The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Wednesday, the Soviet government eased the embargo against Lithuania and the parliament approved moving to a Western style economy. In Washington, Sen. Durenberger pleaded for compassion at his ethics hearing. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in New York tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary [FOCUS - ETHICS PROBE] we look in on Day Two of the ethics hearings on Sen. Durenberger. Roger Mudd is our guide. Next Charlayne Hunter-Gault follows [FOCUS - THROUGH THE SAFETY NET] her series on Americans falling through the social safety net with a look at some efforts to catch them. Tonight a program called America Works. Then the musical rap group, Two Live Crew [FOCUS - TAKING THE RAP]. Is what they are singing obscene or just another popular lyric? We'll consider the controversy.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Soviet Pre. Gorbachev eased up on Lithuania today. He decided to resume shipments of some fuel and other supplies to the Baltic republic. The word came from Lithuania's prime minister, Kazmira Prunskiene, after she met with one of Gorbachev's top aides. The embargo was imposed two months ago to punish Lithuania for declaring independence. Prime Minister Prunskiene said her republic would now consider freezing that declaration while talks with the Soviet government continued. Also in Moscow today, the Soviet parliament approved a plan for free market economic reforms, but it gave the government until the end of the summer to work out the details. We have a report from Moscow by David Smith of Independent Television News.

MR. SMITH: Everyone who spoke in the Supreme Soviet said virtually the same thing. "We have to act quickly. Time will not wait," that from the mayor of Leningrad. "The situation is getting worse by the day," that according to the delegation from the Baltics. In the words of one deputy's leader, Alexi Boyko, "This is the last chance this government has.". Yet despite all the urgency, parliament has voted today to give Prime Minister Ryzhkov three more months to produce his package for saving the economy. Mr. Ryzhkov, obviously relieved, then told us he'd be sticking to his basic idea of a gradual transition to the free market. Do you believe that this economic package can work?

NIKOLAI RYZHKOV, Soviet Prime Minister: [Speaking through Interpreter] I'm sure it will work. We've no other way out now. We've reached the end. For years we've lived with a command economy. Now over the past two to three years, we've been attempting a transition towards more flexible economic measures, so at the moment everything is in contradiction.

MR. LEHRER: The government also said today it would delay its plan to triple the price of bread. The price increase was supposed to take effect in July. Its announcement last month led to panic buying throughout the country. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: In Romania today, police battled anti-Communist demonstrators in the streets of the capital in what the government is calling a right wing coup attempt. It was the worst violence in that country since the December revolution that overthrew Dictator Nicolai Ceausescu. We have a report narrated by Nicholas Glass of Worldwide Television News.

MR. GLASS: It was supposed to be a swift, surgical police operation to clear the main square of Bucharest, but it evolved into a series of street battles and the worst violence since the December revolution. Last month's election victory by the National Salvation Front had, it was thought, virtually extinguished the spark of anti-Communist protest; not so. Today the riot police rekindled it at a stroke. Two police buses to barricade one end of the square were set on fire. This was the square 12 hours earlier, noisily occupied as it had been since April. These were, Pres. Iliescu claimed, little more than hooligans and tramps and the police went in at dawn, over 250 people arrested. The square was cleared but only for a time. These are the latest pictures we have from Bucharest, and it's clear that demonstrators have reclaimed the square and that violence is spreading. Eye witness reports say that the police headquarters have been set on fire. Reuters News Agency reports that four to five thousand demonstrators have stormed the compound of Romanian television. One of their longstanding demands has been for a freer media. Reports speak of at least one dead and more than thirty injured, including twenty policemen.

MS. WOODRUFF: There were anti-Communist demonstrations in two other East European nations today. In Bulgaria's capital, Sophia, demonstrators stopped rush hour traffic to protest the apparent victory of reformed Communists in Sunday's nationwide elections. They were the country's first free elections in more than 40 years. The demonstrators claim the elections were fraudulent. In Yugoslavia's capital, Belgrade, about 30,000 anti-Communist demonstrators held a rally to demand free elections in Cerbia, the country's largest republic. The Communists in power there have said elections will not be held until next year. The demonstrators said that's not soon enough.

MR. LEHRER: The Coast Guard said today nearly 3 million gallons of oil have leaked from the super tanker off the Texas Gulf Coast, but they said most of it burned up or evaporated. Some twelve to forty thousand gallons remain in the water. The tanker's problems began with a series of explosions and fires Saturday. It took firefighters four days to bring the blaze under control.

MS. WOODRUFF: Sen. David Durenberger spoke on his own behalf today beforethe Senate Ethics Committee. The Committee is looking into charges of financial impropriety by the Minnesota Republican. Durenberger told his colleagues his life and reputation were at stake in their deliberations. Yesterday the Committee's special counsel recommended that the Senate should formally denounce Durenberger for his actions. The public part of the hearing ended today. The Committee will now deliberate behind closed doors before rendering their decision. We will have extended excerpts from today's session right after this News Summary.

MR. LEHRER: There was action today on a constitutional amendment to protect the American flag. A House Judiciary Subcommittee voted 5 to 3 against the amendment, but agreed to send it to the full Judiciary Committee for further consideration. The vote was along party lines, Republicans for the amendment, Democrats against it. The full Committee is expected to consider it next week.

MS. WOODRUFF: In economic news, the Commerce Department said that retail sales dropped for the third month in a row. The last time that happened was during the 1981 recession. Declining auto sales, high interest and a sluggish manufacturing sector were all blamed.

MR. LEHRER: Sec. of State Baker had some strong words for Israel today. He told a House Committee in Washington there would be no peace in the Middle East unless Israel changed its stand on talks with the Palestinians. He pointed to new conditions just announced by the new Israeli government.

JAMES BAKER, Secretary of State: Many of the wires are full of reports this morning that there will be no dialogue unless the people with whom we sit down accept this and this and this in advance as the position, unless Palestinians accept these positions as positions they will take during the course of the dialogue. Now if that's going to be the approach and that's going to be the attitude, there won't be any dialogue and there won't be any peace and the United States of America can't make it happen. You can't; I can't; the President can't; and so it's going to take some really good faith, affirmative effort on the part of our good friends in Israel. And if we don't get it, and if we can't get it quickly, I have to tell you, Mr. Levine, that everybody over there should know that the telephone number is 1-202-456-1414; when you're serious about peace, call us.

MR. LEHRER: Pres. Bush said today better relations with Iran depended on release of the remaining six American hostages in Lebanon. He made the remarks to a group of regional reporters at the White House.

PRES. BUSH: There will not be a normalization of relations with Iran I'm afraid until all of our hostages are out. They asked me, you know, at the time of the release of two whether I would, what good will I could exhibit, and good will begets good will. We cannot have normalized relations until we make more progress on getting the hostages out. I mean, it's like saying okay, two are out, but four are still kidnapped, so for each one, you make some deal. I'm not going to do that.

MS. WOODRUFF: In the North African nation of Algeria today, Moslem fundamentalists upset the government in the first multi- party local elections. Voters rejected the government party that has ruled Algeria since it won independence from France in 1962. The fundamentalists are calling for the dissolution of parliament and national elections within three months. That's it for our summary of the day's news. Just ahead, David Durenberger speaks in his own defense, a Charlayne Hunter-Gault look at one effort to save victimsof the social safety net, and obscenity and the rap group Two Live Crew. FOCUS - ETHICS PROBE

MR. LEHRER: We go first tonight to the case of Senator David Durenberger, the Minnesota Republican was the subject of public hearings before the Senate Ethics Committee. He is charged with bypassing rules on outside income with a book contract and misusing Senate funds to pay for a condominium. Yesterday the Committee Counsel said he should be disciplined for his conduct. Roger Mudd has the report for us.

MR. MUDD: Senator Durenberger had been working on his statement for more than a week revising and rewriting what he acknowledged to be the most critical speech of his political career. The Ethics Committee knew it was coming. The Senator's lawyer said yesterday they would not dispute the evidence only the interpretation. So in effect Durenberger was throwing himself at the mercy of the court and he began today with a quite sketch of his childhood, boyhood and young manhood.

SENATOR DURENBERGER: In 1962 I married Judy Mc Gimpy. Our sons were born in 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1967. We discovered that Judy had breast cancer at the birth of our youngest son, Danny, who happens to be with me here today. She died 3 and 1/2 years later at the age of 31. Within a year of Judy's death I met and married Penny Tuey, Penney was the widow of a U.S. Marine Captain. Steve was killed in the Tet Offensive. And Penney undertook to help raise these four boys while she had her own cross to bear she added 5 more of ours. With a mother lost to Charlie, David, Mike and Danny. A husband lost to Penny and a wife lost to me sadness made bonding difficult. Some of that sadness was acknowledged but a lot of it never dealt with it. My grief counseling was to throw myself into my work. That was a serious mistake. One that I did not know how to acknowledge.

MR. MUDD: Durenberger separated from his second wife in 1985 for about a year during a time he himself called a mid life crisis. The came increased financial pressure when he said he could no longer afford his Minneapolis condominium unless he could Senate reimbursement for its use.

SENATOR DURENBERGER: My friend and political chairman Gene Holderness had persuaded me that I needed to sell the condo and stay in a hotel or rent so that I could be eligible for Senate reimbursement on my visits back to the Twin Cities. If I didn't have to spend so much time in the Twin Cities on Official Senate Business I would not have bought a second home or rented a condo. many Senators as we all know own two homes. I had a second home in Minneapolis until I couldn't afford to. And that I rented from a partnership in which I was a part owner. Throughout the formation of the investment partnership and the sale to Mr. Overguard I sought independent counsel. Every subsequent decision was made on the basis of legal advice.

MR. MUDD: As with the condo arrangement Durenberger said he relied in the advice of counsel in concluding a book contract with Piranha Press and it was not he told the Committee a deliberate scheme to avoid the Senate's limit on honorarium.

SENATOR DURENBERGER: First ask yourself is he a writer or is he a politician who is using his books for some devious purpose. And the first part of that answer depends on the books themselves. I am proud of the books content. They are thoughtful original statements on critical national policy issues. They were not designed to make money for me. They were not sold by my staff, the were not vanity books. They sold 3000 to 5000 copies and I am told that is about average for these public policy books. Is he a good writer? Ask an audience. Prolific? You bet. I write most of all my speeches. Did he intend his book promotion contract to promote book sales or to make him money? And the answer to that is both. And that is the key. If I spoke often this fledgling publisher, had the opportunity, the audience and the money to publish and sell more of my works. If I spoke well I earned at least what several of out other colleagues did who were earning money from stipendiary contracts. But having said all of this, having said all of that and having had the opportunity to review the special counsels evidence that he has introduced today I want to acknowledge the problems in the way my books were promoted and sold and especially the problems of their appearance. Giving speeches to organizations who usually pay honorarium but in this case pay sponsor fees to a publisher who pays me sure as heck looks as a way of getting around the law limiting honorarium. Take away the assurances, take away the legal opinions I should have known it and I should have avoided it. And I am sorry that I didn't.

MR. MUDD: Durenberger said that he had been ill prepared for the financial squeeze that hit him and that he had to make what he described as accommodations to serve in the Senate which he said was not a place for the poor, tired or the hungry.

SENATOR DURENBERGER: In conclusions members of the Committee and the Senate and especially the people of Minnesota I want to express my regret, my sadness to the circumstances that have brought us to this point. I acted throughout in good faith. I sought out competent legal and official advice. I worked to hard on your public agenda to attend to my private one. Since my service to you began I have never sold your vote or bartered your influence to enrich myself. But I recognize that real damage has been by what has been perceived as my desire to push the limits and take advantage of the Senate and for that I am deeply sorry. My life and my reputation are at stake and I believe because I know you that each of you will combine both the good judgement and the compassion in your decision. Those are my feelings and my motivations as best as I can express them. And I hope that they will be received in the spirit in which they are offered.

MR. MUDD: The Committee's Special Counsel Robert Bennet said yesterday Durenberger should be formally denounced because he had knowingly engaged in unethical conduct. Today Bennett said that he had been moved by Durenberger's defense by not persuaded by it.

MR. BENNETT: It is difficult to follow such an eloquent speaker and I mean that sincerely Senator. But I feel that integrity to the investigation, fairness to this Committee and to use a term that is somewhat common place in this institutions on matters of personal priveldge I feel that a number of remarks are appropriate. It is the Senator who says I got bad legal advice. It is the Senator who says when the document was backdated I was not in the room. It is the Senator who says I relied on my staff. It is the Senator who repeatedly places blame on everyone else and never once asks maybe my moral compass was in need of repair.

MR. MUDD: This afternoon Durenberger's lawyer waived all rights to call or cross examine witnesses relying instead on affidavits and depositions to prove the Senator had not intended to break any rules. That he had acted in good faith and always on the advice of Counsel. The Committee now closes its doors to the public to decide whether or not it believes him.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the Newshour a new form of Safety Net and a storm over dirty songs. FOCUS - THROUGH THE SAFETY NET

MR. LEHRER: This past Spring Charlayne Hunter-Gault profiled a series of families and individuals who had fallen through the safety net of government poverty assistance programs. Starting tonight and on an occasional basis she will examine some programs that have been successful in helping people like them. Today she looks at one called America Works.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: For the past 15 months Lisa Mc Pherson has been working as a mail clerk at a prestigious old New York law firm.

MS. MC PHEARSON: Right now I deal with uniforms and I deal with receiving packages, important documents that have to go to lawyers.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: It is the start of a brand new life for the 24 year old single mother, a high school drop ,out with the history of receiving welfare. It is the first job that she has ever had.

MS. MC PHEARSON: I was looking for a job and I saw an ad in the paper. I went in for an interview, started classes and from there it was uphill.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Taking the poor up the hill from public assistance to the labor force is the business of this company. America Works is a private profit making company with branches in New York and Connecticut. During its almost 5 years of operation America works has helped almost a 1000 welfare recipients find jobs. Jobs that 90 percent of them still hold. Orientation is the first stop. The clients find out about America Works mostly through classified adds the company places regularly in area newspapers. The adds list available jobs and specifically invite welfare recipients to apply. Next comes what America Works calls a pre employment class. A mandatory week long session where applicants familiarize themselves with routines and work habits like being on time. Also intangibles that help build the self esteem lost through years of debilitating welfare dependency.

INSTRUCTOR: What you expect really becomes your self fulfilling prophesy. Walk in there with a positive attitude and it will just come through.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The business lab class offers a safe place to brush up on rusty typing skills and more important to practice interviewing techniques. America Works has placed people in entry level positions in accounting firms, printing, public, fashion and law offices. One of its unique features is the support that it provides to the worker during a four month probationary period. During the probationary period a company representative visits the sight a few days a week to head off any real or potential problems between the worker and the company. It is called try before you buy. It is also during this time that America Works pays the worker a $3.80 hourly start up salary. The company plays about $7.00 an hour to cover benefits and other costs. If an employee remains in the job for a year the Government gives the employer a tax credit. One of the employers now closely involved with American Works is Rosenman and Cohen a top flight law firm in New York. Over the past few years it has hired about 25 people from America Works. They were brought in by Larry Emerson Director of Office Services. Unlike some potential employers Emerson says he has never been put off by the welfare history of these workers.

MR. EMERSON: Actually I see it as being a plus. You have a person that is coming off of public assistance that can pretty much can sit home they are out looking for a job. So therefore I look at that as being a motivated person, that they want to come out that they want to work. And the only thing that we have to do is give them the opportunity.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: On this particular day America Works representative Phil Jones was asking about Michael Goldstone a 34 year old single father who has been unemployed for almost 2 years. When we caught up with him he was just one week in to his new job hard at work and very optimistic.

MR. GOLDSTONE: It will work out because I want it to work out. So all I can do is do the things that I am recommended to do and just do my best. Both Michael Goldstone and Lisa Mc Phearson have big plans in their future in the labor market.

MS. MC PHEARSON: TO move up in this company. I don't want to leave it that is for sure.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: America works is the brain child of Lee Bowes a Sociologist and her husband Peter Cove. Peter I have read where you aspire to become the Federal Express of the welfare system. Explain that?

MR. COVE: Well what Federal Express did was to privatize what the Government was not doing very well and take certain pieces of the Postal System and do it on a private basis. What we are trying to do is to take welfare reform and getting welfare recipients off of welfare and into jobs and doing that around the country and doing it better we think at what the Government clearly failed at over the last years. Never in history of employment programs in this country has there ever been a program, I can say this unequivocally, that only gets paid for its production. We only paid if the person gets a job and is off welfare.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Describe to me your typical client?

MS. BOWES: The people that we are working with are the products of schools systems that have not done very well. Many of them are high school drop ,outs and even those who graduate from high school find that they have limited basis english and math skills and their school experiences were not good they were negative.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: I think we have an average of six or seven years out of the labor force and on welfare. They are people who even if they had been in the labor force they are in and out and back in and then out. So they are not people who normally are out there working. They are people who are being excluded.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What are the biggest problems that you have with this cliental?

MS. BOWES: They lack the appropriate attitudes and behavior. They don't understand the subtle norms of a workplace that is so important. We had a person yesterday who was told by her supervisor that her clothes were inappropriate. She was wearing these new shorts that are like coulots but hers were more like shorts. She was told that was not appropriate and she said I don't care if you don't like it. And so the supervisor said I am going to have to write you up for insubordination and she said so what go ahead worse things have happened to me. Luckily we were able to counsel her. She was a good worker, she apologized to the supervisor but it is the type of situation that makes people lose their jobs.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What are the attitudes on the flip side. I mean what attitudes do you get from business about people on welfare.

MS. BOWES: Well when you talk about that you have to understand the way we go and sell and market our services. Unlike a Government training program or private school we never go in and say to the employer we have these poor disadvantaged could you from your heart hire this poor, this disadvantaged poor person. We go in and we sell to the people hiring. We say we can make your job easier, we can save you money. We are a service with a track record proven that has been valued. When we sell it that we are not going in to sell welfare recipients. We don't get questioned about that. We say that we happen to be working with people who have been forced to accept public assistance for a period of time, who want to get back in to the workforce. We put that in as a closing statement if they take us up on that and say well who is that you are not talking about welfare we will address it. So there is skepticism but we don't sell the person we sell the service.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think the country is capable of putting all the people who want to work to work?

MS. BOWES: I believe that it is. You have to understand the number of jobs available when the government works with private companies to subsidize their workforce and help them. They are more productive when their workers cost less, when their product gets out faster. When government and private enterprise do that they are creating more jobs and there is an unlimited potential to expand the jobs that are out there.

MR. COVE: Hasn't any one noticed that we have the baby boom busting and that in the year 2000, 15 percent of the people entering the work force will be native born white males. If we don't find new ways of accessing the labor force that looks unfamiliar to us in to our companies we are not going to grow and we are not going to become the world class nation that we need to be in the year 2000.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Have you been able to make any generalized assumptions about people on welfare and their attitudes about work?

MS. BOWES: There is not an adequate system to get people jobs. Anybody can get on welfare. They keep millions of dollars to keep people on welfare. There is a difficulty convincing people that they would prefer work.

MR. COVE: Our system is there principally to provide money to needy people and then by the way ask them here is ten million dollars now get then people off of welfare. I think that you are asking the wrong institution to do absolutely the right job. Which is the fact most people do want to be working but perhaps we shouldn't have been asking the welfare departments of this country to do that job. The Government is more than willing to use taxpayers dollars to bail out the savings and loan industry but isn't willing to put the kind of money in this kind of private sector activity that will help us reduce the vast expenditures that we have on welfare in this country.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You are not talking about a large amount of money really.

MR. COVE: No.

MS. BOWES: Very small. Compared to the cost of keeping some one on welfare we are only half as expensive. It costs the Government $5000 to take some one off through our program. It costs them $14000 to keep the family on for a year. Our people have been on for an average of 10 years. So they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep these people on public assistance.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What has the Government being doing wrong that you think you are doing right?

MR. COVE: Well, I think, and it continues to do it. The family support act is just a continuation. It is not just wrong it is the emphasis. The emphasis is and has been on education and training up front for people. Education and training is not necessarily the right access for them. What is the right access is success and we provide a job and the job them becomes a success for some one who has failed in systems that are now being asked again to pick up the pieces and help people who they failed before. What we are suggesting is that job come first allowing the person success in the job then getting the education and the training is meaningful for the person.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How replicable is this program?

PETER COVE: It's very replicable. It's replicable because it's a business. It's a real business and as a business, it can replicate itself by finding good local managers, by the right investment and by the right support from the public.

LEE BOWES, Sociologist: We have the same thing going on with the Russians Jews, because there are all these Russian Jews coming in. And we were asked recently, well, how can you work with Russian Jews, they're so dissimilar? It's so similar it's unbelievable. They face discrimination. There is racial discrimination and religious discrimination against them, so their self-esteem is terribly low. And the other thing is that their expectations and knowledge of the work place and how it operates are often out of sink with what the reality is. They don't know how to look for work. They never had to go out and job interview. They've been paid in Russia for make believe jobs. They get paid irrespective of how hard they work, so there isn't a correlation between work and pay.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: One of the things that we encountered when we were reporting on the so-called "underclass" in the series that we did is that people get so entrenched and so mired down at the bottom, they think about themselves only as being at the bottom. How do you overcome generations of this kind of thinking in the limited time you spend with these people?

MS. BOWES: It's possible and we do it every day. People, no matter what walk of life they're from, if they're generational welfare, they still have absorbed the mainstream values of our society. I have never ever met someone whose grandmother, great grandmother, mother and they are on welfare who doesn't say, I want out, I want out. They believe that society should offer that to them. And I'll tell you one thing. They walk in the door here and they're greeted in a nice way. They start to turn around right from that moment because they're treated with respect. And it's that dignity and self-respect that carries them forward. And nothing succeeds like success. Each day give someone a little bit of success, let them know they have dreams and they can hope for them and they can get there and those cycles will break.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Dr. Bowes and Peter Cove, thank you both for being with us. FOCUS - TAKING THE RAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight a debate over censorship and artistic freedom. Last week a federal judge in Florida ruled that an album by the Miami Rap Group Two Live Crew was obscene. Local police arrested a record store owner for selling it, and then arrested two of the band members at a performance on Sunday. The group had put out two versions of the record, one without explicit sexual language, and it put warning stickers on the version with explicit language, but that was not enough to satisfy authorities in Florida or in San Antonio, Texas, where police yesterday issued warnings to local merchants saying they would be arrested for selling the album. Here is a sanitized video clip of the group in performance last Friday night in Miami Beach. [SEGMENT OF TWO LIVE CREW PERFORMANCE]

MS. WOODRUFF: Can community statutes against obscenity be used to ban the sale of record albums considered obscene, or do such efforts amount to censorship of artistic freedom? We have four views on the subject. Florida's State Representative, Joseph Arnall, has played a key role in getting record companies in Florida to put warning labels on albums with explicit lyrics. Bruce Rogow is the lawyer for Two Live Crew. He joins us from Miami. Joseph Reilly is president of Morality in Media, a national organization that is trying to rid the country of obscenity. And John Leland is a music critic at Newsday, a New York daily newspaper. I'm going to turn to you first, Attorney Bruce Rogow. We obviously have chosen not to air a major portion of what Two Live Crew said both in that performance in Miami and in the album that has raised such a controversy, but just so we know generally what we're talking about and without using the explicit terms, can you describe the subject matter for us.

BRUCE ROGOW, Lawyer: The subject matter of the record, Ms. Woodruff, is sexual activity, there's no question about it, but it's accompanied by an extraordinary rhythm, an extraordinary beat, and John Leland, who is a witness for us in the trial, I think will tell you about that. This music has serious artistic value and the record in the trial was unrebutted on that point. And under the applicable Supreme Court test, if it has serious artistic value to any person, this is not a community standard, to any person, to any reasonable person, then a record cannot be obscene or any work of art cannot be obscene.

MS. WOODRUFF: What does Two Live Crew say was the artistic purpose in producing this album?

MR. ROGOW: The music is made to dance to. You know, people have read the lyrics, Ms. Woodruff, but that's a mistake. These lyrics were not made to be read; they were made to be played. The music was made to be played and to be danced to. And as you saw in that film clip, people do dance to Two Live Crew's music. It has an extraordinary beat and a special Miami ghetto base beat that makes is music different from everybody else's.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Rep. Arnall, if that's all that's going on here, if they are just producing records that are supposed to be danced to, if there is artistic value, then what is all this fuss about, and why did this judge say this is obscene?

JOSEPH ARNALL, Florida State Representative: Well, apparently, there is a U.S. Supreme Court case in Miller vs. California that holds that it appeals to the either prurient interest or its patently offensive or that it lacks serious literary or artistic value, so apparently Judge Gonzalez, who by the way is a Carter appointee and not a Reagan appointee, deemed that to be the case. And so I suppose that refutes what Mr. Rogow says.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Rogow.

MR. ROGOW: Well, you know, I'm enjoying this Reagan appointee, Carter appointee. Judge Gonzalez is a good judge, but Oliver Wendall Holmes made mistakes so that's not the test of anything and what has not been addressed to you is that artistic value is not a community standard. Now we lost the case. I concede that, but we're up on appeal. But I think what you have to understand is communities cannot ban something that they don't like. The test has to do with a reasonable person finding artistic value. Mr. Leland found artistic value. Another music critic from a local newspaper with a large circulation in South Florida found artistic value, and that's really the major defense of this.

MS. WOODRUFF: How do you respond to that, Mr. Arnall?

REP. ARNALL: Well, I'm not a lawyer and just because I'm in the House of Representatives doesn't mean that I know law per se in relation to the definition of obscenity. What I did though was present a bill which would require for explicit lyrics labels to be put on albums that were like Two Live Crew or Guns and Roses, some of theirs, or Motley Crew, so we're not just zeroing in on rap music or Two Live Crew. We tried and we got an agreement with the record industry to do it not only in the State of Florida, but all over the country.

MS. WOODRUFF: But before we get to that, what about Mr. Rogow's point that what's at issue here is whether there's artistic value in this, and he says there clearly is artistic value in this material in this album?

REP. ARNALL: And he's representing Two Live Crew and I can understand him saying that. I just disagree. And I think the federal judge disagrees and I think many people disagree and the point is though, and what makes an interview like this very stilted, is that still we cannot put on the air the words that were in the songs that I think most people in your audience would be offended by.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Rogow, how do you define obscenity? I mean, do you go along with the Supreme Court definition?

MR. ROGOW: Well, I mean, it's a difficult definition, a difficult test, and the court has said many times that they're troubled by trying to apply these rules, but they have set out the Miller vs. California test. One point I want to make with regard to Rep. Arnall, and you made it before, Ms. Woodruff, Two Live Crew has always stickered their albums. They are responsible. There's no question that you would not run this music on national television or local television. We're not talking about television playing of it. We're talking about grown-up people, adults, being able to buy a record in the music store, going home and playing it, and that's all we're talking about. And what's happened here is the government is trying to dictate whether or not adults can go and purchase these records. The Supreme Court may very well in this case retreat from the Miller vs. California test and throw up its arms and say we can't get into this anymore. Justice Scalia has in a recent opinion talked about the difficulty of applying the Miller vs. California test and said that perhaps it's time to review the courts participating in this kind of thing. And the lesson of censorship, of course, always is that the censors always lose. I mean, Two Live Crew's situation today is an example of that. This record is about to go double platinum. All their other records now are in extraordinary demand in this country and throughout the world, and so what the censors have done has been to make Two Live Crew a household word and promote interest in their music. Now if they wanted to censor it and keep it from people, they would have been better off not doing that.

MS. WOODRUFF: Joseph Reilly, let me bring you into this. Is that what's happened here, that the censors have managed just to make Two Live Crew more famous and that's it?

JOSEPH REILLY, Morality In Media: First of all, as I understand it, it was Mr. Rogow, himself, who took the case into the federal district court, and he did that in order to obviate a decision in the local court to his disdain as well, not to his favor, and he's lost. He's now saying that Justice Scalia is indicating the court should abandon Miller.

MS. WOODRUFF: The Supreme Court?

MR. REILLY: That's correct. And Justice Scalia and I read the case as something quite different. He said he thought the Miller rule should be reviewed, not abandoned. For this court, with all its votes on this issue and other similar issues in decency and all that sort, this court is not going to abandon an obscenity norm for courts of the federal jurisdiction. That's what we're dealing with.

MS. WOODRUFF: But to get back to the issue we were discussing a moment ago, Mr. Rogow's point that he believes and many others believe there is artistic merit in this record in question.

MR. REILLY: But again, I would point out to you that that's on his part a calculation, it's a guess. The question is, is it obscene by the Miller rule, the judge found it so, until a Superior Court overrules Justice Gonzales or Judge Gonzales? All the speculation on that issue means nothing. As has been pointed out here, Mr. Rogow is doing a very fine job of representing his clients. That does not make him the most objective judge of all that's going on in this matter.

MS. WOODRUFF: John Leland, you're a reporter, a critic, music critic for Newsday. You were a witness before this federal judge, Gonzales, who made this ruling that's caused all this stir. What did you say when you talked in the court about this record and what it says?

JOHN LELAND, Music Critic: What we're dealing with is a brand new art form. Rap, hip pop music are less than 20 years old. It's music created by young people, fostered by young people and only understood by young people. It's the most radical break in popular music since Chuck Berry came out with rock and roll. And what you would expect is for this to be, not to be understood by people older than that. What groups like Two Live Crew and say two decades of rappers and hip pop people before that, have thrown out a lot of the notions that we have of what constitutes music. Do you make music out of notes and tones? The rappers say no, you make music out of small samples of other records, creatively chosen and put together in a collage scheme.

MS. WOODRUFF: But by that definition, anything could be considered okay, is that right? I mean, where do you draw the line, or are you saying you shouldn't be drawing any line?

MR. LELAND: We have a valid art form here and Two Live Crew are innovators within that rap form. According to Miller vs. California, if they have serious artistic value, then they are protected by the first amendment, then they're not obscene.

MS. WOODRUFF: That's right.

MR. REILLY: But at the same time the court has also said that if a dose of serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value is thrown in like a proverbial fig leaf, that won't do it. It has to be genuine. It has to be recognizable. Nobody's worrying about the tones or the notes. The problem here is the language which Mr. Rogow, himself, has said in rather gutter terms describes sexual genitalia, sexual activities, ad nauseam. And there is no indult for music with lyrics vs., Miller vs. California. In other words, it's not this, that, oh, and never music with lyrics, and all the stickers in the world don't make any difference vis-a-vis the law.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Rogow.

MR. ROGOW: Mr. Reilly at least at 3 o'clock this afternoon had never heard the music, so I'm a bit amused and bemused by his comments on it in light of his never having heard the record.

MR. REILLY: Well, I did have some intervening time, Bruce, but the point is I'm not worried about the music. That is not an issue of law. What we're talking here --

MR. ROGOW: Music and words go together.

MR. REILLY: Pardon me. The reason Judge Gonzales found this obscene did not have to do with a rhythmic note, a mellow note, or a discordant note. It had to do with the language.

MR. ROGOW: He separated the two out and that's the difficulty. Can you separate words and music? This music was made --

MR. ROGOW: Rogers & Hammerstein, Gilbert & Sullivan did it all the time.

MR. LELAND: This isn't a written text. It was never submitted as a written text. It was never put on sale as a written text. If it were, no one would buy it. The reason that people are interested in this and the reason that it exists is that it's valid musically.

MS. WOODRUFF: But why --

MR. REILLY: Why do you say it's valid musically, I mean, because of the language?

MR. LELAND: It's valid musically because of the music, because of the rhythms that the rappers use, because of the way they construct the beats and the music underneath.

MR. REILLY: But pardon me, the music is not bleeped out.

MS. WOODRUFF: But -- let me just --

MR. REILLY: The music was not bleeped out by this program; the words were bleeped out.

MR. ROGOW: Well, that's right, but what you're doing is you're throwing out the whole album because you don't like the words and these are only dirty words.

MR. REILLY: All I'm doing is saying Judge Gonzales found it without any serious literary or artistic value. I think the man's a brilliant jurist.

MR. LELAND: We need to look at the work as a whole and the work as a whole is not the lyrics. It's the lyrics and the music.

MS. WOODRUFF: But it's the lyrics that have been found to be offensive.

MR. REILLY: Obscene.

MS. WOODRUFF: By this judge.

MR. ROGOW: Ms. Woodruff --

MR. LELAND: No, the album -- is the album, the artifact, itself.

MR. REILLY: Let me ask you this. Do you think that Judge Gonzales would have found the album obscene if it were without lyrics?

MR. ROGOW: There would never have been an issue had it been without lyrics.

MR. REILLY: Aaa --

MR. ROGOW: That's the trouble. You're separating out the lyrics.

MR. REILLY: The music covers the fact that obscene language is in the particular record. Is that your issue or your argument?

MR. ROGOW: No. Go ahead, Ms. Woodruff.

MS. WOODRUFF: Let me just interject here because I want to bring up a couple of other issues. One is that feeling has been expressed on the part of some I think including by Mr. Leland here that this sends a chilling signal out to the rest of the music industry and to other performers, artists, about what kind of work they can then proceed to put into an album. Why do you feel that way? What do you base that on?

MR. LELAND: As soon as an artist in creating his music has to worry about whether he's going to be thrown into jail for it, whether he's going to be arrested, whether police are going to come to his house or approach him on stage and pull him off stage afterwards, it's going to put a clamp on his creativity.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Arnall.

REP. ARNALL: May I say something? I think this is the first album that's ever been deemed obscene so we're not talking about this affecting something like 25,000 releases a year. What we're talking about though is if we do have the record industry just like the movie industry voluntarily label those explicit, those albums which contain explicit lyrics, then we've given the parents of this country a tool to use so that they can look at those albums and see that they, whether they really fit what their children should be listening to or not and they are the judge.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Rogow.

MR. ROGOW: And that's been done, Ms. Woodruff. The recording industry has agreed to that, to a voluntary kind of standard just like the movie industry.

REP. ARNALL: Because of my bill.

MR. ROGOW: Well, no --

REP. ARNALL: And others like mine.

MR. ROGOW: I think that's fine, Rep. Arnall. I think everybody agrees that people should have some notice of what's in music just like what's in movies and have a choice. But that's the key, at least have a choice. The way that Mr. Reilly is speaking, there would be no choice because some people find this to be --

REP. ARNALL: No choice about what?

MR. ROGOW: -- some people find this to be indecent and vulgar, Mr. Reilly would have it banned from being sold.

MR. REILLY: Well, again, let's look at this. We're not talking prior restraint here. We're talking about something that was served up to an audience and again I get back to the very ironic fact it was Mr. Rogow's legal strategy to bring this matter to Judge Gonzales, and now having thought that he pulled the inch on landing, and his boat sank, he's saying, foul, foul.

MS. WOODRUFF: Let me bring up another point. One of the members of Two Live Crew, Luther Campbell, has charged that his group has been singled out because the members are black. He says that this is, that it's his album, his group, other white groups who are performing work along the same lines of similar style and type and so forth, have not been singled out. What about that, Mr. Reilly?

MR. REILLY: Bill Kelly is a retired FBI agent who specialized in obscenity and is an adviser to various police forces in Florida said that that was an absolutely scurrilous accusation. It had nothing to do with race. In fact, not too many district attorneys or policemen have been enforcing the various laws around the country about anything. Some places have, but not here.

MS. WOODRUFF: But it is true that no other group has been --

MR. REILLY: I guess what I'm trying to say is there is a first. When the seven dirty words were found to be indecent by the Supreme Court, George Carlin would have said the same thing. That was the first time the FCC had enforced indecency in some decades. And he could have said, they picked me because I'm white. I don't know what George Carlin is except a pseudo comedian. But somebody had to be first.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Leland, is that how you view it?

MR. LELAND: I think the question of race is very complicated in this and race can play a role in any number of places. For one thing, this is an aesthetic created by black people that's being judged by white people.

MR. REILLY: The first judge was black.

MR. LELAND: What's so important -- there's also an age barrier. I think it's created by young people and it's being judged by older people.

MS. WOODRUFF: But on the race question specifically, Mr. Rogow.

MR. ROGOW: The cultural issue, I understand what Luther Campbell has said, and of course, I'm close to him, we've spoken a lot about this, and he does feel that way, that he has been singled out and he is young and he is black, and I understand that logic. But I agree with Leland, that there is a cultural gap here. This is a slice of the black community that was being spoken to in this record. This is a kind of ghetto patois, and it's a term that Mr. Reilly used earlier, and I'll give him credit for that. I think it's a good term. It's a ghetto patois that is not easily understood by the upper middle class white community that's called upon to judge these things. And we've taken away from people the right to be heard even in crude language. And I think that that is the problem. The first amendment says you may not like it but it still has a right to be heard, be it political speech or be it sex speech.

MR. REILLY: No Supreme Court majority in history, as Mr. Rogow knows, has assigned to obscenity first amendment protection. With all the vagaries and philosophies that have preoccupied the various courts even in my lifetime, the liberal court, the centrist court, or the conservative court, none has ever found obscene material to have first amendment protection. So there's no question of what he's talking about; that just is not an issue.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Arnall.

REP. ARNALL: Well, I think another aspect of this is people think of obscenity meaning words. We're talking about connotation too and that's really what concerned me, why I got disturbed about what was going on, the connotation of violence in sex, the role of women in sex, very demeaning, basically saying, if you don't give it to me, I'm going to beat you up and take it anyway. That's the wrong message. It's wrong under any standard.

MS. WOODRUFF: What about that, Mr. Rogow?

MR. ROGOW: Well, obviously, Rep. Arnall has not heard this music either, so we have another person speaking about --

MS. WOODRUFF: Is that true, you have not heard it?

REP. ARNALL: I've heard it.

MS. WOODRUFF: He says he has heard it.

MR. ROGOW: He's heard the whole tape.

REP. ARNALL: Yeah.

MS. WOODRUFF: He says, yes.

MR. ROGOW: Then I think this is part of the cultural problem. He's misunderstand some of these things and some of these terms. But I'm not denying that the tape is rough, that there is rough language on the tape. But that's not the issue. You know, when you talk about obscenity in the new Arnold Schwarzeneger movie, apparently a man's arms are pulled off. Now you can disembowel people on television and in movies and that's not obscene. Obscenity --

MR. REILLY: That's violence, Mr. Rogow.

MR. ROGOW: That's right.

MR. REILLY: And you have a distinction.

MR. ROGOW: I do.

MR. REILLY: So let's not try to muck up the record here.

MR. ROGOW: Well, this is the interesting part, that in this country only sex can be obscene, the most irrepressible human force we've decided --

MR. REILLY: By law excretion can be found obscene.

MR. ROGOW: Another irrepressible force of human nature.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right, gentlemen, we will wrap it up there. Mr. Arnall, thank you for being with us, Mr. Leland, Mr. Reilly, thank you all, and from Florida, Mr. Rogow. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, the Soviet government eased the embargo against Lithuania, the Soviet parliament voted in a new plan to turn the economy into a Western style market economy, and Sen. David Durenberger pleaded with the Senate Ethics Committee to have compassion in dealing with the charges against him. Good night, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Jim. That's our Newshour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.