whose late mother Carolyn Hagner Shaw and grandmother Helen Ray Hagner have made the rules for Washington’s social games as the register’s publishers since 1930. Carter Appointee Mary King, for example, is certainly the deputy director of ACTION, which oversees such volunteer programs as the Peace Corps and VISTA, but Mrs. Murray sternly ruled that King be listed simply—and only—as the wife of Peter Bourne, special assistant to the President. In the Green Book, married women are never allowed to be listed under their maiden names; that would give the Wrong Idea. Divorcing couples are barred from the register until their legal tangles are settled. But because the Green Book also serves as a protocol guide and automatically lists anyone ranked Assistant Secretary and up, an exception had to be made in order to include Michael Blumenthal, who is getting divorced, in his capacity as Secretary of the Treasury.

Then there was the touchy question of how to list the President. Nicknames are not permitted in the Green Book, but the White House nixed James E. Carter Jr. and insisted on just plain Jimmy. Sniffs Mrs. Murray: ” ‘Jimmy.’ Now really!” Indeed for her, Washington is just not the same these days, thanks to James E. Carter Jr. Says she: “Doing away with Ruffles and Flourishes and Hail to the Chief! What does he accomplish by making everything so commonplace?”