The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Elizabeth Farnsworth conducts a debate about funding the new F-22 fighter plane, Paul Solman updates the Y2K computer problem story, and essayist Richard Rodriguez and Terence Smith explore the celebrity news explosion. It all follows our summary of the real news is Tuesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton criticized the Republican tax proposal again today. He did so at a White House rally for Medicare. He said a large tax cut could reduce federal funds available for the health plan. He said that would risk hurting women who live longer and become more dependent on the system than men.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I do not believe that is the wise thing to do. I think first we should say let's save Social Security and Medicare. Let's add this responsible prescription drug benefit. Let's decide the commitments that we ought to make to give our children good education, to keep our streets safe, to biomedical research, to national defense, to the environment. And then let's decide what we can afford in a tax cut. Let's do first things first.

JIM LEHRER: But Republicans say taxpayers are entitled now to have some of the federal surplus back in the form of a major tax cut. The House bill, passed last week, contained $80 billion in cuts. The Senate is set to begin debate on its version tomorrow. The House voted today to renew normal trade relations with China. It means tariffs on Chinese imports will be as low as they are for other U.S. trading partners. The Environmental Protection Agency today called for less use of a smog-reducing gasoline additive. A special panel report had found the methanol-based additive, called MBTE, had leaked into water supplies. Federal research showed it caused tumors in rats. It's used in 16 states where air pollution is especially bad. Panel Chairman Daniel Greenbaum said it was not now a public health threat.

DANIEL GREENBAUM: Although occasionally we have -- we saw cases where water supplies had had very high levels MBTE, this has not been, nor is it today an issue of concern about the health and safety of people drinking this water, in part because MBTE, when added water, has a characteristic taste and odor which, for the most part, means that people will stop drinking it, but in part also because the contamination has not generally risen to levels of public health concern.

JIM LEHRER: The heat wave continued to beat down on much of the country today. Forecasters predicted no immediate relief along the East Coast. The heat has been blamed for at least 33 deaths in Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina. In Pennsylvania, a drought emergency was declared. And areas in Virginia were considered agriculture disasters. In Southern California Monday, rising winds and temperatures sparked wildfires that charred 33,000 acres of grassland. In Kosovo today, doctors finished autopsies on the bodies of the 14 Serb farmers killed last week. Villagers blamed ethnic Albanians for the murders in a village ten miles south of Pristina. Pathologists said some bodies had as many as ten bullet wounds. A funeral has been scheduled for tomorrow. In Washington, Russian Prime Minister Stepashin said Russia and the U.S. have settled many of their differences over rebuilding Kosovo. He spoke after a talk with Vice President Gore this morning and before meeting with congressional leaders. It's his first official visit to the United States. North Korea was warned today of serious consequences if it goes ahead with further missile tests. The U.S., Japan, and South Korea issued the warning at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Singapore. Secretary of State Albright said aid to North Korea would be jeopardized. U.S. officials have said North Korea appears ready to test a missile capable of striking Alaska or Hawaii. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the F-22 debate, a Y2K update, and celebrity news.

FOCUS - FIGHTER FIGHT

JIM LEHRER: The fight over a new air force fighter plane: Kwame Holman begins with some background.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Air Force says the F-22, with its radar-evading technology and ability to fly faster than current jet fighters would guarantee U.S. military air superiority for decades. Lockheed Martin, the nation's largest military contractor, began designing the plane in the 1980's. But the cost of producing the F-22 has soared from its original estimate of $90 million per plane to about $200 million. To date, the Pentagon has spent $20 billion for research and development. Last week, during debate on next year's defense spending bill, the House overwhelmingly voted to delete the $1.8 billion the Clinton administration requested to complete the first six F-22's for actual military use.

REP. DAVID OBEY, [D] Wisconsin: It would be a great plane to have if we had all of the money in the world, but the problem is that its costs are taking off faster than the airplane is expected to if it is ever constructed. Secondly, the General Accounting Office says that we certainly don't need it yet for a good number of years. And thirdly, it is a $40 billion cancer which is eating a hole in the ability of the Air Force to meet a number of other high- priority items.

KWAME HOLMAN: The House vote caught many F-22 supporters off guard and called into the question the future of the F-22 program. Republican Sam Johnson, a former Air Force pilot, represents a district near a Lockheed-Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas.

REP. SAM JOHNSON, [R] Texas: The cancellation of the F-22 will adversely affect over 151,000 jobs in the coming years. Billions of contracts will be canceled.

KWAME HOLMAN: Some of Connecticut Republican Nancy Johnson's constituents work for Pratt and Whitney, an engineering firm working on the F-22's engine.

REP. NANCY JOHNSON, [R] Connecticut: Pausing or delaying production puts our forces at higher risk and hurts thousands of workers whose skills are critical in fighter sophistication and safety and reliability. In addition, delaying the program just two years will add approximately $8 billion in completely unnecessary costs to the F-22 program.

KWAME HOLMAN: Connecticut Democrat Sam Gedjenson also supports the F-22, but says the cost has gotten out of control.

REP. SAM GEJDENSON, [D] Connecticut: I think we have to go back and take a harder look at it. I think there is nothing wrong with trying to get a better price out of defense contractors. All of us have them in our districts. They do an important part for the country. Their prime goal is to make sure we have good systems, but we have to make sure those systems come to the taxpayers at reasonable cost.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Pentagon already has two other jet fighter models in development: The joint strike fighter and the FA-18. And during its debate last week, the House approved money to upgrade and purchase more F-15's and F-16's, the Air Force's current top line jet fighters. But the House also left in place $1.2 billion for further research and development of the F-22.

SPOKESMAN: The President of the United States.

KWAME HOLMAN: At his press conference last week, President Clinton said he supports full funding of the F-22.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We can fund the plane without compromising the basic priorities of our national defense within the funds set aside, and that is what I will fight to do. I think it would be a mistake to abandon the project. I think it has real potential to add to our national defense. I have always supported it. And I hope that it can be preserved.

KWAME HOLMAN: And the Senate seems inclined to go ahead with the program as well. It already has passed its own defense bill that includes $1.8 billion to complete the first six F-22's. Differences between the House and Senate positions will have to be worked out before a final defense spending bill goes to the President this fall.

JIM LEHRER: And to Elizabeth Farnsworth in San Francisco.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: For more on the F-22 we turn to California Republican Jerry Lewis, Chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee; Georgia Democrat Max Cleland, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee; General Richard Hawley, whose most recent assignment before he retired this month was as commander of air combat command, which trains and organizes the U.S. Air Force; and Lawrence Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration -- he's now a vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations.

General Hawley, tell us more about this plane. What would it add to the Air Force capability?

GENERAL RICHARD HAWLEY: Well, Elizabeth, you know, an earlier generation of political leaders sent my generation of airmen to Vietnam with a fleet of multi-role airplanes not unlike those that people talk about today as substitutes for the F-22 -- joint strike fighters and F-16's and F-18. We suffered almost 1700 combat losses in Vietnam. We lost 640 airmen who were killed in action and another almost 300 who were imprisoned. Out of that experience the Air Force learned that we need a dedicated, high-end, air superiority fighter in order to guarantee air supremacy over future battlefields. We produced that fighter in the F-15, which has served us now for more than 25 years, assured air superiority in the Gulf in 1991, and, of course, we saw what dominant air power can do for the country in the most recent conflict in Kosovo. And so what the F-22 will do for this nation, with its combination of maneuverable stealth, the ability to evade detection by enemy radar defenses, the ability to cruise at more than 1.5 times the speed of sound for prolonged periods of time, without using after burner, and some very, very modern avionics, which will give the pilots of these airplanes unprecedented ability to understand what's going on around them in the battle space. This airplane will assure this country's ability to be dominant over future battlefields all the way through the year 2030, and that's why this is a good buy for the country.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Go ahead, sorry.

GENERAL RICHARD HAWLEY: Failure to buy it would result in added costs. We'd have to modify, the nation would have to modify --

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. I'll come back to that, General. Good. I want to come back to that, but, first, Congressman Lewis, as head of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee you led what eventually happened, which is that the $1.8 billion in production money was cut out. Why?

REP. JERRY LEWIS: Well, you know, I was very much impressed by what General Hawley had to say. I mean, he's come before our committee on a number of occasions. And during his work with the Air Force before he left the Force he was most concerned about the fact that our wonderful men and women who fly in the Air Force are spread too thin. We have them doing too many things in too many places in the world. Indeed, our assets also, the F-15, the F-16, et cetera, are against the wall. There is not enough money to go around. Well, the fact is in terms of future tactical aircraft we have -- we're on three lines as your introduction mentioned -- the F-18, the F-22, and the joint strike fighter. If we complete all those programs, it costs some $340 billion. We just can't afford that. So what we have really done here is not eliminate the F-22 but rather suggesting a pause, i.e., first there was $3 billion proposed. If we leave $1.2 billion in, for research that will go forward with the F-22, but also add substantially to the work that's needed for the joint strike fighter. In the meantime, if we took $1.8 billion out and redistributed among other very, very important Air Force programs that -- the F-15, the F-16, some transport aircraft -- it is absolutely critical for us to recognize that our men and women are at stake here. And, indeed, if we're not willing to support them at the beginning point, the assets don't mean very much. Within this total package we increase the pay for those men and women, given bonuses to keep our pilots in the force. It's an effort to make sure that the Air Force is well balanced and not focusing on just one major asset, as they had been doing.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And just briefly, Congressman Lewis, this is very unusual, isn't it, for Congress to take the money out for a program that's about to reach an assembly line. I mean, I've read it's highly unusual. Why did you do it now?

REP. JERRY LEWIS: It's very unusual for us to suggest that the Air Force or a Force should look again. We are in the research and development phase. The next step is major procurement. And we're talking about potentially six aircraft that cost $1.8 billion. If you don't step back and take a look before you start that procurement, you'll never be able to. And this program could cost 50 or 70 billion dollars. If there are questions as to which avenue is the best, the F-18, the F-22 or the joint strike fighter, we'd better pause first before that major buy begins.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Senator Cleland, you supported the production money. Why?

SEN. MAX CLELAND: Well, you know, I think the best way to serve our young men and women who we commit to harm's way is to give them the best technology available. Air dominance does two things: First of all, it wins wars. Secondly, it saves lives. And all you have to do to understand that is look at the most recent conflict this country has engaged in. It was air power that brought Milosevic to heel. It was air power that dominated the air so that we could work our will. And it was air power that saved lives. They shot down two of our aircraft though. We have to get better at this air power game. And the F-22 is the air dominant force for the next 20-25 years. I support it because it saves lives, and provides us access to to work our will around the world and use our naval and other forces as we might desire.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Lawrence Korb, what about the argument, that the air dominance is necessary?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I think that the air dominance could be achieved at much less cost. General Hawley was talking about flying over Vietnam. The Navy also flew over Vietnam they think the FA-18, E and F, which is much less expensive than the F-22, and much less sophisticated will assure air dominance, and I happen to think they're right. This was a good plane when it was first conceived, but the world changed between 1981 and 1999. I don't think you need that sophisticated an aircraft to ensure what we all want to is to safeguard the lives of our men and women. And I think as our Congressman Lewis pointed out the fact of the matter is that this thing is getting so expensive, you'll have so few of them, you will not be able to deal with situations around the world. With the money that they took out this year, they were able to buy over 20 planes of different categories, which the forces need because they have been so busy wearing out the current generation of equipment, and then have money left over to keep the pilots in. And if you don't have the pilots, it doesn't matter what kind of plane you have.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. General Hawley, what about that and please respond to the questions that have been raised about the way costs have continued to go up with this plane.

GENERAL RICHARD HAWLEY: Well, this aircraft began development in 1991. And the objective was to complete development in about six years at that time. The program was slipped three, maybe four times, depending on how you look at it during those years due to budget cuts and the quantities of airplanes were reduced from over 750 to 339. So over that time, the cost of both development and the average cost of the airplane went up because of those reasons. Now we're at a point where we have already invested almost $20 billion to develop this airplane and people, of course, attribute that cost to the 339 airplanes that are currently planned to be produced. This airplane will actually cost on average for those 339 about $84 million apiece. Now, that's a lot of money, but an F-15 today costs $50 million, and it is only about one third as capable as an F-22. So this airplane is not going to break the bank. In its most expensive year, the first year of high-rate production, it will consume less than 6 percent of the Air Force budget and only 1.7 of the DOD budget. That's very much in line with the amounts that were spent on the F-15 back in the late 70's, ear y 80's, on the F-16, other major procurements like the F-18 that Congressman Lewis mentioned. So these are well within the norm for fighter airplane procurement. And I think this debate has focused so much on costs that people have lost sight of the need for these high-end capabilities if this country is going to adequately support its men and women in uniform in the next century.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Congressman Lewis, your response to that?

SEN. MAX CLELAND: I'd like to respond, actually. The Senate last year responded to the rising costs of the F-22 and installed a cost cap of total production cost of $44 billion for 339 aircraft. The F-22 is designed to be an expensive, but low production item aircraft to dominate the air. The joint strike fighter is a completely different animal. But if we don't dominate the air, we won't have the chance to do the other thing we want to do on the battlefield.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Congressman Lewis.

REP. JERRY LEWIS: But, wait a minute, Senator. The fact is that we began talking about this program in 1985, and the projections then were that the R & D would just be about $12 billion. Currently, as of now we've spent almost $23 billion in the research and development side. The escalation of costs continues forward. And indeed we hear from the Air Force today that we can afford this aircraft, but they keep ratcheting down the numbers that we'll be able to buy or that they need. First we're going to buy 750. Then it came down four times in a row. Now we're at 339. The actual cost with the R & D is going to be $148 million an airplane. And when they were first selling it in 1985, the Air Force told us it would cost about $35 million a plane. So, it's clear that there is a need to review the management that's taken place, look at three lines of different aircraft to be our future tactical aircraft and decide which one among those we can afford, or which two. We certainly can't afford all three. And I said earlier, if we produce all three, it's going to cost us $350 billion and push all kinds of other very critical needs for our young men and women in the services just off the board.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: General Hawley, what are the threats you're most concerned about here? Give us a sense of the threat.

GENERAL RICHARD HAWLEY: Well, you know, we've never been very good at predicting threats 15 or 20 years out, but there are a number of very good airplanes being produced by friends and former foes around the world. The French produce wonderful airplanes. I've flown their Mirage 2000. It's every bit as good as our F-16 and F-15. And they are now producing a more advanced airplane called the Rafael. The Russians have two excellent airplanes that they are producing, the MiG-29, the Su-35. These are very good airplanes, but even more important are the surface-to-air missile defenses that our airplanes must face when they go into combat. And of course, in Yugoslavia most recently, that country opposed us with a fleet of surface-to-air missiles and airplanes that represents 1960's technology. SA-2's, SA-6's. We've been facing these kinds of defenses for 30 years. But the defenses of the next century will be SA-10's and SA-12's, much more modern, sophisticated surface-to-air missiles, and airplanes like the Rafael and the Su-35, that will make it very difficult for us to even enter the air space, much less dominate it the way we have recently in both Iraq and over Yugoslavia.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Lawrence Korb, your view of the threats?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, if you take a look at some of the planes that the general mentioned, the Soviets or the Russians are only going to produce those planes that he mentioned when their economy gets better. Their economy is certainly going in the other way. The interesting thing when you look at the Rafael and the Mirage, people around the world are buying the F-16. I mean, it's rather ironic the head of international sales for Lockheed said the plane most in demand around the world is the F-16. And in fact when the Navy does its war games against the next generation of Soviet fighters, they basically use the F-16. So I think we're already, you know, with the best. And if you take a look at what's happening with surface-to-air missiles around the world, now the Russians, the Soviets were the leaders in those. Now that they are no longer putting any effort to theirs, they're not going to be upgraded to the extent that they were during the Cold War. So I think the joint strike fighter will be more than adequate to dealwith any reasonable threat. And if the world should turn dramatically, we are so far ahead in research and development compared to any country in the world. I mean, we spend three times as much on research, development and test and evaluation than all of Europe combined.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. And very, very briefly. We have just a little bit of time left. Senator Cleland, and then to you, Congressman too, very briefly. Are you going to really push for this to - in your case, Senator Cleland, keep the money in, in the joint committee, that will rationalize the two bills, and what's the consequence if it's out?

SEN. MAX W. CLELAND: Well, I'm going to continue to fight for the F-22 with every ounce of strength I possess. We need that fighter. We need the air dominance that it provides. And Lord knows what kind of missile attacks we might find against our forces. On the news tonight we just saw where North Korea is developing an intercontinental ballistic missile. We are going to go up against some very tough foes in the future. We need the best that we can provide our country for our servicemen and women.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. And, Congressman?

REP. JERRY LEWIS: We need the best that we can buy for our service men and women, but also we need to give them the kinds of benefits and variety of needs that causes them to stay in those military careers. Without the best pilots staying, we can have the best aircraft in the world and still have problems. As of this moment, we do have the best in the world. It's my intention to see that as we go out of conference, we have not just the best tactical aircraft but also the best Air Force.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: All right. Gentlemen, thank you very much for being with us.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a Y2K update and celebrity news.

FOCUS - AGE OF CELEBRITY

JIM LEHRER: Our economics correspondent Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston has the Y2K story.

PAUL SOLMAN: With the year 2000 now just months away, for some, fears of the Y2K computer bug seem to be growing out of all proportion to reality. There are people getting guns, moving to the wilderness, preparing for the breakdown of society. But we're here at Boston's Computer Museum because this isn't a story about the panicky. Instead, we wanted to talk to those sober souls who are trying to solve the Y2K problem, the people whose job it is to get inside the old computer systems, find the Y2K bug and fix it. And what they told us was genuinely surprising. Before the surprise, though, a quick cram session on Y2K for those who still don't get it. At Primeon outside Boston, Carl Giallombardo showed us an actual line of computer code.

PAUL SOLMAN: Show us the year 2000 problem.

CARL GIALLOMBARDO, VP Consulting Services, Primeon: This is a line of code. And what it's doing here is taking a date that happens to be a two- digit date and storing it in another location. It is always adding 1900 to the year. So whether or not the year is 02 or 95, it will always be 1902 or 1995. The individual who wrote this piece of code assumed that you would always add 1900.

PAUL SOLMAN: And so the problem is, when you start adding 01 or 02, it thinks it's 1901 and 1902 as opposed to 2001, 2002.

CARL GIALLOMBARDO: That's right, and then when the information is used later in the program, it will be used incorrectly.

PAUL SOLMAN: So a program that deletes old data might wipe out all new entries starting January 1st, thinking they are 100 years out of date. Throughout billions of lines of code, the dates are hidden. It takes human and automated sleuthing line by line of every single computer program to find and fix every single two-digit date. The total projected tab: $600 billion in the U.S. alone. And so a whole industry has grown up to ward off the catastrophes of power failures, missile mishaps, market meltdowns. But here's where the surprises start. The cyber sleuths we talked to say we may be focusing on the wrong date. In fact, they told us the real problem may not come on New Year's Day, but afterwards. Systems might keep working but start putting out bad data and no one will realize that it's because the computer thought the date was 1900, and, for example, started using the interest rate of 1900 for the bonds in your pension fund. Tim Cho, who runs Reasoning, Silicon Valley Y2K firm, talked to us by remote.

TIM CHO: So what we may ultimately see actually is a corrosive effect moving through the first couple of months of the year where bad data's calculated, bad data's stored, bad data's used, and suddenly, maybe on March 1st, you're staring at a report and wondering, "well, how come this capsulation is wrong? What's going on here?"

PAUL SOLMAN: Thus, Y2K could put subtle errors into your pension fund, bank account, bills, requiring real vigilance by all of us to closely check what comes in the mail. Okay, so maybe we should worry more about the lingering Y2K problems hidden in giant computer systems than one big crash. But after all the talk of Y2K apocalypse, such problems wouldn't be the end of the world. And that may explain why some experts are now viewing Y2K not as a crisis, but an opportunity with actual competitive advantages for the highly computerized U.S. economy.

CARL GIALLOMBARDO: Folks who have gone through the Y2K process, I think, it has been a real great learning experience. Firms suddenly have a complete picture of their systems world where before they didn't really understand it.

TIM CHO: Time and time again when we talk to senior managers in all these major companies, they actually do not view Y2K as a thing that's been bad. It's been a thing that's brought everybody's level of understanding, level of appreciation, up a huge step, particularly into senior management's ranks.

PAUL SOLMAN: In other words, say the bug hunters, Y2K has been a spur for U.S. firms to think about, organize, and modernize their computer stems. MIT Economist Lester Thurow agrees.

LESTER THUROW: I think Y2K is a positive even if there wasn't going to be a Y2K problem, because it forces you to go through your computer systems, straighten them up, and people, of course, didn't just replace Y2K. They did a lot of improvements.

PAUL SOLMAN: We ran into another possible Y2K plus at the Massachusetts statehouse.

STATE SENATOR SUSAN FARGO, Massachusetts: Hi there.

PAUL SOLMAN: State Senator Susan Fargo has been helping cities and towns cope with Y2K.

PAUL SOLMAN: As we've been doing this story, we've been hearing people more and more say that Y2K might, in fact, be good for the American economy. Does that sound silly to you?

STATE SENATOR SUSAN FARGO: Not at all. Actually I've been thinking about it more from a community-based point of view, that as towns pull together to confront this whatever, time -- ticking time bomb, that they may develop some resources within the community they didn't know they had.

PAUL SOLMAN: Fargo says towns in her area, like Concord, Massachusetts, are using Y2K as a training ground for any emergency-- earthquake, flood. They are finding out who in town can do what if public service or utilities were to fail.

STATE SENATOR SUSAN FARGO: You may have somebody in the neighbor hood who's really good at chopping wood, and you may have people that are doctors in the area. Kids are terrific at resolving computer issues.

PAUL SOLMAN: In the process, says Fargo, America might again feel the stirrings of community.

STATE SENATOR SUSAN FARGO: I mean, I would compare it perhaps to World War II, when people on the home front pulled together and everybody pitched in.

PAUL SOLMAN: So Y2K could benefit U.S. companies, communities, and also, some experts now say, the work force, because the U.S., already ahead in computer innovation, has used Y2K to speed the recruitment of the globe's top high-tech talent.

SPOKESMAN: Let me show you some of the programming staff that works here at Primeon. Robert Yang has a Ph.D. from Chinghua University and was a professor at Chinghua for ten years. Jason Zhicheng Shi is the manager of year 2000 development. Jason has two Ph.D.'s. Lu Sun is a project manager, has a Masters in Computer Science from Cinghua University, and ended up number two in his class. His wife ended up number one.

PAUL SOLMAN: Primeon itself was founded by Fred Wang, a member of China's cr me de la cr me Class of '77, the first class to enter the reopened colleges after Mao closed them during the cultural revolution and sent students out into the fields. Wang scored higher than-- get this-- some 200 million potential college applicants. Just to get his spot at one of China's top engineering schools, he was one in 10,000. He has recruited his fellow best and brightest.

PAUL SOLMAN: This really the very smartest of the computer people in china that have you here?

FRED WANG: Yes, I'm sure. Yeah, we have about ten Ph.D.'s and professors. Yeah, it's a very, very-- I mean, they are like a superstar.

PAUL SOLMAN: Superstars like Fred Wang and his top classmates.

JAMES DONOHUE, Vice President, Human Resources, Primeon: Getting people of Fred's quality to do this kind of work in the U.S. is just about impossible. Y2K is not a glamorous business. The Internet's the glamorous business these days. And to go in and basically spend your time cleaning up "other people's messes" when you could be working on Internet and E-commerce type of situations may put you in a big competitive disadvantage. You can't hire people of that quality to do Y2K.

PAUL SOLMAN: Americans won't do it?

JAMES DONOHUE: That's right.

PAUL SOLMAN: But the Chinese will.

JAMES DONOHUE: That's right.

PAUL SOLMAN: To most economists, immigrants are a huge plus for the U.S. economy.

LESTER THUROW: There is no question about it, if you look at immigrants, they've got more get up and go because we know that, right? They got up and went. It's a big advantage when, hey, you can get a fully trained, let's say, computer software engineer to migrate to the United States. That's a plus-plus, right? We don't have to pay for the education and we get the benefits.

PAUL SOLMAN: We get the benefits. Well, not all of us. Not, for instance, older programmers like John Nimmo, relics in the youth-oriented computer industry. Y2K, it was said, would put them back to work fixing the programs they had written way back when.

JOHN NIMMO, Computer Programmer: Well, I certainly thought that this was going to be an opportunity to go back to work full-time.

PAUL SOLMAN: Nimmo was a top guided missile programmer in the 1960's. By the 1980's, he was considered obsolete.

JOHN NIMMO: I applied to over 500 places. I sent out somewhere between 500 and 600 resumes, and I was interviewed in about 35 places, 35 or 40 places, and never received an offer.

PAUL SOLMAN: Because?

JOHN NIMMO: Well, I had to presume it was because of my age. What they're doing is they're hiring people outside of the country and these people have masters degrees in computer science and they do understand the field, but they're willing to work for half price. So you run a company and you want to increase the bottom line, you know, improve profits for your shareholder ? You're not going to hire me at $70,000, $80,000 a year. You're going to hire some guy from another country who is willing to work for $40,000 and he's probably just as capable as I am.

PAUL SOLMAN: For out-to-pasture programmers then, Y2K may have been a minus, a false hope of jobs that were filled by immigrants and younger programmers for whom Y2K has been a blessing. So, after all these twists and turns, what's the bottom line on Y2K? Well, $600 billon is one heck of a repair bill, even if you re upgrading in the process. But if there turns out to be a Y2K crisis, many experts believe that America, by spending so much, will emerge a lot better off than the rest of the world, and that whatever happens, in terms of overall economic efficiency, Y2K will have improved U.S. computer systems, U.S. computer consciousness, the U.S. computer workforce. Amidst visions of catastrophe, it's at least a potentially comforting thought.

FOCUS - AGE OF CELEBRITY

JIM LEHRER: Now, the death of a Kennedy and the culture of celebrity. We begin with an essay by NewsHour regular Richard Rodriguez of the Pacific News Service.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: After the death of John Kennedy, Jr., it was finally clear what had happened to America four decades earlier, when his father became President. During the Kennedy administration, show business, politics, and journalism - the three most important avenues of public life - converged upon one golden street. Forty years later, it fell to television's Barbara Walters to tell us, quite gratuitously, and within hours of John's plane crash, that he had once been rumored to have had an affair with Madonna. During the search for young Kennedy's body, along with those of his wife and sister-in-law, there was otherwise much talk of the Kennedys as our "Royal Family" and John, Jr. as "Prince"; much talk of Camelot in our newspapers and magazines and especially television. The Kennedys, after all, became America's First Family of television. During the first televised presidential debates, when the camera found Richard Nixon perspiring and pale and JFK looking tanned and relaxed, the physical difference was everything. The Kennedy family seemed to us an old order - a dynasty. They were, in fact, new

money, with a winning populist politics. Unlike the Roosevelts or the Rockefellers, the Kennedys invited us to watch them-and we did. JFK had a queenly wife with a queenly name - though the press preferred to call her "Jackie," a familiarity she rebutted and toyed with. She was glamorous - that's all we needed to know. And she had two beautiful children and a flair for myth-making the equal of Hollywood. It was Jackie, after her husband's assassination, who encouraged a Life Magazine writer to name the Kennedy years "Camelot." Last week, Dan Rather, on CBS News, lost his composure reciting the lyrics from the musical, "Camelot" - such now is the stranglehold of myth on journalism. In truth, the Kennedy years saw the beginning of our disastrous involvement in Vietnam and saw growing discontent among black Americans. And we now know the back lot of Camelot was a placeof shadows and brambles. Last week, journalists and Kennedy courtiers - it was hard to tell the difference - gathered on programs, including the NewsHour, to eulogize that black-and-white golden age. One Kennedy functionary suggested that the assassination of JFK was perhaps the central event in American history and the 20th century - hyperbole no one bothered to challenge. In the Age of Celebrity, our interest changes rapidly, but as long as we stay focused, we are capable of big feelings. Mourning may be one of the things we do best, whether for Rudolf Valentino or Judy Garland or Lady Diana. Last week, television showed us images we knew by heart, the hidden years, the Prince Hellion years when we only caught glimpses of him. He told interviewers that his father was simply his father, his life a real life, but we insisted on reading his life mythically in the pages of People Magazine. Nothing he said, in the end, mattered as much as the tiny salute we had seen make at his father's funeral. It was a salute he had been prompted to make and one, he said, he couldn't remember making. That salute would doom him to celebrity hood and make it impossible to avoid our need for him. He edited a magazine, "George", devoted to something called "political life-style". To that extent, he submitted to the terrible, blinding life as style-culture that joins journalists and movie stars and politicians in one tragic round. All last week, outside his Tribeca apartment or at Arlington Cemetery, where the graves of his parents are marked by an "eternal flame," strangers had opinions about where he should be buried. For wasn't he, after all, ours? A journalist at ABC News said that now "the torch passes to Caroline, if she wants it," and over at NBC speculation was that the Kennedy women may become the family's new celebrities. In the end, his sister, Caroline, cast his ashes to the sea where the television camera and our eyes will never be able to find him. I'm Richard Rodriguez.

JIM LEHRER: Media Correspondent Terence Smith has more on this subject.

TERENCE SMITH: Richard Rodriguez referred to ours as the age of celebrity, one that colors public attitudes and journalism today. To explore that further, we're joined by Richard Reeves, an author and syndicated columnist. He was an on-air commentator for CBS News during the coverage of the Kennedy plane crash. Richard Schickel is film critic for "Time" Magazine. He has written about the beginning of he modern celebrity system. And Leo Braudy is a Professor of English at the University of Southern California and author of the "Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History." Gentlemen, welcome to you all. Richard Schickle, I wonder what you thought of the coverage of JFK, Jr.'s death and whether it seemed to you the sort of wretched excess that some people feel it is.

RICHARD SCHICKEL: It's now ritualized wretched excess. It seems to me that the media, most especially led by the all news networks, but then inevitably followed by all the other networks, really are asking the public to take part in what amounted to the old-fashioned death watch. But that was a function of journalism in those days of, you know, a few representatives of the public distilled the essence of the experience and reported it to the public. Now the public is part of that entire process. And I think that makes for an exquisite and tortured mix of public and private experience.

TERENCE SMITH: Professor Braudy, you're a student of fame. Is this age of celebrity different than others before it?

LEO BRAUDY: Well, it's certainly different in the quantity and the available media and the kind of penetration of imagery that washes over as every day and the inescapability of it. It's possible now to keep watching the same story again and again 24 hours a day, and it gets that kind of drumbeat in the blood that there are certainly precedents for in the past but never so extensively.

TERENCE SMITH: But what goes on there, that watching over and over again? Is there this -- the word closure is sometimes used referring to the public.

RICHARD SCHICKEL: That word makes my teeth ache.

TERENCE SMITH: Richard Schickel.

RICHARD SCHICKEL: We have really no right to closure with someone like JFK, Jr.. We don't know him. I mean closure is something that we need to have if someone near and dear to us passes on. But it's a false connection. We are intimately involved with a stranger that we know only as Rodriguez says, through the pages of "People" or through television. And to me, it is an awful presumption on privacy, even though that person may not be, as this man was not, a private citizen.

LEO BRAUDY: I'm not so upset about that, I don't think.

TERENCE SMITH: Professor Braudy, go ahead.

LEO BRAUDY: Yes. I'm not upset about that because I think, in fact, one of the things the media has done, the media world in which we live, has created numerous virtual families. And this is one of our families; that is, we have emotional relations, of course, with people who are nearest and dearest to us but we have other sorts of emotional relations with other kinds of people that we don't know at all. And so it's not so much closure as a kind of repeated ritual that happens to us again and again and that the media treats us to again and again that we participate in.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Richard Reeves, we've had a little technical problem getting through to you, but if you can hear me, I wonder what you think. You participated in this coverage on CBS News through much of this time. Did you feel that it was over the top?

RICHARD REEVES: No, I think it was over covered. You've got to help me here. I think it was over covered, but it was a real story in terms that there were beautiful people there, was suspense, there's the great back story of the Kennedys, everything that entertainment is built on. But I think we have to grow up about television. It's not a media. It's an environment. People are living their lives in interaction with television, and also the question of it -- the same things being repeated over and over again, a lot of that has to do with of course people switch televisions on and off. And just as when they watch a baseball game, the first thing they want to see when they turn on is the score. And, in effect, some of the over and over again is repeating the score for people who, as it were, have just joined the game. My feeling is that that's what journalism is. I think the great problem that comes out of this is the fact that what is done visually now is going to be history. If it's on television, people ten years, fifty years from now, will be watching it. And I also like to say that the business of an age of celebrity, which it certainly is, part of that is the way television has democratized our lives. Everyone is the same size on television. A person going down Demoore Street in Tribeca, or the President of the United States, are the same size on television, and sometimes they sound better than the President does, but there is nothing we can do about all of this. This is the environment in which we live. It's not buying a newspaper.

TERENCE SMITH: Dick Reeves, while we still have you on the phone there, what did you think when you saw, and perhaps participated, as the coverage went on during the burial at sea? Nothing visible was happening, other than a ship off in the mist, and yet it went on, on some channels all day long. What did you think of that?

RICHARD REEVES: Well, I wouldn't spend my day watching it. I suppose some people did, but in a way people getting as close to it as they could at that point, and if that's what they wanted to watch, and if in some way it was important to them, that's fine. I mean, they had the option to live in that part of the environment or go wash the car or do the other things that people do.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Richard Schickel, what do you think of that, of that defense of repetition and of the process?

RICHARD SCHICKEL: Well, I mean, first of all we all know what the score was. And the score was really a very simple score. It seems to me that the second issue that's arisen out of this is this business of the public wishing to participate in the process of mourning, which is someone else' process - you know -- the whole business of leaving flowers and teddy bears and the like at the doorstep of the deceased -- something that started, I think, with Princess Di, maybe it has earlier precedence -- but it is a process by which ordinary people attach themselves to the celebrity of celebrated people. The question of what kind of a celebrity JFK was is another nice question. I mean, you know, he was an obviously agreeable, intelligent young man full of promise that was as yet unfulfilled. So, you know, you have a peculiar creature, a creature who is, you know, basically had celebrity thrust upon him by history, was never able to escape it, but was never able to make it his own in the full sense of the word. And I think that creates a whole bunch of problems along the reality-fantasy continuum that - you know -- cannot be addressed by the simple business of turning on cameras and letting people tune in and out on the drama.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Professor Braudy, what do you think is going on in terms of popular culture when people do leave flowers or teddy bears, as Richard Schickel says, at the site of some tragedy, be it Princess Di or JFK, Jr.?

RICHARD SCHICKEL: Well, I think it's something that's very much connected to the way in which the media works these days in and our relationship to the media, and particularly to television. It's not just as Richard Reeves was saying that everybody is the same size on television. They are also in our living rooms. They are part of some kind of extended family. And we feel that they are somehow, at least emotionally, I mean, never have met them in the three dimensional flesh, but they are somehow part of our emotional family. And so we bring them gifts; we bring them flowers when they are gone. We feel upset. And the Kennedys particularly, I think, are that kind of family. I mean, look at all the sitcoms on TV. The premise is the Cheers syndrome almost -- the place where everybody knows your name. Well, it's not that everybody knows your name, you know their name, too. The Kennedys may not know your name but you certainly know their name. They're part of your family. They are certainly probably the prime American family in this way for our participation in the events of their lives. And so that virtual family, that virtual kind of emotion -- I don't mean to denigrate it by saying it's virtual. It's a different kind of emotion -- we exploit, we feel good about when we see that ship floating out there, it's about the emotional place of that ship, rather than the factual place of that ship.

TERENCE SMITH: And, Dick Reeves, if you can still hear me, does this seem to you a kind of redefinition of news of the notion of news?

RICHARD REEVES: I tend to think that the news is the same. This was an interesting story by any measure in popular media. Again it had people we knew. There was suspense and part of it was the government and airline people were - just refused to admit at the beginning that they knew what had happened. It took more than 24-48 hours for that to play out. So that I think it's legitimate news - news is what's happening at the moment. You get a report, let's say, Dallas, the President has been shot. Oh, my God. Someone has shot at the President. Oh, my God, has he been hit? Yes, he's been hit. Oh, my God, is it serious? Yes, it's serious. Is it life threatening? Yes. That's the suspense of journalism that goes on. The bigger problem, I think, is how we will deal with the kind of supply side history. That is, whatever there are pictures of are going to live in some sort of digital future of history while extraordinarily important things that were not photographed or were not on film may die out or just be the property of an elite of people who do old-fashioned things like read books.

TERENCE SMITH: Richard Schickel, supply-side history? Is that what we're getting here?

RICHARD SCHICKEL: I think it is getting more and more important to cling to a traditional definition of reality. I think here are realities that are not photographable realities. They are realities in our daily lives, our real family lives, if you will. I think it's important to keep the emotions appropriate to those separate from these more inchoate virtual family emotions. Obviously one is sympathetic to those people. But I think there was something in this story that I think no one has mentioned here and that is the really marvelous way the Kennedys handled it -- burying him at sea, the private memorial services, the incredibly graceful eulogy of Ted Kennedy. There was a real sense on the part of the Kennedys, I felt, to defend themselves against these intrusions, without being rude about it. And I think that if there was anything hopeful in this death, it was in their response to this clawing into their privacy.

TERENCE SMITH: Intrusion, clawing into privacy, Professor Braudy? Is that what's going on?

LEO BRAUDY: Well, one of the most interesting things that's happened certainly over the last ten years or so, let's say in the intensification of the age of celebrity is this continued erasure of the line between the public and the private, and certainly the idea that there is a virtual family and a real family encourages the fuzzing over of that line. And many people do it. Now many people no, matter -- perhaps closure is not a very good word. I used to think it only had to do with the Senate, but in fact for individuals, if somebody is feeling upset and they take a bouquet of flowers and they drop it there and don't feel as upset anymore and they feel they've made their statement, that's fine. If they start stalking; if they start doing all the extreme kinds of celebrity attacking, crossing the line between public and private behavior that we're all too familiar with, then it moves into a kind of madness.

TERENCE SMITH: A final word, Richard Reeves, if you can still hear me. I have the feeling that as you went through this process, you were more sympathetic to it than when you started out. Is that correct?

RICHARD REEVES: Well, in terms -- I was working for CBS, yes I did become more sympathetic to it.

TERENCE SMITH: Why?

RICHARD REEVES: Because one, these people have checks out there all the time and as soon as they went away from the story, half the audience tuned to other channels which were still covering it. And second, I had never really understood -- I was sitting next to Dan Rather for hour after hour -- why the redundancy existed and it was because you had to assume that people were coming on who had not been on before and you did have to catch up to do that. So I did -- I became sympathetic enough to think television is here. It's our environment, get used to it.

TERENCE SMITH: Dick Reeves, Professor Braudy, Richard Schickel, thank you all three very much.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday. President Clinton said a proposed Republican tax cut threatens Medicare and the elderly women dependent on it. The Senate is to begin debate tomorrow on its version of the $800 billion tax plan. The House voted to continue normal trade relations with China. And late today, the U.S. And Russia announced a new round of talks to reduce nuclear weapons would begin next month in Moscow. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.