Whether or not he wins election this week, as he is favored to do, the young (22), intelligent and self-assured candidate has the look of a winner and name to match. He is Henri Giscard d'Estaing, son of France's President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, running for the council of the farming district of Marchenoir. Giscard fils does not downplay his family connection or resemblance to the tall, coolly patrician Giscard pere: "I have the virus of politics and I have had good coaching." Working out of a former butcher shop, he has shaken hands with at least one-third of the district's 6,000 people. A defeat of Communist and Socialist opponents who mock him as a dauphin would make him the youngest elected official in France.

Poor Patty Hearst. Kidnaped, tortured, terrorized, brainwashed, on the lam, captured, tried for bank robbery, imprisoned until sprung by presidential commutation, and now this. Engaged to marry San Francisco Policeman Bernard Shaw, a former bodyguard, on April Fools' Day, Hearst had selected a $1,000 gown by New York Designer Frank Masandrea. But last week Patty and parents abruptly chose another. It turned out that exclusive rights to posing Patty in the gown and covering the ceremony had been sold to Look magazine. Alas, United Press International, pitting ingenuity against pocketbook journalism, discovered and printed sketches of the bride's finery.

Peace doves and the accolades they generate are right down the presidential flyway these days, but whooping cranes are birds of a different feather. Else why did Jimmy Carter look so dubious last week when presented with a miniature replica of that endangered species by the National Wildlife Federation as "Conservationist of the Year"? Whatever he felt about the whooper, Carter appreciated the award, which recognized his support for environmental protection and recreation. The President boasted of his prowess as "hunter, fisherman, canoeist, hiker, camper and lately cross-country skier."

Call it a bran-new genre of film making or the wheat germ of an idea by innovative Director Robert Altman. Filming in St. Petersburg Beach, Fla., is Altman's Health, all about a leadership power struggle at a national health-food promotion convention between a vigorous virgin of 83 and a younger opponent. Lauren Bacall, of all sexies, is the maiden, and Glenda Jackson her antagonist; Carol Burnett gets involved as a White House aide dispatched to the convention mainly to get her out of Washington. On the set, there is no concern about life enervating art. Altman stores up energy by gobbling yogurt, Burnett is a yogist, and Bacall goes through a daily dozen of what she calls "lying down" exercises. The only lump is Jackson. "I OD on coffee and cigarettes every morning," she confesses. "That's all the exercise I need."

"If I get a group of diehard Baptists all pushing 60 who go to church every Sunday," sighed the man in the wheelchair, "I'm in trouble." Whatever the jury's demographics, Hustler Publisher Larry Flynt was in trouble. In Atlanta he went on trial on eleven obscenity charges that could each net a $5,000 fine and a year in jail. Flynt, already appealing an obscenity conviction in Cincinnati, was surrounded by 20 guards as a result of the mysterious ambush last year during another trial in Lawrenceville, Ga., that left him paralyzed in both legs. "This is not the kind of justice I'm entitled to," said he, "railroaded in Cincinnati and gunned down in Lawrenceville."

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