Nixon had a habit, whenever he got into his helicopter at the airport, of going to the window for a moment and waving at the crowd. George Embrey [of the Columbus Dispatch] was the only member of the press who would always wave back.

"Goodbye," he would cry softly as the helicopter started to take Nixon away, "Goodbye!"

Embrey was a blank-faced, clean-cut man who wore white shirts, striped ties, neat suits, well-shined shoes; he spent a great deal of time at the National Press Club bar, soliciting votes to become the club's secretary. He liked pool assignments, and once blew up at Ziegler for not letting him follow Nixon out of the kitchen exit of a hotel. "My job is to stay with him at all times!" said Embry. What he really wanted, many of his colleagues thought, was to become a Secret Service man.

From The Boys on the Bus, by Timothy Crouse, 1972.

Sycophancy is unseemly in a journalist covering a president.

Or, for that matter, a pope.