Betty Ford faced her own credibility gap last week: how to be a President's wife and a thinking human being. Courageously establishing a precedent--the first fullscale, open-admission press conference to be given by a First Lady --Mrs. Ford tried hard to avoid ideological traps. Wearing a mustard shirtdress, she gracefully fielded the mandatory housekeeping questions. Inflation had hit the Fords, she acknowledged: "We don't eat as much steak or roast beef as the boys would like." And she spoke to Moms everywhere: "I'm dumbfounded the children have adjusted so well to the change." But after she nailed her colors to the Equal Rights Amendment, she slipped. She indicated support for Vice President-designate Rockefeller's controversial stand pro liberalized abortion laws. Next day her press secretary Helen Smith issued an equivocation. Mrs. Ford believes abortion is justified, she backpedaled, but it should not be given on demand.

Musing on the qualifications necessary for a President last week, Eugene McCarthy opined, "The question should be: Do you want this man to go to bat for you?" The former semipro ballplayer in Minnesota's Great Soo League was fresh from a personal success on the playing fields of East Hampton, L.I. Invited to join George Plimpton, Peter Mathiessen and Wilfrid Sheed on the writers' team in an annual charity softball game between writers and artists, Poet McCarthy went three for three against strong opposition that included Fabric Designer Boris Kroll and Painters Syd Solomon and Jimmy Ernst. One line drive could have been a home run if McCarthy had not stumbled at first base. His team went down 10-1, but Gene did not finish. When a pinch runner replaced him in the fifth inning, everyone laughed at the public address announcement: "McCarthy has chosen not to run."

Bonanza may no longer be filling prime time on TV, but the spirit of the Ponderosa gallops on. Big Ben Cartwright rode into Washington last week to lobby for some of the constituents of Ponderosa ranch: horses. Along with Papa Charcoal, the American Horse Protection Association's mascot, Actor Lome Greene gave a press conference opposite the White House, asking for legislation to curb the cruelties inflicted on horses in the U.S. Greene, who has his own ranch in California's San Fernando Valley, has joined the board of the A.H.P.A. Said one fan who had gathered round to give Papa Charcoal a pat, "and he isn't hossing around."

J. Fred Muggs, where are you? TV Host Mike Douglas, in Planet of the Apes makeup, strode onstage last week at Philadelphia's KYW-TV studios to tape his daily talk show. His first guest was Trainer Bill Hampton with Marvin the Magnificent, a 100-lb. chimp. To the delight of the audience, Marvin recognized a pal right away. He stroked Mike's unusually pale paw consideringly, then sat back on his haunches and let out a few friendly howls. "The volume could have parted your hair," said Mike later. When Douglas mimicked him and let out a few howls of his own, Marvin stared stonily at his host, then wandered off into the audience. Next thing, he began swinging from the balcony. When Mike remonstrated with him, Marvin merely picked up a TV camera and shook it in Douglas' face as if it were a Brownie. Following a producer wielding a lollipop, Marvin made for the newsroom, hurled a typewriter through a partition, stomped on file cabinets and tore out acoustic tile so that he could swing on the steel beams above. His $2,700 rampage was finally stopped by a blowgun tranquilizer, and Marvin departed handcuffed to a stretcher. Said a shaken Douglas, hurriedly taking off his ape makeup: "You never know when they're going to revert."

It is a long way from street crime to Lee Radziwill's Fifth Avenue drawing room. Last week, however, WCBS-TV gambled that its New York audience was ready for social satire. It let loose Jackie Onassis' younger sister as a probing interviewer. Recently Lee taped for CBS-owned stations Interviews with John Kenneth Galbraith, Gloria Steinem, Halston, Robert Coles, Peter Benchley and Rudolf Nureyev. If successful, they could earn Lee her own talk show. For 2 1/2 minutes on the evening news last week Lee, dressed with unrelenting chic and speaking in a throaty mid-Atlantic drawl, questioned Rudi about his life and work. The concept, explained a CBS spokesman, was to cover a single thought each time. The most provoking idea occurred to Lee in the fourth session. "Do you think you'll ever get married?" she asked a startled Rudi. Replied Rudi reprovingly: "One doesn't expect close friends to ask silly questions."

For more than six weeks the 1,700 citizens of Tylertown, Miss., waited on tiptoe for their first celebrity visitor in decades. Last week Martha Mitchell blew into town accompanied by her personal seamstress. Ostensibly on hand for the wedding of her son Jay Jennings to a local girl and fellow dropout from the University of Mississippi Law School Janis Crawford, Martha quickly took the mint out of everyone's juleps.

Dressed flamboyantly, she overshadowed even her blonde daughter-in-law, a former Miss Hospitality of Walthall County, and upstaged the wedding ceremony by arriving late because of a flat tire. As for Tylertown, it quivered at the mention of her name. One guest choked at Martha's description of Richard Nixon as "a dirty son of a bitch." Still, most agreed that years in the Northern wilderness had not spoiled her. Said Tylertown Times Editor Paul Pittman:

"We've heard of people who could charm a rattlesnake, but I've never met anyone like Martha."

What will the naughty Aussies do next? Alan Bond may have been away on a brief visit to Australia but his fellow countrymen continued their assault on the crusty New York Yacht Club.

"You guys are no different from the Watergate fellows," said Bob McCullough, manager of the defender Courageous syndicate, after members of the Australian squad had sneaked aboard Courageous at Newport Shipyard and prowled the deck of the sleek racing machine.

They were checking, the Australians said darkly, to make sure that the installation of Courageous' big sheet winches did not violate America's Cup rules. Newport salts particularly enjoyed this gamesmanship ploy on the challenger's part because this year for the first time a delegation from the International Yacht Racing Union was checking to see that the complex 12-meter yachting rules were upheld. On the eve of the first race, Courageous was declared legal, and Brian Leary, Southern Cross syndicate manager, put the squall behind him. "Listen," he said, "the Americans have pasted Courageous stickers all over the inside of our boat."

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