The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MS. WARNER: And I'm Margaret Warner in New York. After the News Summary, we wade into the stormy debate over the NAACP's new direction. Then Lee Hochberg reports on the business of soccer, Mark Shields and Paul Gigot update this week's political developments, and essayist Roger Rosenblatt reconsiders Father's Day. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Former football star O.J. Simpson was charged today with two counts of murder. The alleged victims were his ex-wife and a male friend. The 46-year-old Simpson is being sought by Los Angeles police after he failed to surrender as promised. The charges could carry the death penalty or life without parole. Simpson had earlier denied any involvement in the killings. Thirty- five year old Nicole Simpson and twenty-five year old Ronald Goldman were found murdered late Sunday night. The Simpsons have two young children and were divorced in 1992. Late today, a commander of the Los Angeles police spoke to reporters.

COMMANDER DAVID GASCOW, Los Angeles Police Department: Mr. Simpson in agreement with his attorney was scheduled to surrender this morning to the Los Angeles Police Department. Initially, that was 11 o'clock. It then became 11:45. Mr. Simpson has not appeared. The Los Angeles Police Department right now is actively searching for Mr. Simpson. The Los Angeles Police Department is also very unhappy with the activities surrounding his failure to surrender. And we will be looking further into those activities, including anyone that may have intervened on his behalf.

MR. LEHRER: The commander said police believe Simpson is still in the Los Angeles area. Margaret.

MS. WARNER: President Clinton said today the U.S. is still seeking U.N. sanctions against North Korea. He was reacting to reports that former President Jimmy Carter told North Korea's president the U.S. was willing to hold off on its drive for sanctions. Mr. Carter's been in North Korea trying to defuse the crisis over the country's suspected nuclear arms program. Mr. Clinton said he was sticking to the position he outlined yesterday, i.e., that Washington will keep pursuing sanctions until North Korea affirms that it's willing to freeze its nuclear program in place.

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton talked about crime today to residents of Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes, the largest housing project in the United States. He also toured the nearby police station, where he was shown a large display of guns and assault weapons taken from people at the project. The homes are the site of a recent controversy over gun sweeps into apartments without warrants. President Clinton told residents those searches are necessary.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: One of the reporters asked me about the policy here of the sweeps and about the assault weapons, and he said, Mr. President, are we going to have to be willing to give up some of our personal freedom to live in safety, and I said that I thought the most important freedom we have in this country is the freedom from fear, and if people aren't free from fear, they are not free.

MR. LEHRER: Later in the day, the President also attended the opening ceremonies of the World Cup soccer finals in Chicago. He joined the leaders of Germany and Bolivia, whose teams played in the first match. We'll have more on soccer later in the program.

MS. WARNER: President Clinton appointed two emergency boards to help mediate the Long Island Railroad strike that began overnight. The strike by 2300 members of the United Transportation Union, shut down the country's largest commuter rail line today. Thousands of commuters were forced to find alternate forms of transportation this morning. The union is striking over wage rates and work rules and workers have been without a contract for almost two and a half years. For now, no new talks are scheduled. A bill to end the strike has been introduced in Congress, but no action is expected before Tuesday.

MR. LEHRER: Eight members of the Branch Davidians were sentenced inSan Antonio today in the killing of four federal agents last year. Five were given the maximum of forty years, the other three from five to twenty years. All were convicted on weapons charges stemming from a shootout in Waco in which the federal agents were killed. The shootout began a 51-day standoff which culminated in a fire that killed Davidian Leader David Koresh and 78 of his followers. The Supreme Court ruled today juries must be told if the alternative to the death sentence is a life term without parole. By a seven to two vote the Justices struck down a South Carolina law that bars juries from learning about the choice. The ruling overturns the death sentence of a convicted killer.

MS. WARNER: NATO announced today that Russia's foreign minister will sign the alliance's Partnership for Peace Agreement next week. The program grants special NATO cooperative status to former East Bloc nations, and many have already joined. NATO officials stress that Russia won't be treated any differently from other East European countries and won't have a say in NATO decision making. In Rwanda, a United Nations peacekeeper was killed by a rebel grenade near the capital today. The peacekeeper's death forced the swift cancellation of cease-fire talks that had begun earlier in the day, and heavy fighting in Kigali forced the U.N. to cancel once again its planned evacuations of hundreds of civilians.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to directions and problems for the NAACP, the business of soccer, Shields and Gigot, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - UNITED FRONT?

MS. WARNER: Now, where is the NAACP going? Earlier this week, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sponsored a three-day national summit of black leaders in Baltimore, the purpose, to forge a new civil rights agenda. The attendees were a cross-section of political, business, and religious figures, but it was the inclusion of nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan that touched off a firestorm of protest from many of the NAACP's mainstream supporters. NAACP director Benjamin Chavis and the organization's national field secretary, Earl Shinhoster, had agreed to join this discussion which we had originally planned for last night, but late on both afternoons the NAACP withdrew, so we pick up the issue now with Jesse Jackson, long time civil rights activist and founder and president of the Rainbow Coalition; Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and the former assistant director of the NAACP; Jack Greenberg, the former director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, he's the author of the recently published book Crusaders in the Courts about the civil rights movement's legal battle; and Al Sharpton, a community activist and a candidate for the Democratic Senate nomination in New York State. Welcome, gentlemen. Rev. Jackson, long time civil rights activist Julian Bond wrote recently that by inviting Louise Farrakhan to the Baltimore Summit the NAACP had made itself a partner in Farrakhan's hateful views of whites, Jews, and homosexuals. He went on to say that it was such a grave mistake that it "may condemn the NAACP's noble history to a shameful oblivion." Is Julian Bond right?

REV. JACKSON: I don't believe that. I think in a democracy we must be civilized enough to agree, to agree to disagree. And I, I support conversation over confrontation when it's necessary. And I think if I were in the U.S. Senate, I met with Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms and Hollands and the committee, that would not be condemned. When you think about Farrakhan, things he's said which are unacceptable to many people, those are rhetoric wars. And when you think about DeKlerk and Mandela meeting, they had the need to end blood wars. When you think about Arafat and Rabin meeting, or you think about the meeting involved in Begin and Sadat, it just seems to me in a democracy, you ought to be encouraging talk. And what ought to be the issues, what was discussed, and I think that is what has been missed. I mean, the NAA's agenda at the meeting was [a] economic development and alternative to welfare. That was what Ben Chavis had as the primary agenda. The second was the education of our youth and the empowerment as opposed to going to jail. And thirdly, modern spiritual regeneration. I think it's not right to spend too much time on the distraction of who was present and not on what was discussed.

MS. WARNER: Well, we hope here to discuss the NAACP's new direction, and let me ask Michael Meyers. You've been critical of that decision to invite Louis Farrakhan. Why, and what do you make of Rev. Jackson's defense of it?

MR. MEYERS: The answer to your question is that the NAACP is headed toward the role of self-destruction. It's been hijacked by black extremists. Louis Farrakhan is the apostle of fate, the apostle of black racism, the apostle of anti-semitism. By doctrine, his nation of Islam believes in racial apartheid, in the separate fates for blacks and for whites. The NAACP believes just the exact opposite. The NAACP believes in integration. It also has a charter that says in its beginning that it shall have straight talk about all forms of racism, and it will be opposed, vigorously and strenuously opposed to racism of all kinds. The NAACP's Ben Chavis as well as the board of directors of the NAACP who employs him, it seems to me, by inviting the apostle of hate to the table has given cover for that kind of racism and has become an accessory to bigotry. Moreover, the NAACP -- the difference here is the NAACP is a membership organization. It is an inclusionary membership. It includes whites and Asians and Latinos, not just blacks. For the NAACP, the mainstream organization that it is, to have a racially exclusionary meeting to not to --

MS. WARNER: You mean, because no whites were invited?

MR. MEYERS: That's right, not to even allow the three members of its national board, 64 board, who are white, into the room, for them to have such a meeting seems to me to violate the spirit and the letter of its charter and to tear it up, so I think --

MS. WARNER: Rev. Jackson, let him finish, please.

REV. JACKSON: I'm sorry.

MR. MEYERS: And it conveys a message that the NAACP is appealing to and pandering to the passions and prejudices of what Roy Wilkins warned against, and that is a cult of blackism.

MS. WARNER: Jack Greenberg, you have a long association to the NAACP.

MR. GREENBERG: The NAACP has great successes, but all those great successes have been part of a broad coalition of people of all religions and people of all races. To associate with someone like Farrakhan, no matter what Rev. Jackson says about the utility of speech, would certainly drive away, would drive away Catholics. Most Hispanics with whom the NAACP should be having an alliance are Roman Catholics, and consign it to a role of the student non-violent coordinating committee, which once was integrated and successful, turn separatist and disintegrated. The Congress of racial equality which was once integrated and successful turn separatist and disintegrated; the Black Panthers, which are separatists and disintegrated; the Marcus Garvey black to Africa movement. Most black people don't support that, and certainly virtually no white people support it, and if the NAACP is to be successful, particularly in today's day and age when blacks who will soon no longer be the largest minority in the country, it has to have a broad coalition with all groups.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Sharpton, you don't have a long history with the NAACP but does this sound like the organization that you saw at that meeting? Is it moving in a separatist direction?

MR. SHARPTON: I think we're confusing two things. The summit meeting in Baltimore was a summit hosted by the NAACP for black leaders. The NAACP convention will be in Chicago in a couple of weeks. I don't think we should confuse what will be the NAACP and how it will operate, and I'm sure Mr. Meyers and others that want to raise the internal issues will be free to do that with them hosting a meeting with outside guests that some of us that attended were. Secondly, I don't think that for black leaders to meet is any different for the Conference of Jewish Organizations that meet here in New York, the Polish-American Congress. We don't call them racist. But what's more disturbing to me is what standard are we going to operate by. The cardinal has a very strong position about gays and lesbians. Should we say he's homophobic and not allow him in the meeting? I mean, who's going to determine now who is included and excluded? If the barometer that we're going to look for is that we want a cross-section of leadership, those that have a following should be invited to the table, and people should agree and disagree. But I think if we're going to impose a standard on some, that it has not used on others, then we are reinforcing double standards rather than solving them.

MR. MEYERS: I don't think that the people at that meeting had any following. As Jack suggested, the majority of blacks in this country are integrationists, not separatists.

REV. JACKSON: But, you know, Jack --

MS. WARNER: Just a minute, Rev. Jackson. I'll get right to you.

REV. JACKSON: That agenda is not about separatism, integration. People like Dr. Albin who sat there -- a Harvard psychiatrist talking about the plight of our children.

MR. MEYERS: You had Lennie Jeffries there too.

REV. JACKSON: Of course, he was, and people like Dr. Connor, but the point is there's a cross-section of American citizens who've said they're dealing with the crisis of urban America. How does one --

MS. WARNER: Rev. Jackson, let me ask you this. What do you say to people like Mr. Meyers and Mr. Greenberg, who were long associated with the NAACP, who say that the inclusion of someone like Louis Farrakhan makes them feel unwelcome, particularly any white or any Jewish-American?

REV. JACKSON: I guess I'm really saying that when I think about rhetoric wars where we speak unkindly about each other, which I do not support, in conscience, how we applaud when the people end blood wars, it's a new South Africa. Mandela and DeKlerk, he locked him up for 27 years. Then there's the Arafat-Rabin meeting. These were blood wars. Can we not at least talk it out, rather than fight it out? I mean, if we came out of that meeting with a racist, sexist, anti-semitic, homophobic conclusion, that should be condemned, but even to change people's ways, you have to meet, even to alter their course.

MS. WARNER: All right. Let me ask Mr. Sharpton here --

REV. JACKSON: To not talk is immoral.

MS. WARNER: Rev. Jackson, please. Whatdoes Mr. Farrakhan bring that's so special?

MR. SHARPTON: First of all, he wasn't the only one invited.

MS. WARNER: Yeah. But we're here to discuss his inclusion. What does he bring that's so special?

MR. SHARPTON: What he brings is one who has a following that should have been invited, if that was the determination of Mr. Chavis, who called the meeting.

MS. WARNER: Because there's a large following.

MR. SHARPTON: Now, what other people have done -- there are a lot of people that we'd invite. What other people have done is try to use that distraction as a distraction. I think what is more important is what is the standard that we're going to use. It was Farrakhan today, and it becomes Hutu tomorrow. How are we going to establish what is the standard to hold a leadership meeting if it is not based on goals that have established a following.

MR. GREENBERG: May I just --

MS. WARNER: Yes, Mr. Greenberg.

MR. GREENBERG: Leonard Jeffries doesn't have a following, as far as I know. I mean, he's got a bunch of students in his class, and he doesn't have a following.

MS. WARNER: Explain who Leonard Jeffries is.

MR. GREENBERG: Leonard Jeffries is an anti-semitic professor at the City University, and he doesn't have a following. Why was he invited?

REV. JACKSON: Mr. Greenberg, Mr. Greenberg --

MS. WARNER: Mr. Jackson, please.

REV. JACKSON: -- on this democratic idea, look, look at the breadth of the knesset. They've got some people who wanted to trade with South Africa while apartheid was legal. You've got some others at the opposite extreme. You've got some others who've said, Palestinians should have no place versus nowhere, others who disagree. At least, they were under one roof to agree to agree, or to agree to disagree.

MS. WARNER: All right, Rev. Jackson, I'm going to interrupt you and go to Michael Meyers.

REV. JACKSON: And what's painful to me about even the --

MS. WARNER: Mr. Sharpton has raised an interesting point, which is that the Reverend -- that Louis Farrakhan does have a huge following and, in fact, in a recent poll of African-Americans by Time Magazine when asked who's the most important black leader in America today, the No. 1 volunteer was the Rev. Jackson, but the No. 2 volunteer was Louis Farrakhan. Where are the charismatic integrationist leaders --

MR. MEYERS: If you measure appeal --

MS. WARNER: -- that the NAACP used to offer?

MR. MEYERS: -- if you measure one's appeal by who attends a stadium, then it's Louis Farrakhan first and then Rev. Jackson second. But if that was the appeal of the NAACP, if they wanted to appeal to the black extremists, to the passions and prejudices of the people, if they wanted to appeal to those kinds of people, then they should appoint Louis Farrakhan the executive director of the NAACP, not Ben Chavis, because he can't fill that at all.

REV. JACKSON: But the meeting was not about this.

MR. MEYERS: Just a minute, Rev. Jackson. We heard you, so listen to our side. You want to talk. Let us talk. Let us talk, Rev. Jackson.

REV. JACKSON: That's --

MR. MEYERS: Let us talk, Reverend.

MS. WARNER: Rev. Jackson, please let him finish.

MR. MEYERS: As far as talking is concerned, you know, it's very interesting the self-selected audience that they had. Where were the militant integrationists in that room? There weren't any. They purport to have a democratic dialogue, but they're talking to themselves, and I suggest to you, Rev. Jackson and others, that this covenant with Louis Farrakhan, you should tear it up. You haven't renounced it yet. You haven't rescinded it yet. He has not repudiated his anti-semitism. In fact, he has talked about the truth of Khalid Abdum Mohamed's talk, and nobody among the mainstream leadership has asked the question --

REV. JACKSON: But --

MS. WARNER: Rev. Jackson, I'd like to ask you this. Rev. Jackson, is the hate part of Louis Farrakhan's message the secret of his appeal, and is this what the NAACP is trying to latch onto?

REV. JACKSON: I do not think that hatred, racism, anti-semitism, homophobia of anybody should be embraced or approved, but that meeting was about [a] trying to have not a covenant, that's not correct, some kind of operation in order to agree to disagree, to focus on economic justice, the lack of an urban policy, education for our youth --

MR. MEYERS: Well, why can't whites and Asians come into the room?

MS. WARNER: Let him finish.

REV. JACKSON: I'm sorry.

MR. MEYERS: Why can't whites, Asians, Latinos come into the room in a civil rights agenda?

MR. SHARPTON: And they can, and they will.

REV. JACKSON: I suppose when I spoke about a month ago at the conference of Jewish presidents, about six of them in New York, that was just Jewish presidents. That was not offensive. It was perfectly all right.

MS. WARNER: All right. Let me ask Mr. Sharpton. Do you think there's a future -- do the NAACP has a future?

MR. SHARPTON: Absolutely. I think it does, and I think we must realize, again, that people cannot have this type of cynical paternalism over approving when people that have proven that they can lead and serve sit down and discuss things even if we disagree. I mean, that's insulting to our intelligence to act like we cannot sit in a room even though we disagree. And many people that are critical of this summit were also critical of the Dave Dinkins who didn't have any of these type of things that they claim that Minister Farrakhan has. Mr. Meyers had the same view of Mr. Dinkins that was very critical. So I think --

MR. MEYERS: Let's not change the subject.

MR. SHARPTON: No. We're not changing the subject. What I'm saying is --

MR. GREENBERG: I supported David Dinkins.

MR. SHARPTON: -- I think people have a very strange type of paternalism, that they want to guide our footsteps, rather than help us go where we're going. We ought to be talking about the threat to voters' rights that Rev. Jackson and others rode across the South about. We ought to be talking about how we don't have health care facilities rather than discussing a guest list that all of us accepted to the NAACP summit. If there's a problem with Mr. Meyers' feeling of how the NAACP is going, he ought to go to the convention and handle that. But we that accepted an invitation to go for a needed dialogue I think should be commended but not condemned.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Meyers.

MR. MEYERS: Let me answer about the point about the convention. I went to the annual meeting of the members of the NAACP in February, and I tried to raise the issue of the covenant with Louis Farrakhan, and guess what, they changed the rooms, they cut the microphones off, and they adjourned the meeting. I am a member of the NAACP and a life member, and we're going to a convention in Chicago in July, and we're going to meet Ben Chavis there, and I think we're getting enough votes from the national board now, and they're coming together. They're going to oust Rev. Chavis, as well as Bill Gibson, the chairman of the board. We're going to have a package deal.

MS. WARNER: Now you are the leader of that movement, aren't you?

MR. MEYERS: I'm one of them.

MS. WARNER: And you have also urged NAACP members to not pay their dues anymore.

MR. MEYERS: That's right. Unfortunately, members cannot directly elect or un-elect members of the board so it's difficult to have accountability. So the power we have is to speak up, speak up, because silence is assent. And the second power we have is to stop funding the organization. And one of the worst kept secrets of the NAACP is that not only does the membership organization but the members don't carry it. They are publicly supported organizations. They need the support of foundations, big corporations, and the people at large, and when those moneys get cut off, and they will get cut off, because they cannot stand the idea of a covenant with Louis Farrakhan and embracing Louis Farrakhan, the NAACP is headed straight to a world of self-destruction.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Greenberg, let me about this.

REV. JACKSON: While there is a subversion or while there's --

MS. WARNER: Ben Chavis has taken over the NAACP. He has actually increased membership from about a half a million to about six hundred and fifty thousand.

MR. MEYERS: That is not true.

MS. WARNER: That is not true?

MR. MEYERS: No, it is not.

MS. WARNER: At the same time, I gather, his contributions have gone down. Setting aside whether I'm right or whether Mr. Meyers is right, do you think that --

REV. JACKSON: What we focus on --

MS. WARNER: -- this is going to really undermine the financial stability of the NAACP?

MR. GREENBERG: Well, I think it probably will. I can't imagine - -

REV. JACKSON: But you know, what we're focusing on --

MR. GREENBERG: -- any of the great national foundations, corporations, or philanthropists, or even middle income or modest contributors contributing to the same extent they did in the past. It's just inconceivable. You know, this embracing of Farrakhan, because he has drug programs in the ghetto, is like embracing the ku klux klan, because he cleans the litter in the highway in South Carolina. To me, it's the same thing. It makes absolutely no sense.

MS. WARNER: Rev. Jackson, let me ask you a question that Mr. Greenberg just raised. Did you --

REV. JACKSON: What's really offensive to me, when I look at all the white, all the news shows on Sunday have all white hosts. That's offensive. When I walk through an airport and see Brinkley and Roberts and Donaldson and Wills, this, the best that America has to offer, and that is, in fact, air supremacy, can we have a show on institutionalized racism --

MR. MEYERS: We're talking about the NAACP. This is a show.

MS. WARNER: Rev. Jackson, let me ask you this. What do you think -- where do you think the NAACP is headed?

REV. JACKSON: I hope the organization is successful in helping to reduce violence, broadening the base of dialogue, even to convince people who have gone the violent route not to go that route, even to convince people who may be anti-semitic, or inclination to turn them around. Does an organization have the power to redeem? That's the true measure of an organization. Can it redeem people? Can it revive? Can it renew people? I certainly hope that these kind of veiled threats and the kind of unstated hope that they NAA will go out of business on this basis, I hope that does not happen.

MS. WARNER: Well, Rev. Jackson, do you think the NAACP can survive and flourish without white American and American Jewish support and membership?

REV. JACKSON: Well, I --

MS. WARNER: If it comes to that.

REV. JACKSON: I was certainly hoping African-Americans would see the value of the organization, but more than that, I would hope that right thinking whites would not try to be so paternalistic as to impose it on the organization how it tries to reduce anxiety, anger, and violence in black America. Corporate America is not dealing with that issue of dialogue. The government is not doing it. So why can't the organization? Now this is not a membership meeting.

MS. WARNER: Thank you. Let me turn to Mr. Meyers now.

REV. JACKSON: That's not --

MS. WARNER: Let me ask you one final question. We only have a couple of minutes. Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been suggesting that if Louis Farrakhan would renounce anti- semitic statements, that then all would be well. Do you think that's the way to close this gap?

MR. MEYERS: Louis Farrakhan's doctrine is not just anti-semitism. It's anti-homosexuals and lesbians. It's also anti-white. A doctrine of the nation of Islam is one of black supremacy, black separation. The NAACP is opposed to that. The membership of the NAACP by its constitution is not open to black nationalists and black separatists and Louis Farrakhan claims to have a life membership in the NAACP. The NAACP officials were supposed -- once they received his check they were supposed to tear it up and send him back to him. They don't want black nationalism, black separatism in the NAACP, and we're going to go to the convention and make sure we keep and hold our NAACP open to all people, regardless of their race and their color.

MS. WARNER: Very quickly, Mr. Greenberg, do you see any way to close this gap?

MR. GREENBERG: Well, I think the association has to return to the days that made it great, when it was an interracial, ecumenical movement and included people of all different kinds of groups. That's when it had its greatest achievements, and if it goes down the path of SNIC and CORE and the Panthers and Marcus Garvey and the Communist Party, it'll end up the way they ended up.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Sharpton.

MR. SHARPTON: I think we need to play the game by one set of rules. Mr. Mandela was right to meet with DeKlerk and Buthelezi. If Mr. Dinkins was right to meet with people that called him murderer in Crown Heights, people that marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, saying every Jew at 22, if we were right in Bensonhurst when it was a racial murder to meet with people that spit at us and called us niggers, then it's shocking to me the same people that phrased those acts would tell us not to meet with somebody that they find offensive.

MS. WARNER: Thank you very much, Mr. Sharpton, Mr. Greenberg, Mr. Meyers, and Rev. Jackson. Thanks for being with us. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, U.S. Soccer, Shields & Gigot, and a Father's Day essay. FOCUS - KICKOFF!

MR. LEHRER: Now the World Cup of Soccer. It began this afternoon in Chicago. President Clinton, the leaders of Germany and Bolivia, 60,000 fans in the stadium, and 2 billion television viewers around the world watched as Germany beat Bolivia one to nothing. Despite the intense international interest in the 52 World Cup games, soccer is not that big a deal here in the United States. Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Broadcasting reports on professional soccer's efforts to change that.

MR. HOCHBERG: These are giddy, exciting days at the Los Angeles offices of World CUP USA. Soccer's month long extravaganza has come to the US. Ticket sales were brisk earlier this month for an exhibition warm-up to the Cup. The US team playing the Mexicans at the Rose Bowl. World Cup's promotional message seem to be catching, that soccer has become American as American gothic. But if you looked closely at the 91,000 plus that jammed the stadium for the game, you wouldn't find a cross-section of America. An estimated 80,000 of them were Hispanic-Americans or Mexicans coming across the US border to cheer for Mexico. [soccer segment] While it's practically a religion in Europe and Latin nations, soccer as a spectator's sport just hasn't caught on in the US.

JOHN CALLAGHAN, USC Sports Studies Program: It's the feel for the game and it's the spirit and it's the soul of the game that matters, and it's the passion for the game. And they are the things that somehow seem to be missing.

MR. HOCHBERG: It's not that Americans don't like soccer. The Soccer Industry Council, a coalition of soccer equipment suppliers promoting US soccer, says 16 million Americans played the game last year. Because it's less violent than football and cheaper to play, schools have adopted the game. It's now the nation's No. 2 participatory sport among children 12 and under, behind only basketball.

DEVIN PIERCE, Soccer Player: It's an aggressive sport. I mean, there's no time out. It's non-stop kind of play.

MR. HOCHBERG: But soccer never has been a profitable spectator sport in this country. In the 1970's, the North American Soccer League brought in top international stars, then in-door soccer tried laser light shows and smaller fields. American audiences yawned at both. Sportswriter Frank DeFord.

FRANK DeFORD, Sportswriter: We have a lot of people who swim but you can't get them to go watch swimmers. We have a lot of people who job but track and field is dying in this country. So there's absolutely no connection whatsoever that I can see between spectator sports and participant sports. It's two entirely different things.

MR. HOCHBERG: Alan Rothenberg believes the thrill of having World Cup games on home turf will turn America's soccer enthusiasts into paying fans. As chairman of the World Cup Organizing Committee, Rothenberg notes that nearly all 52 World Cup games in nine American cities are sellouts, with 3 1/2 million tickets sold. Several of America's top companies have purchased sponsorships at $20 million apiece, and they're proudly linking their products to the game.

ALAN ROTHENBERG, World Cup Organizing Committee: That's going to be as exciting a spectacle, I think, as the American public has ever had the great opportunity to envision.

MR. HOCHBERG: But despite the thrills of this game, Rothenberg's real challenge lies beyond the World Cup. Soccer's world governing body agreed to stage games in the US only if Rothenberg creates a new professional league here. His 12-team major league soccer is slated to begin play next spring.

ALAN ROTHENBERG: We've got a whole generation of people who've grown up with game. Now you have the biggest single sport event in the world, the World Cup, coming to the United States. That's capturing everybody's attention. And we're going to follow that next year with Major League Soccer. So it's clear there's a spectator base. This is not, as some people have been elegizing through softball, where everyone likes to play it, but nobody would pay a nickel to watch it.

FRANK DeFORD: What Alan Rothenberg and his committee has done with the World Cup has been magnificent, but that doesn't relate anyway whatsoever to the success of soccer once the World Cup leaves town.

MR. HOCHBERG: Many sports observers believe after the hoopla of the Cup dies down, American soccer interests will do the same.

FRANK DeFORD: It's a wonderful event. It's like "Les Miserables" coming to your town or the Ice Capades. But once it goes, I don't think there'll be any footprints left at all in the sand.

JOHN CALLAGHAN: It just is not to me the place for soccer in our sporting calendar. We just don't have a gap for it. I mean, I'd love to say we do, but I don't see that we have.

MR. HOCHBERG: USC's John Callaghan argues that soccer faces too much competition from pro-baseball, football, and basketball. Arizona businessman Dewey Schade found exactly that when he launched a season ticket sales drive for a potential major league soccer franchise in Phoenix.

DEWEY SCHADE, Phoenix Businessman: It came during the spring. We had the Phoenix Sons going, making a wonderful race. There was a lot of media attention. It was virtually impossible to get media attention on it. It was also difficult even from the soccer standpoint because we were not a World Cup venue, so the media wasn't really covering the World Cup and soccer in general.

MR. HOCHBERG: The fledgling league asked potential teams to sell 10,000 season tickets. Arizona fans bought only 700.

COMMERCIAL SPOKESMAN: If we're one of the 12 cities that send in the most $75 refundable ticket deposits, we can help our town get a major league soccer team.

MR. HOCHBERG: The league trumpets its sales in Columbus, Ohio, where TV commercials helped sell 13,000 season tickets. World Cup Executive Vice President Sunil Gulati says smaller cities may be lucrative, pro-soccer markets.

SUNIL GULATI, World Cup USA: I think you have to play in New York and you have to play in Los Angeles, and I think we'll be there, but I think what we'll see is a mix of those major media markets, and then some of the cities where maybe soccer's going to be the new sport, the big sport in town.

MR. HOCHBERG: The new league hopes to reach new television audiences as well. It has signed contracts with the sports network, ESPN, and with ABC to televise 36 games in its inaugural season. Soccer does well on European TV, where there are few competing sports. But ratings here historically have been on par with beach volleyball. The networks think new enthusiasm for the game will lure new viewers, and they believe they've overcome a problem with televising soccer, but there are no logical breaks in the action to place commercials.

STEVE RISSER, ESPN: We've come up with a unique plan to superimpose the logos from our four main goal sponsors, superimpose their image next to the clock during the broadcast during each half, during the game action.

MR. HOCHBERG: That will eliminate the need for commercial interruptions, and the networks hope enhance the telecast's appeal. And in a more hands on effort to increase soccer's reach, World Cup USA and the Adidas Corporation have introduced the game to inner city neighborhoods, where it's rarely played, like Los Angeles's Nickerson Gardens.

TOM KAIN, Adidas Corporation: We had no idea what to expect. Are these kids going to even come out and kick a ball around, or are they just going to sit on the sidelines, take a look at this and say, what's going on here?

MR. HOCHBERG: At a cost of $3 million, soccer fields were installed in inner city neighborhoods in each of the nine American cities hosting World Cup, and thousands of uniforms and soccer balls were donated.

TOM KAIN: And the kids picked up on it right away. They became excited. They had a little bit of success, and once they had the success, we think we planted a seed that'll keep growing.

MR. HOCHBERG: And as in the case of the Rose Bowl exhibition with Mexico, the league hopes to fill stadiums with the increasing number of foreign-born Americans. Phoenix's Dewey Schade targeted Hispanics with this TV ad.

[SPANISH TV AD]

DEWEY SCHADE: We have 19 percent of the Hispanic -- of market population is Hispanic in Phoenix, about 22 in the whole state of Arizona, and it's a market that hasn't even been touched, and with the growing Hispanic populations, I think the time has really come.

MR. HOCHBERG: Yet, after the U.S.-Mexico exhibition at the Rose Bowl, some Hispanic fans said target marketing will get them to the games only if the quality of the soccer is world class and the prices affordable.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: And if you want to make it work, it has to be a price that we can afford. The soccer mans, mostly all of us, are not that rich.

SECOND UNIDENTIFIED MAN: We're all on fixed incomes.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Everyone's on a fixed income. So, I mean, you got to make it affordable with all the fans to go.

MR. HOCHBERG: With limits from what they can expect from ethnic Americans alone, U.S. soccer chiefs are trying to change the game to make it more attractive to all Americans.

SUNIL GULATI: I think in general American sport audiences want the final result, and that means either a goal or a near goal or a near miss. We're actually trying bigger goals, which in parts of the world is considered heresy, but that obviously would increase goal scoring.

TOM KAIN: The American audience and the American kid is a little bit different. He needs to be spoken to differently.

MR. HOCHBERG: And soccer's sponsors are doing what they can to Americanize the game. Adidas launched an ad campaign to imbue US. soccer stars with the same brash persona that's become popular in other sports. In this commercial, goalie Tony Meola surrenders a goal to an opponent wearing an Adidas shoe.

TONY MEOLA [in Adidis commercial]: This shoe sucks.

TOM KAIN: He walks out of the goal, looks into the camera, says, "This shoe sucks." Kids pick up on the honesty from it, because Tony's got an attitude that they have about everyday life.

MR. HOCHBERG: An American attitude?

TOM KAIN: Very, very much so, and it's working for us.

MR. HOCHBERG: Trash talk, multicultural marketing, rules changes, all part of the plan to make the world's game an economic gold mine in the US. As Americans fill the stadiums this month to see soccer's best, the question is whether they'll come back after the world has gone away. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MR. LEHRER: Now some Friday night political analysis by Shields and Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot, who is with us tonight from San Jose, California. Mark, health care reform, the Democrats on the House Ways & Means Committee appeared to get their act together, at least yesterday. They voted en masse. Is that a harbinger of things to come, or what?

MR. SHIELDS: It -- I'm not saying it's a harbinger of things to come, but we saw yesterday the most powerful man in all of Washington. It turned out not to be Bill Clinton. It turned out not to be speaker Tom Foley, or Dan Rostenkowski, Sam Gibbons or Dick Gephardt or George Mitchell. It turned out to be Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich, the Republican House whip, had obviously sent the word to his colleagues that there would be no cooperation and no participation or collaboration in the committee in any way to support him. It would make the deal more palatable and passable on the House floor. So the Republicans en masse who are opposing amendments even sponsored by and advocated by Republican members. And that unified --

MR. LEHRER: Would have made it more attractive.

MR. SHIELDS: Would have made it more attractive, easier for more Republicans to vote for, easier on business, easier on employer mandates, so in that sense, the Democrats came together in this rare burst of unity, and as late as this afternoon, it was -- it was showing signs of at least lasting through the weekend.

MR. LEHRER: At least lasting through the weekend. What do you think -- do you read it the same way, Paul?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I've never heard Mark be so generous to Newt Gingrich before, and I'm not sure he would appreciate the compliment. Well, no, I think there's no question that Newt Gingrich has a dilemma. He has to try to deal with the very partisan strategy that the Democrats are operating with, trying to get a partisan bill that won't have many Republican votes to the floor of the House, and he's going to say, he's saying in committee should we improve a bill that we're going to try to defeat on the House, so it's a very difficult dilemma for a minority leader. I don't think this is a harbinger though that, in fact, it's going to be clear sailing on the House, because, in fact, remember, the BTU tax which a lot of House members voted for in the economic bill, well, BTU has become a verb in this town when it comes to - - when it comes t the health bill because the House members and Democrats are saying we're not going to be BTU'd again, voting for something like an employer mandate on health care, if the Senate is not going to pass it too. So they're waiting. It's going to be a very tough vote on the House floor if they can get through the Ways & Means Committee.

MR. LEHRER: Paul, Sen. Phil Gramm from Texas said the other day - - yesterday to be exact -- that he thought -- I'm paraphrasing here -- but he thought it might be good politics for the Republicans to obstruct, to cause a vote not to be taken on health care reform and go run on that in these mid-term elections. Do you agree with that?

MR. GIGOT: Well, more and more, I hear that's what a lot of Republicans are saying. They're looking at the poll numbers for the Clinton health care plan, and there are not a majority in favor - - opposed to it, rather -- about 50 percent. They're looking at another poll number which shows that about 57, 58 percent of the public doesn't want to do it necessarily this year. They're willing to wait. What's the rush, they say, so a lot of Republicans are sitting back and saying, well, we don't want to appear obstructionist, but rather than sign on to a bill we oppose that has employer mandates, that has price controls, that has things we can't support in principle, maybe the best thing is to have an election, because, after all, in the '92 campaign when the President ran on health care, in a general sense, he really didn't run on things like a payroll tax. He didn't run on price controls. He didn't run on what -- a lot of the things they're trying to promote now.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. But, Mark, that's a change, I mean, is it not? If Paul -- if the poll numbers are correct, because earlier the poll numbers said, well, they may disagree with the President on the details, but everybody wanted health care reform. That's a change now, right?

MR. SHIELDS: Yeah, it is a change. I'm not still if Paul's answer -- whether they want the Republicans to run as total obstructionists in 1994, or is advising that, whether he wants one or not -- I think this is a problem. The way it is going to be drawn, and the Republicans are in favor of the status quo, no change, no improvement, and they'll probably say, no, no, we're not for that, and Paul's absolutely right. The numbers he quotes are right. They're from the Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll, which is a terrific poll, but that same -- that same poll shows that the most popular forms of finance, even more popular among Republicans in the General Electric of financing is employer mandates, and that the overriding concern, people, the change they want to make is everybody, irrespective of who they are, where they come from is guaranteed coverage. So those remain the two real mandates from the electorate. If Paul is right, the Clinton plan which was a lot more popular and was a lot more and is a lot more popular even today, Jim, when tested without the President's name on it. If you ask people in the spring of 1994 what about this plan, it will provide universal coverage that will guarantee that employers provide for those who can't. The government will step in when there's an inability to pay for it, and describe what the President essentially has proposed, it is a lot more popular. In fact, one North Eastern Congressional District just this week, it came back with 75 percent approval. You put the President's name on it, and it fell to 40.

MR. LEHRER: Now what does that tell you?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, it tells me that the President, himself, is a less popular than his proposals. It was always said of Ronald Reagan it was just the opposite, that Ronald Reagan was more popular than the ideas he was advancing.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Does that -- do you think that accounts for the fact that both the President and Mrs. Clinton have been saying increasingly well, we're not hung up on our plan, we just want certain things? In other words, they've almost said we're going to lead with the Congress. Do you read it that way, Paul, that they are not -- pride of ownership or pride of authorship is no longer a Clinton problem?

MR. GIGOT: Well, not really, Jim. I think that, in fact, they are holding pretty firm to a couple of things that are very contentious and to which there is no consensus, and the biggest one is the employer mandate. They're now talking about this delay, putting a mandate in three or four years from now through something called a hard trigger. And they might settle for that, but that's still a mandate. And that's going to be -- that's the big stickler here, because for a lot of Republicans, it represents a new federal entitlement. It represents the government getting in and running the health care program. That's what they don't want to sign on to, and just to take another crack at Mark's point before, rather than sign on to a plan like that, I would recommend that Republicans do take it to the voters and if they have to filibuster, so be it, and we have a, we have a real election fight over something that matters.

MR. LEHRER: And who'd win that one, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: I think -- I think that the argument is on the President's side. I don't think you want to take the President on on an issue that he ran on two years earlier and that the minority party in the Congress is preventing a vote on. All right. And this is not a question -- the President has the most straightforward of arguments. Let's have an up or down vote. That's all I'm asking. I want an up or down vote in the Congress. Instead of saying, you don't want a bill to go to the floor that people can even vote on, you don't want to improve it so it's better, that it has a better chance, what kind of legislative approach is it? It's nihilism. It's putting sand in the gasoline tank, Mr. Gingrich. You're not that kind of a fellow, Newt.

MR. LEHRER: Yes, Paul.

MR. GIGOT: If the issue is framed like that, I agree. That's not the way to run it if I were a Republican, but the point is in the Senate you can offer amendments. You can offer 700 amendments. In fact, a Democrat told me that that would probably be the Republican strategy. You offer a couple of hundred amendments to improve the bill and each of them sounds plausible. So I'm not so sure it's a simple choice between the Clinton bill or the status quo or the Clinton bill.

MR. LEHRER: Paul, what do you think of President Clinton's proposal this week on welfare reform?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I was struck by the reaction to it, because if you contrast the reaction to this proposal from the one that they made -- the reaction that was made to say health care last year or the budget last year, it was a lot more critical. He's really getting beaten up from both the liberals in his party and from the Republicans. He got virtually no Republican support, contrary to health care, where there was kind of a cautious approval. This time -- and I think that it demonstrates that he really didn't meet the test he said in the campaign, which was: Are we going to end welfare as we know it? He's really fallen short of that. He's gone further than a lot of other presidents have in the past, but he created these greater expectations in the campaign, and it was a terrific issue for him. Whenever they fell behind in a state, they ran an ad saying, end welfare as we know it. I think he's falling short with this proposal.

MR. LEHRER: Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: Paul is right in that it is not the proposal that was discussed in the campaign. Bill Clinton, however, is honoring a pledge he made in the campaign of 1992. He is pushing the ball up the hill. It's a fight up the hill. There's no question about it. Is there enough money, no? Would conservatives support enough money that you really need? No, not on your life. Because to really abolish and change welfare as we know it would require a hell of a lot of money. Most people don't like welfare in large part because they think we're using and spending money that we shouldn't be spending in the first place. If you went to them and said, okay, what we're really going to do is spend a lot more money to abolish it, I think it would be singularly unpopular. Paul is right that there is criticism on the left of the Democratic Party for this, especially among those members of Congress who are -- who do come from immigrant families, because the idea of legal aliens being used as one form of subsidizing, i.e., benefits from legal aliens being used as one of form of subsidizing -- but I do think, quite frankly, that in this case that we're talking about a political issue probably more than a substantive issue. This has been a great Republican issue. Ronald Reagan ran against a welfare queen in designer jeans who had 56 IDs and was driving a Mercedes convertible. He mentioned, I remember, in the Florida primary in 1976 the big buck who went in and bought Vodka with food stamps. That was before he sanitized his language. And I think this really is a case where Bill Clinton is moving adroitly politically to neutralize an issue that had been an advantage to Republicans.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree, Paul? Is it still that kind of issue? Can a politician use it the way Ronald Reagan did?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I mean, in a way Bill Clinton is using it the way Ronald Reagan did. And he's not a Republican, but he's used it very effectively. It worked in 1992, and I think you can -- the Republicans think there's some cynical politics going on here now because he made that promise in the campaign, and here we are 18 minutes [months] into his term before he proposes the bill, just about a few months before an election, and there's really no intention of trying to pass the bill this year. There's no support for it. Dick Gephardt said as much this week. So in a way he's using it as a political issue this year so Democratic candidates can say, look, here is our welfare bill.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. And here is the end of our time. Paul, Mark, thank you. ESSAY - FATHER KNOWS BEST

MS. WARNER: Finally tonight, on this Father's Day Weekend, we return to Roger Rosenblatt's 1993 essay about holding on and letting go.

[FATHER HELPING HIS SMALL DAUGHTER SWIM IN POOL]

FATHER: Okay. Want to kick?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: He holds his hands palms upward beneath her stomach as if he were a juggler and she an object to keep in balance, the pies de resistance of a specialty act. But this is merely a father teaching his daughter to swim. They are stage No. 1. Don't be afraid. Let yourself float. Let the water take hold of your body. You won't let go? I won't let go. She is as anxious as he is confident. He knows from experience that there really is such a thing as swimming, that the human body, complex and fragile, can when sufficiently buoyed and propelled move along in an alien environment and keep itself from drowning? But she for her part in this eternal transaction does not know what her father knows. She looks up to him constantly for reassurance. This is what transpires when parents teach their children to swim, when parents teach their children most anything, a meeting of truth and conjecture, of the known and the not yet known. You won't let go? I won't let go. I wonder what she will think when he does let go and she floating, not drowning, discovers that she wanted him to let go. A lie, an ingenious necessary lie is stretched between the two of them. One makes a promise he will not keep. The other secures a promise she does not wish kept. I suddenly feel my father's hand beneath my stomach. It is 1946. I am five years old. You know, son, swimming is something every child must learn to do. I know, I know, I must learn to become a man, and yet, my body, the clumsiness, the weight, the water. You won't let go? I won't let go. Those were the days when parents often taught their kids to swim by hurling them into the middle of a lake and waiting for panic to turn itself into a survival skill. My dad was not that kind of parent, nor was I the kind of child who would have appreciated education by attempted murder. I taught our children to swim the same day my dad taught me. They will undoubtedly teach theirs in the same way. We progress as generations of parents, telling our children in more than swimming lessons that we won't let go. When in their deepest heart, deep as the ocean, they know that we must let go, and they want us to let go, yet, they do not, and we do not. And in some unreachable, anarchic truth, it all works out. Of course, I know why my mind is going this way today. It is Father's Day. And I am missing my father and missing myself as a father of kids young enough to teach to swim. I envy that fellow with his daughter. I want back to the times I believed the lie and told the lie. When my father was in his late 40s and I in the strength of my teens, we took a long swim together off Cape Cod. We went out far. My father had to stop to catch his breath. He was ill, the first signs of a heart condition. But wesimply joked about his having to hold on to me as we swam back to shore, father and son having exchanged their roles. The light thickens on the water like unpolished silver. The afternoon grows smoky. The young father, tireless, tells his girl to relax, but she is still too scared. She will swim but not today. And years from now, her father will begin to run out of breath, and she will hold him and assure him of what she cannot possibly assure, make a promise she cannot possibly keep. And he will believe her and not believe her in the incomprehensible sea of truth and lies in which people move along together. You won't let go? I won't let go. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, former football star O.J. Simpson was charged with the murder of his ex- wife and a male friend. Simpson is being sought by Los Angeles police after failing to surrender as he had promised. Police are also searching for one of his former team mates. Earlier, Simpson had denied any connection to the killings. If convicted, Simpson could face the death penalty. And President Clinton disputed remarks by Jimmy Carter that the United States would offer to postpone sanctions against North Korea. Good night, Margaret.

MS. WARNER: Good night, Jim. That's it for the NewsHour tonight. We'll see you Monday evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Good night.