Plumbers Framing Operation

Sunday night at the Playboy Club the stink was of cigars as lumpy old fat cats arrived for a $1,000-a-ticket Humphrey reception. This time hippies were the problem: a faction arrived to heckle, harass, and barricade the entrance. Then, fire engines clanged their way up the driveway, answering a fire alarm in the Playboy bunnies’ dressing room. It had been set ablaze by commando feminists. Mayor Daley’s cigar-chompers arrived at George McGovern’s convention not knowing whether they’d get to be delegates or not. They had a hard time enjoying themselves at Playboy Plaza Sunday night, and that was even before they were set upon by torch-bearing women’s libbers. They visited the hospitality suite at the Doral that the McGovern team had set up to woo “uncommitted” delegates such as themselves; there were twelve different kinds of whiskey and Scotch. And a twenty-three-year-old host, wearing sandals and a psychedelic tie. Jesse Jackson suggested a compromise. White reformers called him a sellout. McGovern suggested a compromise. The cochair of the reformers responded, “If he needs Mayor Daley’s support more than he needs us, we don’t need him.” Splitting the Democrats was proving easier than they thought.