Gentlemen, Please!

"Just a moment, please!" cried Moderator Faye Emerson. Helplessly banging her gavel, she tried to get a word in: "Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Excuse me, gentlemen!" The gentlemen disregarded her. At one point, she made a fluttery appeal to the studio audience: "I am only a woman, and I'm not very well able to moderate this--"

Looking pretty but disheveled, Peacemaker Emerson was trying desperately to bring order to last week's Author Meets the Critics (Thurs. 10 p.m., Du Mont). Her out-of-hand panel consisted of Presidential Candidate Senator Robert A. Taft; his strong supporter, Hearst Columnist George Sokolsky; and Tex ("I Like Ike") McCrary, who is perhaps best known for his weekday husband & wife show with Jinx Falkenburg. They were met to discuss Taft's recent book, A Foreign Policy for Americans. The trouble started when McCrary charged that Taft "has been careless with the truth in this book. He has even deliberately distorted the truth . . ."

Bad Word. On the TV screen, Taft at first seemed to take these charges calmly. But Sokolsky's temper had a lower ignition point. Tossing his mane, he shouted indignantly: "I resent very much anyone giving the impression that Senator Taft is a liar, and if I were Senator Taft I would rise now and leave this program . . . Only scoundrels lie. And the word 'lie' is a bad word, and when a man impugns the truth of another man, he places himself outside good manners, and I resent it."

By this time, Senator Taft had begun to show resentment, too. McCrary had called him a liar, he said, and he demanded that McCrary "withdraw that statement." McCrary denied calling anyone a liar, and he refused to withdraw anything. Faye, smiling through incipient tears, suggested that everyone had reached "a pretty irreconcilable point," but she couldn't silence her bickering guests in time for more than a hasty sign-off announcement.

Bear Trap. Televiewers found it a lively if not very illuminating show. Next day letters and telegrams (running more than two to one against McCrary) poured into the network. The national Citizens for Eisenhower organization, headed by Arthur H. Vandenberg Jr., hurriedly announced that McCrary was not an official or even a member of their group. Bruised but unrepentant, McCrary defended his charges on his own bedside radio show next morning (NBC promptly offered Taft equal time for a rebuttal). That night, as a guest on WMCA's Barry Gray program, McCrary protested that he had been caught in a TV "bear trap by two men who brought with them their organized hecklers . . ."

Faye Emerson, the innocent bystander, was groggy but still game. "Tempers got a little hot," she conceded, "but this week we have Senator Kefauver, Senator Capehart and Senator Blair Moody. With just Senators, I don't think we'll have the same trouble."

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