Compared with what there was a couple of years ago, there is very little left of the left, admitted Left-Wing Lawyer William M. Kunstler. The occasion of his mournful reflection was a courthouse press conference he had called in Baltimore. Only one reporter showed up to hear him hold forth. "Nationally, the pace of and interest in the left has dropped way down," said Kunstler. "I think there is a feeling that the movement is dead. There just isn't the same furor." -

Senator William Proxmire, who turned up with two black eyes a couple of weeks ago (TIME, Feb. 21), walked into the hearings of his Joint Economic Committee with his head swathed in bandages. The Proxmire shiners--diagnosed by observers as the effects of a debagging operation--were never officially explained, but the head wounds were accompanied by a press release. Text: "On Tuesday night, February 22, I began treatment for hair transplants. The treatments will take a couple of months. The change in appearance of my bald head will be gradual, it will be a year and a half, or more, before the transplanted hair has grown out. And even then, I will still be a semi-baldy, but a little more semi and little less baldy. I expect humorous, critical, amused, outraged, or even ridiculous reactions. But I will acknowledge none of them. This statement is it." -

Would Nancy Reagan, first lady of California, go to an X-rated movie? "No," she replied to a reader of her column in the Sacramento Union. What's more, the former actress thinks that some recent movies have shown "an appalling lack of taste and judgment and no sense of responsibility at all." The Governor's wife concluded: "I don't think anyone wants censorship. But I'm afraid that if the picture business doesn't start to censor itself as it used to, that's exactly what will happen." -

After playing to more than 12,000 G.I.s in Long Binh--his first show in Viet Nam--Sammy Davis Jr. spouted enthusiasm for the Now Army. "From my Army days in the '40s to now it's unbelievable--in terms of the black and white relationship, in terms of the Army's bending the rules which used to be so rigid, in terms of regarding men as individuals as much as they can. I saw certain things yesterday I wish I could see at home in terms of people, just peopleness. They have been out there and faced the same thing. Maybe that's what we need to do at home." -

The Howard Hughes caper has blasted Nina van Pallandt off to stardom. The Danish singer and actress has done her fetching thing on the Dick Cavett and David Frost shows. She has been approached by four major record companies and two film companies. Nightclub offers have been piling in from Canada, the Bahamas, Florida, Mexico, San Francisco and Las Vegas (including one from a Hughes-owned hotel). "She's had more exposure in one week than Tom Jones has had in his whole career," bubbles Nina's manager, John Marshall. "Why, she got 5,000 letters and telegrams last week, and in one day we had 120 phone calls." Slim and sexy at 38, Nina says she was "terribly upset about all this at first. But now that it has all turned out as well as it has, I'm glad." -

The annual Gridiron Club dinner, at which the cream of Washington correspondents lampoons the cream of Washington politicians, is traditionally as male as it is white. This year, though, no fewer than 13 distinguished women were invited. One of them, New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the leading black presidential candidate, felt her invitation was addressed to "a carefully selected token woman." She wrote back: "Gentlemen of the Gridiron Club: Guess who's not coming to dinner?" -

In a letter to the London Times, Scottish Laborite M.P. William Winter Hamilton "publicly and unreservedly" withdrew his recent House of Commons reference to Prince Charles, the heir apparent to the British throne, as a "young twerp." Wrote the repentant Member: "I believe Charles to be a sensible, contented, pleasant young man. Who wouldn't be contented and pleasant with a guaranteed, untaxed annual income of -L-105,000 [$273,000], which is likely to be doubled--or even quadrupled--automatically, within the next five years?"

All the world loves a lover, and the Israelis would apparently like to elect one Premier. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, just divorced and the subject of sensational stories about a love affair with a young girl, has leaped ahead in a poll on the question of who is "best fitted to lead the nation." The three candidates (rated from 1 to 100): Dayan, 88.1; Premier Golda Meir, 82.2; Deputy Premier Yigal Allon, 31.8.

"I believe in private property," said Joseph Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva Peters. "They live a communal life. They share their incomes, their food, their living. Everyone works, including the children." Svetlana was not describing the Soviet Union, from which she defected to the U.S. in 1967. She was explaining why she had left Taliesin West, a community of architects founded by the late Frank Lloyd Wright about 24 miles northeast of Phoenix, Ariz. Svetlana's third husband, William Wesley Peters--whose first wife (also named Svetlana) was Wright's daughter--is head architect at Taliesin. And Architect Peters was definitely not leaving to join his wife and their ten-month-old daughter Olga in the expensive small house Svetlana has bought about 15 minutes' drive away. "She came here and was anxious to marry me too fast," said Peters. "She misjudged the person she married. I take a great deal of responsibility in this. In the face of Svetlana's inability to adjust, it would almost seem that divorce is inevitable." But Svetlana did not even want to admit that they were separated. "The first suggestion of a divorce is what I read in the paper," she said. "I am shocked."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.