The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Leading the news this Christmas Day, an Iraqi airliner hijacked on a flight to Amman, Jordan, crashed in Saudi Arabia, killing 62 people. Iran announced a new offensive in its war with Iraq. Pope John Paul II condemned nations that spend their wealth on weapons. We'll have details in our news summary coming up. After the news summary, House Speaker Thomas O'Neill talks of presidents he's known in part two of his interview with Jim Lehrer. Next, a report on Maurice Sendak's highly original version of the Christmas classic, the Nutcracker Suite. Then the debate raging over the gray market. Are consumers being helped by discount goods or deceived? Finally, an essay by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov on the legacy of Star Trek. News Summary MacNEIL: Sixty two people died in Saudi Arabia today, when an Iraqi jetliner crashed after a reported hijacking and midair shootout. The plane, an Iraqi Airways Boeing 737 started on a flight from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan, carrying 91 passengers and a crew of 15. Saudi television said it crashed in attempting to land at the town of Arar, with 62 dead, 34 injured and 10 unharmed. The Saudi report made no mention of a hijacking, but Jordanian survivors reported a shootout between hijackers and security guards, and a Bahrain report said hijackers detonated two bombs while the plane was trying to touch down.Iran claimed today that it had launched a new offensive against Iraq over running islands in the Shatt al Arab waterway between the two countries. Iraq claimed that its forces had beaten back the assault, killing thousands of Iranians. The French hostage released yesterday in Beirut arrived back in Paris today to an emotional welcome from his family and the French government. Prime Minister Jacques Chirac and other ministers welcomed television sound man Aurel Cornea, who had endured ten months of captivity. Cornea said he had not been mistreated and paid tribute to those who had helped his release, naming Algeria, Syria, Lebanon and Palestinian officials. Pope John Paul II delivered his traditional Christmas message to somewhat smaller crowds than usual. Chill winds sweeping St. Peter's Square kept crowds down as the Pope stepped onto the balcony, after celebrating mass in St. Peter's basilica. The Pope thanked those who had listened to the message of peace, but condemned nations whose wealth is spent on weapons, wasting precious resources and arousing fear of apocalyptic destruction. The American First Family had its next to last Christmas dinner in the White House. President and Mrs. Reagan enjoyed a traditional meal of turkey, cranberry relish, roasted chestnuts and plum pudding with 16 friends and relatives, including ex White House aide Michael Deaver. Tomorrow, the Reagans leave for a week long California vacation. When they return, the President will check into Bethesda Naval Hospital for prostate surgery. Across the country, churches and community groups fed the homeless and hungry. In Atlanta, a group called Feed the Hungry did just that today for nearly 20,000. Donna Lowry of WXIA TV has a report.

DONNA LOWRY [voice over]: Welfare mother Madeleine Williams says this is one of the best dinners her six children will eat all year. The Williams family and thousands of others arrived early for one of the biggest single efforts to feed the hungry in the nation. JOSE WILLIAMS: I feel very positive about today. LOWRY: Jose Williams spearheaded the undertaking, as he has smaller ones for the past 15 years. But this one is the largest. The goal is to feed 20,000. By mid afternoon, an estimated 5,000 people had dined on turkey and fixings. Volunteers took several thousand more dinners to people who couldn't leave their homes. For the most part, everything went smoothly. But the people didn't just get shuffled in and out for food; they enjoyed Christmas festivities many wouldn't have found today. MacNEIL: The NCAA today barred all American linebacker Brian Bosworth of Oklahoma and two teammates from playing in the Orange Bowl. Bosworth and teammates Gary Bennet and David Shoemaker tested positive for use of anabolic steroids. The NCAA is testing players scheduled to play in the bowl games for the first time this season. That's our news summary. Coming up, Speaker Tip O'Neill on the Presidency, Maurice Sendak's Nutcracker, the gray market debate, and Isaac Asimov on Star Trek. The Speaker's View MacNEIL: Next week, House Speaker Thomas O'Neill retires after a lifetime in politics. We begin tonight with the second part of Jim Lehrer's interview with him earlier this week. It starts with O'Neill's verdict on presidents he's known, beginning with the man Ronald Reagan defeated.

Rep. THOMAS P. O'NEILL, Speaker of the House: Jimmy Carter, I think, is the most brilliant man that I have ever met, as far as politicians are concerned and as far as the eight presidents I knew. He was so able and so talented. The interesting fact about -- there was a group of Georgia politicians that brought him to the White House. They knew how to handle a campaign, and they brought this man to the White House. Ted Kennedy, you know, he was very parochial. He had a Boston group. But if you didn't grow -- Jack Kennedy, rather -- if you didn't grow with Kennedy, you fell by the wayside. With Carter, if you didn't grow, you never fell by the wayside. He was very graceful. He had a majestic heart. How beautiful he thought you were. He couldn't see any wrong. Consequently, he brought in an incompetent staff around him, in my opinion, to the White House. But he had so much knowledge, you could name on domestic affairs, on foreign affairs, on economic affairs, on international trade. I never met a more brilliant man, as far as energy was concerned. He had too many balls in the air, and he had too many programs up there. But history is going to treat Jimmy Carter a lot better than we're treating him right now. LEHRER: Is history going to treat Gerald Ford at all, do you think? Rep. O'NEILL: Yeah, I think Gerald Ford comes into the picture. A President had gone out in disgrace -- Richard Nixon. The world was looking at the United States. The Democratic Party -- the opposition -- controlled the House and the Senate. What would they do about it? What was the transition? What would the transition in America be? We had never had a transition of this type before. And Jerry Ford was the right man at the right time. He had that all American image, he was a great athlete, he's a graduate of Michigan and Yale. He was a competent fellow. But the press said -- you used to, you know, accuse him of being a stumbler. But he was loved by the American people, and he's still loved by the American people. So he was the right man at the right time. LEHRER: What about Richard Nixon? Is he only Watergate, or was there more to him than that? Rep. O'NEILL: Well, Nixon's an old card playing pal of mine. I used to play a little poker with him. Take a look at the record of this man. He was a lawyer, he was a congressman, he was a senator. He ran for President, was defeated by our own Jack Kennedy. He -- well, eight years practicing law and studying international affairs, travelling all over the world. Got elected to President. History's going to treat him a lot more kindly than we treat him today. Now, it was the nature of the man. He had no faith and no trust in people. As a matter of fact, he didn't trust his own cabinet. He always had -- they always had a person in there watching the cabinet to see if they were doing the proper thing. He had bad staff people around him with a kind of a military mind and a feeling of distrust and hate against everybody in Washington and the world. And yet, they were very, very close to the President. Now, how stupid could a man be to get himself involved in, you know, a felony like what happened -- the stealing of some materials in the Democratic Committee. How he could have been that type, it's unbelievable. But you have to look at him. People don't appreciate or realize that in 1964 65, America was 26% in poverty. We put through the Johnson program. Because of the Vietnam War, the Johnson program to abolish poverty never really came into existence to its fullest. The colas to the Social Security -- who put that into being? Richard Nixon. The colas on the food stamps -- who put that in existence? That was an executive order. You know, I say to Cap Weinberger, ''Cap, you know, you had Stockman's old job in those days. The two big issues that they blame the Democrats as spenders, spenders, spenders are the colas on the Social Security and the colas on the food stamps. What happened to you? Why didn't you advise the President of the cost of that down the line?'' He says, ''I begged the President,'' he says, ''not to put them in or,'' he says, ''to cut them at a lower rate. '' But the truth of the matter is, he said to me, ''It's an election year. '' Well, he was running against McGovern. He had no fight. But he wanted to win every one of the states. He opened the doors of China. He was a very talented foreign affairs man. It was the inner feeling of the individual who messed up his whole career. But as a President -- as a President, as they eye him 50 years down the road as to what he accomplished, his record isn't going to be that bad. LEHRER: A lot of people are trying to make, either torturedly or otherwise, a comparison between Watergate and Richard Nixon and this current -- Rep. O'NEILL: No, I don't think you can compare it. Number one, I don't think the President has broken the law -- I mean President Reagan. As far as giving to the Iranians, that's a prerogative and an authority that he had. Changing his policy without notifying either the Congress or the rest of the world or our allies was absolutely wrong. But did he have the right to do that? Yes, he has the right to do that under the law. So I don't see where he has broken the law, as I understand it. I believe that he didn't know about the money going to the contras. The President was a participant in trying to cover up a felony that had happened -- I mean President Nixon. LEHRER: Why is it that the Democrats here in Washington, none of them will say the obvious, which is that this is really good news for the Democratic Party -- what's happening to the Reagan administration. Rep. O'NEILL: Well, the interesting thing is that we don't want to acknowledge something like that. They're in a greasy frying pan, and let them get themselves out of it. Any Democrats that enter into that, he makes it blatantly political, and we are trying to avoid ourselves of that. LEHRER: You believe your fellow Democrats when they come on this program and other programs, and they say, ''All we're interested in is preserving the Presidency, and we don't want to make this a partisan issue''? Rep. O'NEILL: We don't have to make it a partisan issue. This is a problem within the Republican Party. What's happening to the Vice President out there? I don't know what's happening to him. You know, he's in between profiles in courage and loyalty to the President. Does he just go along and cut ribbons in the future or go out and make bland speeches like he made in Iowa the other day? LEHRER: You think he's had it now for '88? Rep. O'NEILL: He's got his problems. Of course, we wanted him anyway -- the Democrats. We just figured that all the things that the President has been doing out there are -- like the programs for the poor, the programs for education, the programs in trade -- are the mismanagement of the government, which suddenly the American people are understanding. Even before the Iranian situation happened, the President could do no wrong, but we believed that there'd be a Teflon transfer, and that transfer would be to the Vice President, who advocates -- although he probably in his heart doesn't believe in -- all of the theories of the President. LEHRER: What kind of person does it take to be President of the United States these days? Rep. O'NEILL: Well, that's a hard judgement to make. I think that we have some very, very competent people on both sides of the aisle. I have to see from the polls that Dole is coming strong on the Republican Party. I have a great admiration for Howard Baker. He is a very talented man. But on our side, we're steeped with the talent and ability of young governors and able people. We have young Gephardt in the House, who's chairman of our caucus. He's a very, very erudite and talented person. Bill Bradley is a beautiful person. Then you have Cuomo, and you have Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts, who seems to be idolized by the governors of America for the competency in which he's run the state. And you have Biden. And I have a -- Hart, of course, is the front runner. But in our party, front runners seem to stumble, and they don't go that far. Although he's way out in the front with 1,200 votes, let's say, at the present time. LEHRER: Do you think you would have been a good President? Rep. O'NEILL: Who? LEHRER: You? Rep. O'NEILL: Would I? Well, I never gave it a thought, to be perfectly truthful. LEHRER: Yeah, but there must have been times during these 34 years -- no, I don't mean when you thought about running, but when you thought about, ''Look, if I'd been President, things would have been different. '' Rep. O'NEILL: Oh, that happens often. LEHRER: Sure. Rep. O'NEILL: Certainly. I go down there to the White House, and -- when I went down there with Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter was, you know, a very friendly type of person. He would say, ''These are the problems, these are the messages, these are the things that we want to have done. '' I would give him my voice and my mind, whether I thought he was right or whether I thought he was wrong. But when I go down there for Jerry Ford -- and Jerry Ford, of course, was extremely easy to work with; we had been in the Congress with him for 25 years -- he'd say, ''I'm going to send up these programs, I'm going to send up these programs, something else. '' I'd say, ''Well, you can send them up, Jerry, but we're going to tell you what we're going to do with them. '' And it would be very, very friendly. When I had either Nixon or Reagan, we were there as listeners. They didn't ask us down for our advice. They sent down for us because the Speaker of the House's greatest power is saying what goes on the floor and what doesn't go on the floor. And consequently, I think there's a -- you get to the point, I think there are a lot of tremendously able people in America. I'd love to see Iacocca in there. He'd be -- I think he'd be a tremendous President, were he ever fortunate enough to be elected. LEHRER: How has Congress changed in the 34 years since you first showed up here? Rep. O'NEILL: Well, there's more talent, as far as knowledge is concerned. You know, when I first came to the House, how many people -- when I first entered politics, you know, the farmer used to like to say, ''I was born in a log cabin,'' or something like that, you know. ''I'm highly -- you know, I haven't got any sophisticated education. '' Take John McCormack, who was Speaker of the House. He went to the eighth grade. He later studied to become a lawyer. Lyndon Johnson. You know, he want to a one room school. He was born in a log cabin. Those days are all gone by. With the advent of the 74th election, we came to the highly most sophisticated, educated group in the history. We have I don't know how many sawbone graduates and Rhode scholars and doctorates and masters degrees, and less people who have gone through the road of public life. When I first got elected, I was a member of the state legislature. I became Speaker, then took Jack Kennedy's place and went to the Congress. Eighty percent of the people in the old days came up through the system. And so there was a party loyalty, and there was a party discipline. Today, there's no party organizations on either side. The Democrats are Republicans, and so you don't come up through the system. I think the majority of the members of the House came directly to the Congress right now. This is a very, very unusual situation. LEHRER: Is that bad? Rep. O'NEILL: Well, they came in, as I say, without the coming through the system and without any discipline, and they wanted to be part of the action. In the old days, the deans of the House, the leadership and the cardinals of the -- the chairmen of the various committees; we used to call them cardinals of the Congress -- they pretty nearly ran things. And they ran things pretty well. And now the young fellow comes in, he says, ''Hey, I got elected. Nobody supported me. I didn't get much help from the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. I had a small D beside my name. We want to be part and parcel of the power. '' And consequently, now, I think, we've got 164 subcommittees out there. Everybody -- you're pretty safe in Washington, if you see a member of Congress, you just say, ''Hi, Mr. Chairman, how are you?'' There's that many chairmen out there. Well, I think that the pendulum is swinging. I think the group of '74, who really wanted to break the hold of the power barons and distribute the power. The pendulum swings -- as I see it -- swings back and forth. And so they're getting back, and they're saying that the authority is in too many hands; let's get it back in a few hands. LEHRER: Every poll that's taken shows that politicians are not very highly regarded by the American people. Why is that? Rep. O'NEILL: Well, that's interesting. I watched that over the weekend on the Harris Poll. The Harris Poll shows that we're up, as a matter of fact. LEHRER: Is that right? Rep. O'NEILL: Yeah. I think we're ahead of the media. LEHRER: Oh. Well, I would assume that. That doesn't surprise me. Rep. O'NEILL: I think it was -- LEHRER: We're both down there with the lawyers. Rep. O'NEILL: No, no, we're doing much better. We're up -- I think they said we were 26, which I thought was a pretty good rating. The high ratings, I think, were clergy and medical men, who are 44. And as a matter of fact, in the latest poll, we're ahead of -- I believe that we're ahead of appointed office holders in public life. But we're ahead of people on Wall Street and things. We've moved pretty well up on the totem poll. I want you to know this all happened since I put in the ethics bill. LEHRER: Oh, I see. I see. Are you proud of the fact that you're a politician of 50 years? Rep. O'NEILL: Absolutely. You know, there is no -- there is no occupation that's more honorable and more clean. We live in glass houses. LEHRER: More honorable and more clean? Rep. O'NEILL: Oh, absolutely. You know, the interesting thing, if somebody down in some little hidden city that you never heard of corrupts, and he steals something, he's on the front page of a Boston paper. Because they love to accentuate the fact that a politician getting himself in trouble, that's always news, no matter how big the hamlet is that he comes from. And the press loves to accentuate that. And you know, to criticize the Congress, to criticize people in public life, that's a way of American life. They love to do it. And it's pretty good. It keeps them honest, and it keeps them clean. I would say, percentage wise, that people in public life are the cleanest of any occupation in America. LEHRER: Are you having any second thoughts, any regrets, about your decision to retire? Rep. O'NEILL: Well, I didn't give it the thought it would be the 100th Congress, to be perfectly truthful. But why did I quite? People say to me, why did I quit? I could have been reelected in my own district, probably, without any opposition. I would have been reelected Speaker. There's no question about that. But Jim Wright had been my strong right arm for ten years -- the five terms that I was Speaker. And it was tough on him, you know. He was not a liberal like I was. Jim is a progressive. And I had to admire his ability, his talents, his loyalty. And I owed it to him, and I owed it to Tom Foley. And I used to say to myself, ''You know, old Sam Raven's here 16 years as Speaker and John McCormack here nine and a half years. You know, how long are these old codgers going to stay around? When are they going to give a young fellow a break to move up?'' And all of a sudden, I found myself in the same spot. Millie and I talked it over one night, and I says, ''Mom, listen, this isn't fair to the fellahs that's coming along. '' And so I moved out. Do I regret it? I don't exactly regret it. Am I going to miss it? Sure, I'm going to miss it. LEHRER: What are you going to miss most about it? Rep. O'NEILL: Well, I'm going to miss the routine. I'm going to miss going up every morning and have the first thing in the morning when I usually go in, my staff come down. And I was blessed with very, very able and intelligent people. They would go over every piece of legislation, the important issues. And they'd give me the information on what was happening in committee and what their judgement was and what I ought to think -- what I should -- the decisions that I ought to make, and should I call this chairman, and things like that. And as soon as that was over, I had a meeting with the leadership. We'd talk over the legislation of the day, or we'd talk over the legislation down the line, or we'd talk over what we thought ought to be party issues, or we'd make a decision: should we have a tax bill or shouldn't we have a tax bill? We would talk all of these things over, and ultimately it would -- you'd go to the policy committee or the whip organization in the caucus. So it was a full life. And I travelled all over America, you know, always for the Democratic Party and always for the principles and the things that I believed. I was hammered from pillar to post back in '81 and '82, and all of the sudden, I go to all of these colleges around America, and jampacked crowds, and I tell them what America was like and why I stand for what I stand for. And the feeling is pretty good. And I know that I'm going out, according to the Harris poll, 67% -- the highest in America, with the President down to 45. Makes an old man feel pretty good. Sendak's Nutcracker MacNEIL: Now something seasonal. For many ballet companies, the Nutcracker Suite is the breadwinner of their season. Audiences never seem to tire of the 19th century tale by German E. T. A. Hoffman, music by Tchaikowsky, choreography by Mario Spetipa. In 1983, children's writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak conceived and designed a brand new Nutcracker for the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Since then, Sendak's creation has evolved into a popular book and a movie released last month. When the ballet premiered three years ago, we were there. And tonight, we show you our story again. Maurice Sendak says his ballet is not a ballet for children, but a ballet about children.

MAURICE SENDAK: What we've done was go back Hoffman and see how much more of the tale -- the fairy tale -- we could get into this version, because we liked the original fairy tale very much. It's much juicier, darker, and has a quality to it which I never found in watching the Nutcracker. The ones I've seen have been dull. I mean, bluntly, it's -- you have a simpering little girl, you have a Christmas party, you have a tree that gets big, and then you have people doing a variety of dances at the end that seems to go on ad nauseum. There is no plot, there is no logic. There's lot's of pretty music, but I don't enjoy it, because I'm a very pedantic, logical person. I want to know why things happen and why is she doing this and why is she feeling that. MacNEIL [voice over]: In Sendak's own original stories like Where the Wild Things Are, his small heroes and heroines struggle with the demons of childhood. They confront scary situations peopled with strange beasts in strange locations and learn to cope with them. In every story, the young protagonist is touched with fear or anger, overcomes it, and grows braver and wiser because of that. Mr. SENDAK: It would be very typical that this happens to every child. This is not an unusual occurrence; this is life. A kid stumbles against something he has had no experience with. What do you do with it? If your parents don't explain it to you, you have to explain it to yourself. And you often explain it in a logical fashion. But it suits you, comforts you, and you get through to the next moment. I have an enormous respect for children and their ways of dealing with the difficulties of life. And I tend to believe they deal with them more honestly, more courageously than we do -- meaning cuddles. Children -- that's what interests me. MacNEIL: Like the child in this scene from the new Nutcracker, where Sendak tells the story of a young girl dealing with a frightening experience, as the children do in his books. Here, he has reworked not only the traditional ballet, but also the original fairy tale into his own interpretation. For Sendak, the idea of applying his imagination to story of Clara, the young heroine of the Nutcracker, and her strange dream made the ballet a Sendak story. Mr. SENDAK: As soon as I saw what I could do with her, then it became something for me. I could become part of this. I could join Tchaikowsky, Hoffman, Kent, and become a vital part, rather than merely decorate another Christmas tree. MacNEIL: Kent is Kent Stowell, the artistic director and choreographer of the Pacific Northwest Ballet. It was Stole who conceived the idea of producing a new Nutcracker and, above all, a different Nutcracker. KENT STOWELL, artistic director: Our position was, let's not do just another Nutcracker. If we're going to go into the business of producing Nutcrackers, let's make it the last of the Nutcrackers, so to speak. MacNEIL: For that, the obvious choice was Maurice Sendak. Mr. SENDAK: I had to do sets and costumes, which in and of themselves are important only in that they mean something. I mean, those costumes can't just be pretty. Those sets can't be pretty. Who cares about that? Unless they imply something else. You see what I mean? No point just setting it; it's got to mean something. It's got to signal to everybody sitting here that there's something about this that is strange and beautiful. Not pretty, but beautiful. And Kent has to come in and choreograph the same mood. We have to take these very heavy, realistic things and create some kind of spiritual thing that's only in our heads, okay? Then you have to communicate that to hundreds of people. MacNEIL: Sendak spent over two years on the production, which cost more than half a million dollars. His conception required the skills of dozens of people in all the backstage crafts of music, dance and theatre. Fifteen pairs of hands sewed 180 costumes, each individually designed by Sendak. Like the personal outfits for each member of a whole church full of mice. And for the peacock, a new character created by Sendak, and the tiger, another new Sendak creature. Mr. SENDAK: Most Nutcrackers are set in the later period. Sort of Charles Dickensy England or Charles Dickensy Germany. And it's more of a Victorian setting with big skirts and hoops and bonnets. That to me is heavy and straight laced. Because this story is not straight laced at all. This story is very wild. My giant nutcracker head who appears at the very beginning of the prologue is, to me, very much in keeping with other heads that have interested me, which start back in its early source to Mickey Mouse. I mean, the first head I ever saw as a child was Mickey's head on the screen -- an enormous head with a big grin. Now, Wild Things heads from my book have that same gleaming enormity -- big eyes and a great staring quality. So that really comes from me. Now, I adapted the head that has reappeared ad nauseum in all my books to the nutcracker head. Now, the nutcracker head has to have certain things -- mainly, the teeth. But the eyes, the nose, the expression comes from everything I have done. MacNEIL: For three months, four painters decorated the seven sets to match Sendak's sketches with colors mixed by hand to Sendak's specifications. Kent Stowell, the artistic director, calls Sendak's Nutcracker the most complicated ballet production in the United States today. Mr. STOWELL: The quality of beauty that's in every scene is unbelievable. Because first of all, he's an artist, so he understands color and power. And then the theatrical dimensions of his mind in relationship to all those elements in Nutcracker. MacNEIL: But for the backstage crew, it wasn't always easy to make Sendak's concepts work in the real world of gears and weights and carpentry. The wooden waves for the opening of Act II would not undulate until they were properly balanced. And the boat would not sail upon those waves until a few hours before the opening curtain. Patience and an impatient kick, plus a bit of tinkering, solved the problem. CREW MEMBER: All right, fight scene. Line up. Get in order. Come on. Put your things away. MacNEIL: For Sendak's' scenario, the ballet organized a company including 156 young dancers, in addition to the 32 regular members of the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Just marshalling the youngsters for their entrances was a major job. CREW MEMBER: Fifteen, sixteen, and artillery. Good. When you bring the cannon -- MacNEIL: There are four girls who fire the artillery, six who ride in the cavalry, sixteen who march in the infantry, sixteen servant children, and nineteen mice in various shapes and sizes. Only 90 of the children dance in each performance. But that makes 90 small faces to be made up, again, according to written instructions from Maurice Sendak. In the dressing room on opening night, the youngsters were eager and nervous. For students of ballet, performing in a new production of Nutcracker was both a wish come true and a challenge to learn something new. Mr. SENDAK: I feel much more anxious at this moment for the dancers, for the children, for the first time being out in front of an audience. The whole thing now weighs on them. I mean, I'm up there already. I've gone through my sturm and drang -- I mean, my anxiety attack, my pleasure, my disappointment, my excitement. MacNEIL: But just before the curtain went up for the premiere, Sendak was still pacing about backstage checking on last minute details. Mr. SENDAK: It's like that scene from The Wizard of Oz, the old movie, when the witch takes the hour glass, turns it around, the sand goes trickling, and she says, ''Dorothy, when those few sands are up, you're done for. '' It was like two years of sand coming out, and now here it is. MacNEIL: The climax of the ballet is the battle scene, where the toy soldiers of the nutcracker prince battle the ragamuffin troops of the giant mouse king, and the mice seem to be winning. This is the central theme in Sendak's work -- the crisis in the life of the child, how that crisis is resolved, and what that resolution means to the child. Mr. SENDAK: It may take two hours in the theatre and a tremendous amount of work on everybody's part, but the feeling of the idea behind it, it happens in Clara's head, and it takes all of two minutes. She lies down in that bed at the beginning of the prologue, she goes into a doze, she has a semi dream nightmare, she wakes up two minutes later, and the ballet's over. And we don't know whether she's dreamed it, gone through it. It's a moment in a kid's life. That's what interests me. The prince is not winning the battle. I mean, he's tired. There's a tremendous battle. And then when that thing appears, this little man, how is he going to possibly -- and you see him futilely doing -- she then takes off her ballet slipper or shoe and hurls it at him and kills him. That doesn't make any sense, except it makes sense in a very crucial way, which is that up 'til that point, she's a frightened and confused little girl. Suddenly, she ain't. She's now in love, and she's brave, and she's forgotten her old self, and she has dumped her own ego, and she sees that he's in trouble. And that's what the shoe means. No shoe is going to fill a giant mouth, but heroism will. And in the face of hopeless odds, she takes her shoe, and it makes you love her. What kills the mouse is strength, is courage -- her courage. And suddenly that's why she becomes a woman seconds later. She has earned becoming a woman. She has earned maturity. She has crossed the bridge into maturity at that point. That's what this whole ballet's about. What's it like to have guts? MacNEIL: Then, as Clara's fantasy draws to its end, she is grown up, mature and beautiful, sitting calm and poised and unafraid with her prince as they watch a treat of entertainment from Sendak's always original imagination. Brand Name Battle MacNEIL: We focus next on a battle between retailers over the prices of thousands of discounted consumer items. The struggle concerns the so called gray market, a multi billion dollar industry which pits leading discounters against full price franchises like Macy's. What are gray market goods? Here are some examples. A two ounce bottle of Halston toilet water at Bloomingdale's, a New York department store, sells for $23. At K Mart, the same bottle of perfume sells for $15. 97. At Macy's Seiko watches sell for between $150 and $250, comparable to prices at other major retailers. But at K Mart, a variety of Seiko watches sell for one price: $49. 96. Or take cameras. A well known New York store, 47th Street Photo, sells its cameras for roughly 20% less than the same models available at other retail outlets. How do they do it? By doing an end run around the distribution system and the owner of the trademark. Retailers like K Mart and 47th Street Photo, who are not authorized by the trademark owners, buy their products overseas from foreign subsidiaries or through distributors in this country. The goods are bought at a cheaper price, and that is passed along to the consumer. Trademark owners, represented by the Coalition to Preserve the Integrity of American Trademarks, are challenging the customs rule that allows the gray market to flourish. The case will be heard by the Supreme Court next year, and both K Mart and 47th Street Photo are directly involved. For more on the issue, we talk with Robert Miller, the chairman of Charles of the Ritz, a company that owns the trademark to Eve St. Laurants products. He is also president of the Coalition to Preserve the Integrity of American Trademarks. For an opposing view, we have Hank Hankla, representing the American Consumer Trade Council, a coalition of independent importers, wholesale distributors and discount retailers. I talked with both men earlier this week.

Mr. Miller, you want the Supreme Court to tell firms like K Mart and 47th Street Photo they can't sell gray market goods. Why? ROBERT MILLER, Charles of the Ritz: I don't think we are telling firms such as K Mart or 47th Street Photo they can not sell gray market goods. I think what we are saying to them is, they are deceiving consumers by free riding on our trademarks. They are purporting to sell the same trademark items, when indeed, they are not the same items. And we are asking the Supreme Court to enforce the law as it is written -- Section 526 of the Tariff Act. And that is precisely what we are looking for. MacNEIL: What does free riding mean? Mr. MILLER: Free riding is a term -- an economic term -- used to describe a practice whereby the gray marketeers free ride, or they take a free ride on the investment that trademark owners make in the development of a trademark. For example, a trademark has no value until the trademark owner makes an investment. It is the trademark owner that creates consumer awareness. MacNEIL: Through advertising. Mr. MILLER: Through advertising. Creates the consumer awareness, creates the goodwill, creates the desire of the consumer to buy the product. Without that goodwill, which is created by the authorized trademark owner in this country, there is no value to that trademark. What the gray marketeers are doing are free riding on this investment. And I would make one comment on your opening remarks. You indicated, and you gave some examples, of prices being substantially lower. I think that's a rather poor example. We have done several studies, and they're on balance -- on balance, gray market prices do not sell at lower prices. The Seiko watches, for example, that you cited, I think that what you're doing is comparing apples and oranges. There are watches that you can buy for $25, and there are watches you can buy for $2,500. Those are not the same animals. And I think that it is, number one, an unfair statement to say that the prices are lower. MacNEIL: I'd like to come back to this, but you're not claiming that gray market goods on the whole are not the same product or very nearly the same product sold for a lot less money in this country. Mr. MILLER: They are absolutely not the same product. MacNEIL: Why are they not the same product? Mr. MILLER: And I will give you some examples. A product -- let's take a product such as Pepsi Cola, which is made in Mexico. They use a different formula that tastes just slightly different than the formula used in the United States. That product appeals to the Mexican tastes. It is different than that which is used in the United States. MacNEIL: What about something like a Japanese camera -- a Minolta or a Nikon? Mr. MILLER: There are different -- there are different models of cameras. The cameras that are made overseas, in some cases, are different. They are not made for use in the United States. And let's take, for example, a product such as a video recorder or anything that uses an electronic current. The current may be made differently. But the real issue -- the real issue that you're getting at and I think that needs to be addressed is the fact that the trademark is based on the territory in which that trademark is utilized. The value of a trademark does not go to the product. The value of a trademark is what is placed on it by the trademark owner. MacNEIL: Okay. We'll come back. Mr. Hankla, you've heard what Mr. Miller says. He says, first of all, that you are deceiving the public, because the products you -- or the people you represent -- the products are not the same as the products sold under the trademark in this country. HANK HANKLA, American Consumer Trade Council: Well, that's certainly not true. Any product which the manufacturer holds out with the same identical label, the same identical advertising -- we believe they are holding it out to be identically the same product. This really is a consumer issue. It's not really an intellectual property or an investment issue. Parallel imports are what bring genuine trademark products to the American consumer at 25% to 40% off, on the average. And they also bring it to them at a real availability that's not possible otherwise. You can buy these products now in many of the small towns of America that, without the parallel imports, you'd only be able to get them in the large towns. Mr. Miller and the foreign corporations that make up his association would like to end 50 years of customs law and regulation and would like to be free from price competition. We think that it's the gray market which brings the genuine trademark goods to the American consumer and does that in a way that prevents price fixing that would otherwise be illegal if done in this country. MacNEIL: What about his point that -- and two examples that he gave; cameras that are made for another market or video recorders made for another market, in which the provision for the electric current may be different, or the Pepsi Cola imported from Mexico made to a slightly different formula. It's not -- it's advertised as the trademark product, but in fact, it's slightly different. Mr. HANKLA: Let's remember that, in any case where we're dealing with the gray market, it is virtually the same company in the United States and overseas where it's manufactured, or it wouldn't be allowed to be brought into the United States at all. So the company in the United States that has the trademark ownership or its parent has the control over what is the ingredient. If they want to hold out a Pepsi in Mexico that appears to be the identical product and yet make it differently, I suppose they can do that, but I believe they're the one that's deceiving the consumer if they have no identification on that. MacNEIL: What about the -- Mr. HANKLA: We had 30 million Americans that travelled overseas last year, and they look at these products and probably expect them to be the same; at least to be safe. MacNEIL: What about his first point -- that you gray marketeers, as he calls you, are free riding on the advertising investment that the holders of the franchise have made that creates the value in the trademark? Mr. HANKLA: I've never quite understood that. Any time that a product enters the parallel market channels, it has first been purchased from someone who bought that product. And one assumes that a manufacturer, when they decide on what their price is, they build into it everything that's necessary to be able to make a profit. We paid for it. They made a profit. They may make a profit here too. But if there is free riding going on, in fact, it's the other way around. Without any advertising subsidies from Mr. Miller, his company or his allies, we have created an entirely new market for their products in the United States. He's publicly said that his most popular product, Opium perfumes, one third of what is sold in the United States is gray market. We've created an entirely new market for his company without any cost. MacNEIL: He says you're free riding on them. Mr. MILLER: Let me give you an example. MacNEIL: Answer his point first on the Opium question. Mr. MILLER: I'm going to give you the example. That is not a market that we particularly like. And let me tell you why. That is damaging our business. I would very much give up, if I could immediately, that one third of the U. S. market for this reason: Opium -- Eve St. Laurants Opium -- is a fashion product. I'm sure you and your female companions know that if a product gets in too widespread distribution -- in other words, if your wife or girlfriend sees other women wearing the same dress -- it's going to lose popularity. So, far from being an advantage to us, we see that as detrimental. And what happens traditionally in the fragrance industry -- and there are numerous examples -- that when a fragrance brand is over distributed and overexposed, it has a shortened life. So on the contrary, I'm not very happy about what Mr. Hankla purports to be a blessing. On the contrary. And I would like to respond to several of the misstatements that Mr. Hankla has made. MacNEIL: He is over democratizing your product? Is that the -- Mr. MILLER: Not at all. We'd be very happy to have whoever wants to buy it to buy it. We're in business to make money. And our objective with the trademark is to have it last as long as possible. And we don't want to see anything damage it. The problem that we have in the gray market is that the gray marketeer has no interest in the longevity of the product. They are interested in making a quick buck and then moving on. And I think it's important to really look at what the gray market is. And I'd like to respond to a few statements that Mr. Hankla has made. For example, he indicates that our organization is made up of foreign corporations. That's a misstatement. Every single company in there is an American company. There are companies such as Pepsi Cola, Procter and Gamble, American Cyanamid -- MacNEIL: But I think for the consumer argument in this, how is the consumer hurt? You say the products are slightly different or different. Mr. Hankla disagrees with you. He says they're essentially the products made by the same manufacturer. How otherwise is the consumer hurt by going to 47th Street Photo or K Mart and buying something, instead of going to the house that sells it under the trademark franchise? Mr. MILLER: Well, I'm not going to name names of particular stores, but let me talk -- MacNEIL: But how is the consumer hurt? Mr. MILLER: Let me talk generically. Let's take a product -- a cosmetic product, for example. There are ingredients that are acceptable in other countries that are prohibited in the United States. U. S. trademark owners are obliged to comply with the law. Yet, there are many products that come into this country that do not comply with those laws. They contain ingredients such as red dye number two. They contain fluorocarbons instead of hydrocarbons. These are ingredients which are not acceptable in this country. MacNEIL: Let's ask Mr. Hankla about that. You're importing things that are really not supposed to be sold here, Mr. Hankla. Mr. HANKLA: I'm surprised that Mr. Miller is casting himself as the champion of the consumer in trying to protect them from safety and health problems, when he apparently has just admitted that for distribution to the rest of the world, he may be putting ingredients into his products that the Food and Drug Administration has said are carcinogenic. We have an incredibly strong interest -- all of the people who I represent -- in delivering goods to the consumers which are safe and which meet all American standards. We do everything possible to assure that. MacNEIL: Are you putting things that you can't sell in the American market but you can sell overseas into your products? Mr. MILLER: The United States has the highest standards in the world. In other countries, they have standards that are acceptable to consumer tastes. They are different. MacNEIL: You're answering yes to his -- Mr. MILLER: Yes, absolutely, I'm answering. But that is not an answer that -- MacNEIL: How else is the consumer hurt, in your view, by buying at discount through the gray market a product that -- one that the ingredients may be the same -- a camera or a tape recorder or something like that. Mr. MILLER: Okay, let me give you an example. And this example was presented at the hearing with the Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade in Washington. Let's take a Cabbage Patch doll. These Cabbage Patch dolls were sold in the United States, and they were sold with Japanese instructions and parenting documents. The poor child that got those documents and could not register it and get a birth certificate, that child was harmed. That consumer was hurt. MacNEIL: How about that, Mr. Hankla? Mr. HANKLA: There wouldn't be any instance such as that occur if the manufacturers would price the product the same throughout the world. If there were no incentive to bring the product into the parallel market, then they would have absolute control. Now, at the same hearing that Mr. Miller's referring to, the attorney for Cabbage Patch dolls -- MacNEIL: So you're not -- excuse me a moment, because this is an issue that's frequently raised. You're not denying that American consumers who buy through the gray market may end up with instructions in Japanese or something? Mr. HANKLA: In this case, I think that the Cabbage Patch dolls, it's hardly instructions. If you buy something, however, which is not what it purports to be, there are already laws on the books of all 50 states which give you justification at the store from which you bought it. MacNEIL: But if you buy a camera which was intended to be marketed, say, in Japan, and the instructions are in Japanese, wouldn't that be awkward for the American consumer? Mr. HANKLA: You have the right to go back to the person from whom you bought it and say, ''This isn't what I purchased. I have the right to have a camera which has American instructions. '' Mr. MILLER: That's absolutely right. And that is deception. And that happens quite frequently. In fact, there was an article in a New York City business magazine about a year ago. One of the leading photo stores in the United States, this article reported that it led consumer complaints by a two to one margin over its nearest competitor. And I think this is precisely the point. There is a problem with consumer deception on what they are not, in fact, getting what they think they're getting. And I'd like to get to what I believe fundamentally is the real problem and how the consumer ultimately will be harmed. MacNEIL: If you would do it fairly briefly, and this is the last point we'll take up. Mr. MILLER: Okay. The whole fundamental basis of a free market system is trademarks -- intellectual property rights. If we do not allow the trademark owner to earn a reward, to reap a return on his investment, then ultimately, the consumer will be harmed by the simple fact that the manufacturer, the trademark owner, will not be encouraged to make new investments, new product innovations, maintain the quality standards. And in the long run, the consumer will not have the variety of products to choose from that they have today. MacNEIL: How about that, Mr. Hankla? Unless the integrity of the trademark is maintained, all those bad consequences will happen. Mr. HANKLA: I didn't buy the trickle down theory for other reasons, and I don't buy it for safety reasons either. What we really have here is a consumer issue. Mr. Miller's people have complete control of assuring the health and safety issues. If they'd only price at one price throughout the world, they would have no problem, and our people would be satisfied. MacNEIL: Well, gentlemen, thank you both for joining us. We'll have to see how it's presented before the Supreme Court and what they decide. Thank you. Celestial Legacy MacNEIL: We close tonight with an essay. Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov has been thinking about the influence of Star Trek.

ISAAC ASIMOV: There they are after 20 years, after some scores of television episodes and three motion pictures, appearing in the motion picture Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. There's Captain Kirk, perhaps 20 pounds heavier than in his prime, and Scotty, the engineer, some 30 pounds heavier. Mr. Spock and Sulu are both craggier than they once were, but Dr. McCoy looks much the same, Chekov is still boyish, and Uhura is still incredibly beautiful. The movie's great, fully worthy of the series. Kirk and his faithful crew members, in trouble -- when are they not? -- for what they did in the previous motion picture, are returning to earth to face the music. Earth is about to be destroyed -- when is it not? -- by an intruder from space, and it is up to Kirk, et al, to save the day. This they do by travelling back to present day earth, where the vein of humor is amply mined. [clip from Star Trek IV movie] Captain KIRK: Everybody remember where we parked.

ASIMOV: Very pleasant. And if we throw in an attractive heroine and a strong pitch for the whales, what more can we ask for? It has been a good 20 years, and many of us owe a great deal to Star Trek. In the half century since H. G. Wells' science fiction stories, there had been little in the way of adult science fiction for the general public. There were good stories in the science fiction magazines now and then, but they made no impact whatever on any but a relatively small group of fans. The Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon comic strips and movie serials were intended for children only, and the movie serials, at least, for rather backward children. And then in 1966 Star Trek hit the television screen. [clip from Star Trek series] Captain KIRK [voice over]: To boldly go where no man has gone before. ASIMOV: For the first time, tens of millions of people were exposed to adult science fiction written intelligently and with heart. The characters were distinct, strong and lovable. For this, it won its way into the hearts of the viewers at once and stayed there as no similar series has done since. The result was astonishing, as viewer enthusiasm reached fever pitch. This became evident when, after the first season, the television moguls decided that that was enough and announced the show would not be renewed. The response can only be described as ferocious. Such a blizzard of demands and denunciations descended upon their heads that the astonished televisioneers were forced to back down, and the show continued for two more seasons. Nor was the end the end. Star Trek has continued for nearly 20 years to appear in reruns, so that millions enjoy the show now who weren't born when it had begun. Then when Star Trek conventions were organized back in the '70s, the organizers themselves were flabbergasted when attendance was ten times that which they estimated. There is no question but that it was the success of Star Trek that encouraged movie makers to move into the science fiction field in a big way. Star Wars and its sequels, the captivating ET, and so on -- all showed that science fiction films could be major financial blockbusters. To be sure, the viewing public largely clings to movies and television. But some will be lured into reading science fiction books. The result is that in the 1980s, science fiction novelists found, very much to their own astonishment, that their books were making the best seller lists. I like to think it's because we're all such terrific writers, but I have the feeling it wouldn't have happened without Star Trek. So thank you, Kirk, Spock and all the rest of you. And most of all, thank you, Gene Roddenberry, the presiding genius of the show. [clip from Star Trek IV movie] Captain KIRK: Sulu, take us home. MacNEIL: And now a final look at the day's top stories. An Iraqi airliner hijacked on a flight to Amman, Jordan, crashed in Saudi Arabia, killing 62 people. Iran announced a new offensive in its war with Iraq. And Pope John Paul II condemned nations that spend their wealth on weapons. That's our report for tonight. From all of us at the News Hour, a very merry Christmas to all our viewers in the U. S. and Canada. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.