EXIT EARL, NOT LAUGHING

En route to help dedicate a screwworm eradication plant in Mexico, Earl Butz took a plane to California just after the Republican National Convention in Kansas City. He could have flown either Continental or TWA, but his aide, Roger Knapp, chose TWA. In the first-class compartment, the Agriculture Secretary spied Singers Pat Boone and Sonny Bono, and John Dean, the former White House counsel who had blown the whistle on Richard Nixon and had just worked the convention as a writer for Rolling Stone. A gregarious man who likes to flaunt his snappy country--and often barnyard--sense of humor, Butz, 67, wandered over to make idle conversation, after Knapp had warned him that Dean was now a reporter.

Butz started by telling a dirty joke involving intercourse between a dog and a skunk. When the conversation turned to politics, Boone, a right-wing Republican, asked Butz why the party of Lincoln was not able to attract more blacks. The Secretary responded with a line so obscene and insulting to blacks that it forced him out of the Cabinet last week and jolted the whole Ford campaign. Butz said that "the only thing the coloreds are looking for

in life are tight p-- , loose shoes

and a warm place to s--."

After some indecision, Dean used the line in Rolling Stone, attributing it to an unnamed Cabinet officer. But New Times magazine enterprisingly sleuthed out Butz's identity by checking the itineraries of all Cabinet members. The publication informed the Secretary's office on Tuesday, Sept. 28, that it was planning to print his name. Butz mulled over the problem until Thursday, before tipping off the White House. On Friday morning he found himself on the carpet in front of an exasperated Gerald Ford.

The President did not fire Butz then and there in part because Butz claimed, incorrectly, that he had been quoted out of context and that he had actually said something like "Things have come a long way since the days when a ward politician could say ..." before delivering his bomb. Moreover, Ford hates to make decisions under pressure. More important, he is genuinely fond of the Secretary. ("We think alike," the President once said. "I love to work with him.") Not least of all, Ford was afraid that firing Butz would hurt his election chances in the key farm states.

Ford left it up to Butz whether or not to resign. Not only Jimmy Carter but a chorus of Republicans began calling for Butz's head. After praying "over what to do," Butz sat down on Sunday morning and wrote out his resignation.

While pickets carrying KICK

BUTZ signs marched outside the White House, the Secretary walked in on Monday to see the President alone. Though Ford had been offended by the non-joke, he still felt sympathy for Butz, whom he does not consider a bigot. Butz was close to breaking down. Said he later: "[The President] should have kicked me right in the pants. Instead, he put his arm around me."

Red-eyed, Butz emerged to tell newsmen that the use of a racial jibe did not reflect his real attitude. Resigning, said Butz, "is the price I pay for a gross indiscretion in a private conversation." Half an hour later, Ford said that "Earl Butz has been and continues to be a close personal friend and a man who loves his country and all it represents." Accepting the resignation of "this good and decent man," Ford declared, had been "one of the saddest decisions of my presidency."

And so it was done--but badly, and too late. By hesitating, Ford angered many Americans, black and white alike. He seemed to be giving in to pressure, including Carter's--hardly helpful to a man who is running as a strong leader. The incident also evoked images of Washington folderol--the ole-boy network of Republican cronies sticking together. Worried one top Ford aide when it was finished: "I'm afraid some people will start wondering how straight a guy, how nice a fellow the President really is." Appearing at the University of Southern California last week, Ford was ridiculed by some students. When Ford began a sentence with the words, "The greatest danger I see in America today," someone in the crowd yelled, "is tight shoes!"

There was no immediate indication that Ford's firing of Butz would hurt him badly in the Midwest, although some farmers were angry--particularly the big operators who had benefited most from the Secretary's policies, since early 1973, of encouraging production and pushing exports of farm surpluses. During his five years in office, Butz helped increase the farmers' net income by 60%. Allan Grant, president of the conservative American Farm Bureau Federation (2.4 million members), bemoaned Butz's resignation, calling him the best Secretary of Agriculture in the nation's history. But many farmers with small spreads were not at all sad to see Butz go. They claimed that he favored the big producers and agribusiness.

In mid-1972 Butz was city-slickered by the Kremlin. The Soviets, dealing secretly with private companies and paying bargain rates for grain exports that were then subsidized by the Government, bought up 25% of the U.S. wheat crop, plus massive quantities of corn and soybeans. A Senate subcommittee charged Butz's department with "inept management" and "total lack of planning" in overseeing the deals. The resulting domestic food shortage--along with other factors--helped drive up retail food prices 20% in 1973.

Butz survived his jousts with consumers, environmentalists and what he called the "striped-pants boys" in the State Department. He lived down the uproar from many Catholics, notably

Italian Americans, after he cracked in 1974 that the Pope should not oppose birth-control programs because "he no playa da game, he no make-a da rules." But when he tried to impress John Dean and Pat Boone, it was Earl's last laugh.

While cleaning out his big, airy corner office, Butz chatted with TIME Correspondent Jerry Hannifin. Two ears of golden Iowa corn--a present from an admirer--glowed on his desk, and the horse collar he brought with him to Washington five years ago still hung on the wall, a reminder of his years of plowing fields as a boy on a 160-acre farm in Noble County, Ind. Said he: "I've paid a tremendous price. I'm going back to Purdue, where I studied and taught. I'm going to be an adjunct professor of some sort, talk to students, make speeches ... You know, I don't know how many times I told that joke, and everywhere--political groups, church groups--nobody took offense, and nobody should. I like humor. I'm human."

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