The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Friday, dissident playwright Vaclav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia, its first non-Communist leader in 41 years. The Vatican says it wants Manuel Noriega to leave its embassy in Panama. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: After the News Summary, David Gergen & Mark Shields offer their last comments of 1989, six Americans from the arts world look back on the 1980s and essayist Penny Stallings has some words about collectibles.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Czechoslovakia today elected its first non- Communist president in 41 years. Dissident playwright Vaclav Havel who just eight months ago was a political prisoner of Prague's hardline regime was unanimously chosen by parliament this morning. The inauguration ceremony was held at the medieval castle in the heart of Prague. By his side was Alexander Dubcek, forced out of office in 1968, now chairman of the new parliament. Outside Havel addressed thousands of supporters. He told them, "I won't betray your trust. I will take the country to free elections, and that's a task for us all." Havel has promised to give up the presidency after free elections which are scheduled for the spring. In Romania today, there was scattered shooting in the capital. But government officials said the main danger of Nicolae Ceausescu's security forces has passed. There was some evidence of that as army tanks began leaving Bucharest for home bases. The government said most of the pro-Ceausescu forces have surrendered. There was new information today on the dictator's final days and the events leading up to his capture and execution. We have a report from Bucharest by Paul Davies of Independent Television News.

PAUL DAVIES: The tyrant's last public appearance. It's now known that even as Pres. Ceausescu addressed the crowd from the balcony of his palace last Thursday making one last attempt to end the protest sweeping through his country, he already had an escape plan worked out. ITN has learnt that when the president's speech was drowned by an angry crowd, that plan went into operation. The president and his wife fled the capital the next morning in a helicopter which carried them to a prearranged meeting with his chauffeur-driven car. That night they ran into a roadblock like one. They were 60 miles West of the capital. Capt. Mihai Lupoi, the army representative in the new government, was called to the scene.

CAPT. LUPOI: He was stopped by the policeman and the policeman recognized him and told the people around him he is the president. They took him, the president, with the wife.

MR. DAVIES: A crowd of people mobbed the car then?

CAPT. LUPOI: Yes, and they took him prisoner and gave him to the military unit.

MR. DAVIES: The captain revealed the president was placed in an armored car. It was 72 hours that same vehicle delivered him for his trial. For those three days, the armored car with the deposed president inside had been kept constantly on the move to prevent any attempt to free him.

MR. DAVIES: Now the time that he was being held in an armored car some 100 kilometers outside of Bucharest, the secret police tried to attack a building here in the city and a lot of them died. They just got it totally wrong, did they?

CAPT. LUPOI: Yes, that's correct, but as long as he was alive, they had a chance to survive. Then that's the reason we decided to charge and shoot him immediately.

MR. DAVIES: The white bag carried by the president's wife, Elena Ceausescu, contained his medicines and insulin, but the president, a diabetic, refused to take his treatment to the end, a last act of defiance from a defeated man.

MR. LEHRER: The Vatican wants Manuel Noriega out of its embassy in Panama City. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Nevaro said today Noriega could not be forced to leave but he has been asked to do so on his own. Noriega took refuge at the embassy Christmas eve. In Panama City, the body of an American teacher was found. Reports said Raymond Dragseth was executed during or just before the U.S. invasion. No other details were immediately available. Dragseth is the third American civilian killed in the conflict. Panama's new leaders continued about the business of governing. Vice Pres. Ricardo Aries Calderon met with Panama's new defense chiefs. Afterward he told recruits for the security forces they were important to rebuilding Panama and he emphasized respect for human rights. In New York, the United Nation's adopted a resolution deploring the U.S. invasion. It called the action a "flagrant violation of international law". The vote was 75 to 20 with 40 abstentions. The 75 votes represents less than half of the 159 member assembly.

MR. MacNeil: In Hong Kong today, Vietnamese refugees rioted in a detention center on Lantow Island after police tried to search the area for homemade weapons. Hong Kong recently began repatriating refugees back to Vietnam. Many of them have said they will not go without a fight. We have a report from Hong Kong by Norman Reese of Independent Television News.

MR. REESE: Trouble had been brewing at Hong Kong's camps all day, but most ominously here at the Timawan Camp from which the government plans to select the next group of Vietnamese to be forcibly repatriated aroutine search for weapons was resisted and Hong Kong's security forces set out to assert their authority with up to 400 Sea Launch riot police. Carrying shields and armed with batons and tear gas grenades, they stormed the camp. What followed was one of the most violent encounters yet between Vietnamese boat people and Hong Kong's police. A government spokesman claimed the boat people pushed their women and children to the front line to make their operation more difficult and claimed the use of gas was essential to retain control. Camp people could be seen on the roofs of buildings as helicopters circled overhead. Fires spread through the dense forest surrounding the camp which is on an isolated part of one of the colony's many islands. Women and children were separated from the violence and brought down to the comparative sanctuary of the beach. Authorities said that many of the boat people were armed and that more than 400 makeshift weapons had been seized. The injured were ferried by boat to a hospital at Hong Kong Island 10 miles away. Up to 30 people are said to have been hurt and there have been 19 arrests.

MR. MacNeil: About 44,000 Vietnamese have fled to Hong Kong since June of last year. Since March, only 874 have voluntarily chosen to go back to Vietnam.

MR. LEHRER: Back in this country, the government's major economic look ahead number was out today. The monthly index of leading indicators rose .1 percent in November. The Commerce Department also published its economic predictions for next year. It forecasts a 2 percent growth rate overall for 1990.

MR. MacNeil: That's it for the News Summary. Still ahead [FOCUS - GERGEN & SHIELDS] Gergen & Shields, artists look at the 80's [SERIES - EVALUATING THE 80'S], and tomorrow's collectibles [ESSAY - KITSCH AS KITSCH CAN]. FOCUS - GERGEN & SHIELDS

MR. LEHRER: This is the last Friday night of 1989, which means it is the last chance of 1989 to hear from Gergen & Shields. David Gergen, Editor at Large of U.S. News & World Report, Mark Shields, Syndicated Columnist for the Washington Post. David, Panama, how does the invasion look 9 days later?

DAVID GERGEN, U.S. News & World Report: Well, I think it's been in American terms successful militarily, the affair is over basically. It accomplished its political purpose, which was to depose the government of Noriega and to put in place a democratic government. Politically here at home it's played extraordinarily well. It's surprising, in fact, how jingoistic this country has become about this. The press and everybody else seems to be celebrating. I do think what we're seeing evolve, interestingly enough, is possibly a new role for the United States military in the post war era, and that is in this hemisphere increasingly I think the military is going to be used for such police actions. The Bush administration this week just started talking, in fact, just yesterday, the press spokesmen started talking about using U.S. military forces to cordon off, to draw a tight noose around Colombia and the drug exports that are coming out of Colombia. So what we're seeing in Panama may be the first chapter of more to come.

MR. LEHRER: Is there any possibility left, Mark, for this thing to turn into a disaster for the Bush administration, or are they over the hump?

MARK SHIELDS, Washington Post: I don't see it, Jim. I think they're very much over the hump right now. I think that even though Noriega is not in our clutches, he is, as David put it, out of power, and out of play, as far as an opposition figure or a rallying point fordissident or anti-government forces.

MR. LEHRER: All this focus on the fact that he's still at the Vatican embassy and all of that, does it have a smell of irrelevance to it to you, or is that just me? What difference does it make where he is now?

MR. SHIELDS: That's right. It does. And it's kind of interesting and it's seen a number of people commenting who are international lawyers. I mean, it's a whole new area. I honestly don't know much about it and if someone seeks sanctuary, the Church has provided this over the years and yet the Vatican is a temporal state here and that Endara, himself, had sought sanctuary in the very same building, so it does, I mean, he's no longer a major player. The other thing that is kind of fascinating is sort of the Robin Leach posthumous lifestyles of the rich and famous that we go through. We get a peak at his red underwear and his pornographic videotapes.

MR. LEHRER: Similar to the Marcos and we've also got Ceausescu's palace has been unveiled this week.

MR. SHIELDS: Exactly. Apparently despots have rich tastes.

MR. GERGEN: But they're not the only ones. But I think it does have some relevance, if I might add this qualifier. It seems to me where he goes next is remaining an important question. The working assumption in this country is that we ought to get him back here and put him on trial. My own minority view is that we're better off if we don't have him back here. The best thing we can do in terms of our Latin relations is to move on, to get this episode behind us. To bring him back here, is going to have a very messy trial. Rep. Rangel said yesterday I think correctly it would be a circus. You can imagine all the wrangling over documents, about the CIA, and one thing and other with the lawyers that he would hire. And I think we have a strong national interest now in shoring up Panama and shoring up democracies elsewhere in Latin America, and the best way to get on with that is to put this affair behind us quickly, declare we've succeeded. We have got a new democratic government in power. Let's put Noriega behind us. Let's put him somewhere where he can't do much harm, but not in the United States for a long, messy trial.

MR. LEHRER: Well, look, let's have some fancy year end talk now. What, okay, add in Panama, Mark, and what does it all add up to as an end of a first year for George Bush and his presidency?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, George Bush, I'm frank to say, is a lot better off politically a year into his presidency than I thought he'd be. I'm sure David thought he'd be in the high or low mid 70s and the job rating above that of Ronald Reagan. George Bush I think has shown some qualities that I think Americans have found rather appealing and reacted favorably to. I mean, he's somebody who has never complained about the presidency. There's no crown of thorns or splendid misery. He seems to like the work he's doing. He's enjoying it. He's somebody who's genuinely comfortable with his own family, which is the American ambivalence that we have toward our president and our first family. We want them to be someone, people who are comfortable with each other, and he certainly embodies that. And he's been successful. I mean, he's been really deprived of political opposition at home. The Democrats went through their civil war in a leper colony period earlier in the year.

MR. LEHRER: Civil war.

MR. SHIELDS: Tony Coelho, Jim Wright.

MR. GERGEN: He's been waiting all year, it had to be a year end - -

MR. SHIELDS: Thank you very much, David. I have been waiting all year to get this in.And internationally, of course, as Mikhail Gorbachev is striving mightily and artfully to hold together with baling wire and chewing gum a Soviet empire that's come unglued and undone, so he's really been, I think he's done exceedingly well. I still don't have a sense of what George Bush's vision for the country and for his own administration is. Maybe I'm missing it, maybe David knows what it is.

MR. GERGEN: I'm not sure I do either. I do agree with mark about the point that he's certainly better off today than he was a year ago and I think in particular because he's done so well on foreign policy pretty well across the board. One I think would make an exception with China, some might disagree on Panama, but certainly he has kept arms control on track. He is moving toward major agreements in 1990, and I think that those can be regarded as major accomplishments. He's handled East-West relations well. The reserve that he has shown in the East-West relations has served the country well, and I think that he has worked well with our NATO partner, he's kept NATO and Europe together reasonably well through a tumultuous period, so I think on that score he deserves high marks. Politically, he's a surprise of the year here at home. He's much higher here in the polls than anyone might have imagined, particularly after his slow start in January and February. The one place I would --

MR. LEHRER: Do you think it's because of things he has accomplished or problems he's avoided?

MR. GERGEN: Well, I think he's managed well, and I think he has, Jim, convinced people that he's competent, and that he's honest, that he's a man of integrity on the job, and people are rather comfortable with him now in the presidency, and I think a lot of things have broken his way frankly. He did have an economy which has broken his way. But one point which I do think one would have to raise questions is how he well he has prepared the country domestically for its future. If you look across the board on the budget deficit, on the environment, in which case you know, healthcare, a series of issues. There's been a great deal of rhetoric in Washington, but not much accomplished here in 1989, and I think that really puts a burden on both Bush and the Congress in 1990. Increasingly, as the military becomes less relevant in the 1990s, as military force becomes less relevant in super power terms, we're going to be judged on our economic strength and economic accomplishments, and other countries in Europe and Japan and Asia are rebuilding their economies, we are simply not doing that.

MR. LEHRER: That could be, could it not, Mark, just a lack of interest on the part of George Bush? I don't say a lack of interest on domestic. It's just that he's so much more interested in foreign affairs and security things, is he not?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, it certainly could be, but he, by any definition, I think as even most ardent partisans would acknowledge, Jim, has let the first year go by without defining what he intends to do and without saying, making the presidency the central focal place of national leadership, and saying this is what I believe we ought to be about as a people, and I think that's still missing. Now the test I guess of a success is that I have yet to see and I don't know anybody else who's seen a "Dump Bush" button, and here we are, he's the first President and a year into the Presidency that there hasn't been a "Dump Bush". There was a "Dump Carter", there was a "Dump Reagan", there was a "Dump Ford".

MR. GERGEN: There was a theory in the White House going in,that year one domestically ought to be used to clean up what they thought were the problems left over from the Reagan administration such as the thrift crisis and they did attack that. I think they deserve credit for that, but that's the predicate for saying year two, the beginning of year two ought to be the time when he lays out his domestic agenda, and we really get a sense of where George Bush is going.

MR. LEHRER: You mention the Democrats, Mark. How would you assess where the loyal opposition stands right at this moment, going into 1990, the new guys?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, I think the Democrats are off balance and I think George Bush has knocked them off balance.

MR. LEHRER: They under estimated him?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, they under estimated him. Most of all they wanted to run against him in 1988. He was the one guy, I mean, he was sort of the embodiment of everything they saw as vulnerable in 1988. He was the vice president. He was tarnished with the shortcomings of the Reagan administration, he hadn't been there whether it was Noriega, Iran-Contra, or whatever. They saw Dole as a, Bob Dole as a formidable adversary with an appeal to Democrats. They got George Bush, they got the guy they wanted to run against and he beat them. All right, that's the first thing. The second thing is that George Bush unlike Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan cannot be ignored in the equation of George Bush, Ronald Reagan made it okay to say you like a President again. We'd been through 20 years of failed presidencies and Ronald Reagan by being a successful two term President, which I'm reluctant to concede but have to, am forced to do by empirical evidence --

MR. GERGEN: It took a full year, 1989, all the way through.

MR. SHIELDS: No, but he was two term, a successful two term President, and because he was, it became acceptable to say you like a President again. In comes George Bush and unlike Reagan who provided Democrats with a great target to run against in the off years because he was out to dismantle government, and you know, you could run against him, this guy wants to take apart social security or whatever else. George Bush isn't that sort of a fellow. He temperamentally, I think and viscerally is sort of a liberal Republican in the sense of wanting government to work.

MR. GERGEN: I think the Democrats are off balance for a different reason. They were demoralized in the beginning, they started coming together in the fall and then they went home. And since then we've had, the Berlin Wall has fallen, we've had all these international events swept across the board and international events from the Congress is pre-eminently a stage for the President to play on and the Democrats are nowhere in this situation. They have nothing to say. They had nothing to say about Panama. They had very little to say about Eastern Europe. They just like Bush need an agenda for the second year, what they want to accomplish.

MR. LEHRER: But does it hurt them when they're not opposing the President, everything the President does?

MR. GERGEN: It does not necessarily hurt them in terms of electing people to the Senate or to governorships. I mean, we've seen in 1989 they've done very very well. It hurts them in trying to become a national party in recapturing the White House and setting the national agenda.

MR. LEHRER: So if Mark says President Bush is not offering a national agenda, a national vision, the Democrats aren't doing it either?

MR. SHIELDS: No, but under our system, Jim, the presidential system, the President proposes and the Congress disposes, and one doesn't really expect the Congress or the congressional party to come up with an agenda in specific, dramatic terms as a President does.

MR. GERGEN: Jim Wright for all of his troubles, in the 100th Congress you have to say, the last two years of the Reagan administration, the Democrats seized control of the agenda and ran with it.

MR. SHIELDS: The last two years or the second term of Ronald Reagan's Presidency.

MR. GERGEN: That's right.

MR. SHIELDS: We're talking about the first year of George Bush's.

MR. GERGEN: That's their challenge for the second year of George Bush's administration.

MR. SHIELDS: That's what you say, Mr. Gergen. Happy new year.

MR. LEHRER: And a happy new year to both of you and thank you very much.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the Newshour, artists and writers look at the 80's and essayist Penny Stallings examines future collectibles. SERIES - EVALUATING THE 80'S

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight we continue our look at the decade just ending, different perspectives of what made the 1980s memorable. Tonight the views of six leading writers and artists. Wendy Wasserstein is a playwright and essayist whose play, "The Heidi Chronicles", won a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize in 1989. She's currently compiling a collection of her essays for a book called "Bachelor Girls". Isaac Stern, the violinist, has just completed an international tour. In recent years, he led the effort to save New York's Carnegie Hall from demolition. He will be performing with the San Francisco Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra in the coming months. Robert Stone is a novelist whose book, "Dog Soldiers", won a national book award in 1975. He is now working on his fifth novel, called "Outer Bridge Reach". August Wilson is a playwright whose recent play, "Fences", won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award as well as a Drama Critic Circle Award. [SCENE FROM "FENCES" WITH JAMES EARL JONES]

MR. MacNeil: Wilson is in New York now rehearsing his play, "The Piano Lesson". Sam Gilliam is an abstract artist whose works appear in major museums throughout the country. He's won several honors, including a fellowship from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Ellen Gilchrist is an author whose latest short story collection is "The Anna Papers". An earlier collection of stories titled "Victory Over Japan" won her an American book award in 1984. She joins us tonight from Dallas. Ms. Gilchrist, what will be memorable to you about the 80's?

ELLEN GILCHRIST, Writer: Oh, so many things. So many things, Robin. But the events that began when the people of Estonia began to sing for their freedom and have now spread all the way down to Romania, this is amazing. I can't leave my television set. In 1980, I didn't even own a television set and now I can't quit watching it.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Wilson, for you, the 80's.

AUGUST WILSON, Playwright: I think in order to determine it you have to get into the 90's to see what was significant and what was memorable about the 80's to see what happened the past 10 years that had an impact. I think the last month or so in the 80's is going to wipe out everything that happened prior to that. I think in black American culture, for me the emergence of rap is a very vibrant expression of the culture and the emergence of the black director is personified by Spike Lee I think were two important developments in black American cultural.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Stern, the 80's for you, the most memorable happenings in the 80's.

ISAAC STERN, Violinist: The most memorable. I think that has already been touched upon by the others and also by the people you had on your science group yesterday, the impact of television on all the arts, the changing pace of acceptance of patience to accept the time to pay attention to the inner values of the arts, and I think to a marked difference in the 80's which will see its effect in the 90's is the breakdown of encouragement in private support for the arts without a balancing effort for support from the government all leading to an educational lack which I think is the root of all of the problems facing all of us as artists. I do believe that education, the education of educators as well as young people is the most singly important priority that we have, youth.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Gilliam, what do you think most significant about the 80's?

SAM GILLIAM, Artist: I think the rise in distribution of minorities within the arts and the defeat of Sen. Helms around the obscenity proposals.

MR. MacNeil: You mean the case of the National Endowment for the Arts and its funding of the Maple Thorpe photographic exhibition, that issue?

MR. GILLIAM: Yes, I do.

MR. MacNeil: How do you feel, Ms. Wasserstein, about the 80's? What is do you think most important about them?

WENDY WASSERSTEIN, Playwright: Just before coming on here, I heard that Vaclav Havel was made president of Czechoslovakia, and I thought any decade that ends with a playwright becoming president of Czechoslovakia has come out all right actually. And I think I agree with Mr. Wilson in terms of a broadening of perspective, especially in the arts in terms of women writers, women artists, black writers, black artists, in terms of what is a point of view has seemed to become much broader and I hope into the 90's will become even more broad.

MR. MacNeil: As a mere white male, Mr. Stone, how do the 80's strike you?

ROBERT STONE, Novelist: I think in American fiction the 80's were the time during which the old competition between realism and fiction and the modes of fiction that just set out to replace it were obviated by the question just being resolved more or less by itself. I think the best work that was done in the 80's demonstrated that a documentary or downright style of narrative did not have any more of a handle on reality than a narrative style that was more associative and indirect and poetic, and on the other hand, that a style of addressing reality that was more poetic, that the elusive nature of reality could be pursued just as effectively indirectly and through evocation as by modes that were deliberately and heavily realistic. I think the question just resolved itself.

MR. MacNeil: An escape from realism, you mean, or an escape from the fetters of realism in the 80's, is --

MR. STONE: I think really that we were, both sides in this controversy were deluding themselves. I mean, those who argued in favor of realism I think felt that there was some special relationship that could be forged between a simple narrative and things themselves, and I don't think that's true. I mean, there's no one narrative style that exists in a closer relationship to things than another. I mean, reality is here and language is here, and I mean, the most simple descriptive writing can evoke the most complicated and elusive aspects of reality in life.

MR. MacNeil: Do you have a comment on that, Ms. Gilchrist?

MS. GILCHRIST: I don't like to think about writing in those terms. I just know what I like and I know what I want to do and I do that and I know what I like to read and I read that, and I don't think abstractly about it. I just react to work.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Gilliam, you are an abstractionist. Is there a symbol that you can think of, a visual symbol or is there something that symbolizes the 80's that you will remember as being characteristic of the 1980's?

MR. GILLIAM: Yes, the event of commodities, this is commodities within the visual arts, this is the use of TV and the public media, which is present now.

MR. MacNeil: Who else has a symbol for the 1980's?

MR. WILSON: What best I remember I think that characterizes '80 is seeing someone step over a person lying on a sidewalk to go into a store to purchase a $2,000 watch. I think for me that says a lot about where we are as a culture and if culture is how you live and morality is what it means, then I think we have to question what is the meaning of our lives. We're talking about the National Endowment of the Arts. If we endow the arts for $153 million and we endow the military with $530 million to build one airplane, you see, one is creative, the arts is creative, the other is destructive, and I think that we as a culture have to ask what is the meaning of our lives, and is this the culture in which we want to live and is this the culture which we want to pass on to our kids. You see, I would rather, and I understand the importance of defending the shores of America from foreign invasion, but can we do it with $100 million bombers, and $530 million for that, because the arts are going to help to define the culture by presenting ideas that can possibly change and alter the way that we live.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. Wasserstein, do you want to comment on that, or do you have a symbol of your own for the 80's, something that sums up the 80's for you?

MS. WASSERSTEIN: Gosh, I remember this picture of Nancy Reagan sitting on Mr. T's lap at Christmas, and somehow at one point that summed up the down side of the 80's to me and sort of commercialism of the 80's and the arts, I often thought what was wrong with there seemed to be in a sense formed not over content but just form became the content. It didn't matter what was the morality, the ethics or what it was about, just as long as it looked pretty good or it seemed good, and I find what's interesting in terms of writing, as we get to the end of the decade, at least play writing is, there is, in fact, a coming back to story telling, a coming back to reflecting what is going on in this society, a coming back to what is the content here, and it's not just the veneer or the sheen, and I find that very exciting going into the 90's.

MR. MacNeil: Form over content in the 80's, Mr. Stern?

MR. STERN: Again, back to television, which has been the catalyst of so much political change in these dizzying weeks that we've gone through, I remember this program when I first heard of a somewhat unknown preallot many years giving an interview to you in Paris, his name was Ayatollah Khomeini. Now he used the media to create another revolution and nothing in the arts is untouched by the social revolts that go on in our time. What troubles me is the same thing, the images that you all bring up, is how to bring images to those young people whom I think are always gifted. I think there is no young child without talent, but I do believe deeply that we have failed them with bad teaching, bad schooling, and that now today that we read that libraries will close and be unavailable to young people on Saturdays in this city of all cities is I think outrageous in terms of priorities. The whole idea, everything that we write about, whether it's writing, theater, the plastic arts, thought, any kind, music, itself, is an evocation of all the arts. It's the most natural form because it doesn't, it's not limited by words or images. Each one can have his own or her own image, but there is a wonderment between one note and another, one sound and another, which you have to take time, a little time to understand, not be shouted at, not be screamed at, not be repeated, just to listen, and how do you say ah ha, or ha ah, or ha ha, or ha -- ah, same words, but how do you get there? The in-between, the same thing we try in all our forms is how we get from one small idea to another.

MR. MacNeil: And you think the mass media are discouraging or not providing the opportunities or the time to listen?

MR. STERN: Well, they have exploded in many ways. In the first place, this camera, which is the most all seeing eye that we have, we're all subject to it. For opera, for ballet, it works wonderfully. For music, which is much less a moving thing, the greatest thing the camera does for example are professional football games, that's the greatest use of television cameras we see today, they're wonderful. But when you have to show an idea, then the person behind the camera also has to use the camera as an artistic instrument. How do you show the evolution of an idea or make people want to hear the next word you're going to say?

MR. MacNeil: It depends who's saying them, I guess. Do you have a symbol for the 1980's, Mr. Stone?

MR. STONE: I don't know if there's one symbol. One thing that's interesting about the 80's in terms of style as opposed to content is the disappearance of Bohemia, as far as I can tell. I mean, the Bohemian style among artists, at least among writers, seems to have just disappeared. When I was younger, I mean, we had to externalize our sacred mission and we lived in holy poverty and the girls wore black and now it seems as though writers and politicians and gangsters and stock brokers are all in the same restaurants and they're all pursuing the same style of life.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. Gilchrist, you say what, Ms. Gilchrist?

MS. GILCHRIST: I have on black. Mr. Stone should come to Fayetteville, Arkansas. We still have Bohemians there.

MR. MacNeil: Bohemian is the need to proclaim a separate identity and to differentiate yourself from ordinary people and you say artists aren't doing that anymore.

MR. STONE: It doesn't seem to me that they are.

MR. WILSON: I think rap artists are doing it. I think the whole thing with rap is they are defining themselves and they are working out among themselves without any help from us and I was going to respond to Mr. Stern, we have failed in educating them so the rappers are educating themselves. They are working out what their social relationships are. They are working out their definition of themselves, the relations to the society they live in. They're working out their own sexual codes of conduct, and all this stuff is happening, and I think that Robert was saying earlier about the Bohemia, they've just evolved into something else that you and I no longer recognize. And I think it is important to keep up with what's happening with the younger people because they are moving without us.

MR. STERN: Oh, there are a lot of Bohemians still among the artists. They have their own version of Bohemia today which they follow and they are influencing a lot of younger people. There is more activity in some ways among young people. As we speak tonight, there is going to be a concert at Carnegie Hall, what they call the New York Symphony, it's what they call a Christmas Seminar with Alexander Schneider, a whole group of kids between the ages of 15 and 21. They play with a passion and a joy that is so communicative it demands the ear of the listener. We heard another group of young people between 11 and 13. There are young people, there are talents. There is a life out there that all it needs to do is to be encouraged and to be heard, but it does need the willing hand of authority and teachers. I'm reminded sometimes of what the Russians used to tell me, that they're never afraid of the minister of culture, only the culture of the minister. The new Russian cultural minister is really something very exciting.

MR. MacNeil: There's an idea that interests me and I'm wondering if you think there's an effect. Ellen Gilchrist, has the political conservatives of the 1980's affected the arts?

MS. GILCHRIST: I hope not. I don't, I don't really think about things affecting the arts. I think about the culture in general. I'm 54 years old and I think of the whole thing. If I get to see the images that have affected me, I guess I'll have to be the Pollyanna of this panel because I see those young people up in Alaska washing birds. Every time I see a bunch of kids in California or Alaska washing birds, I think that's more important than the fact that somebody was dumb enough to dump all that oil on the shores, because that's the future and that's what will give birth to the future. Also, I know most of the young people that I know carry cards in their pocket saying that if they die someone can have their eyes, their livers, their kidneys, their hands, their feet, these are the images of the 80's that have affected me.

MR. MacNeil: Who'd like to come in on this question of the conservative, the political conservatives in which so marked the 80's in public life? Have they leaked into the arts?

MR. WILSON: I think it's part of the culture and I think they've tremendously affected the culture. We're talking about people dying. The death rate among young blacks, kids in D.C., murder victims because of the drugs, is astounding.

MR. MacNeil: But how's that connected with political conservatism?

MR. WILSON: No, I think the conservative ideas, I have allowed for a certain cultural, a certain morality, certain meanings of life to foster and to grow. You cannot present a liberal idea. They are no longer fashionable. They were fashionable in the 60's. You know, this is the 80's. They were no longer fashionable. All of these things contribute to the climate in which we live our lives, the fact that we do spend $530 million on a bomber says something I think very crucial to who we are. We have to ask ourselves is this who we want to be? We know this is who we are, but is this the kind of culture that we want to pass on to our kids? If it is, then okay. If it's not, then I think that we should do something about. And we should be, those who want to change it have to be as ardent as those who are willing to accept it.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Gilliam, do you find yourself painting in any way differently because there have been conservative administrations in Washington and the culture has been, that liberal ideas have gone out of fashion?

MR. GILLIAM: No, but maybe I should, meaning that if things had not changed this summer in terms of the obscenity amendment, I would have been, I would have been acting out. I think that one of the things that one thinks about that the conservatives has affected in the arts has been the lessening of private support in the arts and turning it more into cooperative support. So I mean that we titillate between different options now than we would 15 years ago. So that there's not as broad a support, there's only a single source.

MR. STERN: There is a little difference there that I think you should emphasize between the creative artist who either leads or mirrors ideas in society and the recreative art, the performer.

MR. MacNeil: The interpreter.

MR. STERN: The interpreter who sees the possibility and carries the art form still further through his or her talent and then has to give it to a much larger audience, but the necessities, the platforms that the performing arts must of necessity have, have also been sharply affected by the 80's, again to a degree both by political conservatism in our support area, but also by the success, by the great success of pop music commercially. It has become a business as much as it is an art form, and it's not denigrating it when you say that, but it does create a business that is frighteningly successful for a short time for certain people. We look at the --

MR. MacNeil: Why is that frightening or worrying?

MR. STERN: Because it makes other people think that art which does not earn its way is not good enough, and if they can earn it, why can't you? It's a completely different concept. It's the wrong, it's putting the emphasis in the wrong place. There is no way of equating the instant popularity, particularly in our decades, the decades of the 80's, the 70's and the 80's, that really exploded where the whole record industry changed, where television changed everything, where everything was available quickly, loudly for a short time. Now we've been going through political experiences of the most shattering kind. All of us are sitting here watching history being made before our eyes which we would have not expected a few weeks ago. But the fact is in music, which someone when asked about the rarified atmosphere, I reared a little bit at that, because Mozart and Beethoven and Bach and Schubert and Brahms will go on despite the changes that are in history now and will five, ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty years from now also continue as they continued before the revolutions.

MR. MacNeil: Let me pick up with Mr. Stone on Mr. Stern's idea that in the 80's it became clear that arts have to pay their way to be regarded as successful and viable.

MR. STONE: Well, I think that was always clear and certainly it's made clear in every decade. Something else that's going on I think that may be political, now I'm oh for two so far. I started talking about the idea that realism and its opposites were coming together, and I was told that wasn't important, and then I said I thought that Bohemia was disappearing and I was told that I was wrong about that. Now I'm going to try something else. I'm going to suggest that the avant garde is as an artistic conception, as a concept in art, is disappearing. I think it was grafted from technology onto art and I think that as we come to the end of this century, we're really seeing the end of that forced association, and I think this is really political. I think there's a kind of coming to terms with the possible that is essentially political and in its artistic expression I think we see the withering away of the idea of an avant garde in art, so I will now sit back and await correction.

MR. MacNeil: Has the avant garde withered away?

MS. WASSERSTEIN: Oh, dear. I want to say, but I don't think so actually. But I think what's happened is because it is so difficult to be an artist in this society and to financially be one that what happens is you get involved with trying to make the avant garde mainstream and a lot of corporate funding and how do you get that funding, and it becomes so in some ways maybe it has, but I think if you look at like Bab and the Brooklyn economy and the vast success of that, I think what's happened is the avant garde has in some ways become mainstream, so maybe in that case it's no longer avant garde.

MR. WILSON: Is that not going to create a new avant garde --

MR. MacNeil: Isn't avant garde simply what's newer than anything else, I mean, ahead of everything else? Or did it have to be self- consciously ahead of everything else?

MR. STONE: Well, I think there was a real ideology of the necessity. I think the feeling was that it was a philosophical necessity to replace the obsolescence in art just as there was a technical necessity, a kind of impulse in the universe, a constant correction for the expanding of cognition and consciousness, that this was a serious, almost a Hegalian process, and I really think that the philosophical underpinnings of that attitude are being undermined.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Stern mentioned the scientists we had on doing exactly this last evening, and one of them, the astrophysicist from Harvard, Margaret Geller, spoke of a decline of imagination, of national imagination in the 1980's. Does anybody pick up on that, do you think there's been a decline of imagination in this?

MR. STONE: If that is actually going on, we are in big trouble. God, I certainly hope not. I don't think so.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. Gilchrist, do you have any comment on that?

MS. GILCHRIST: Oh, I don't think so. There's so many more people than there were in the world, and as long as there's a constant supply of people, of young people, there will be a constant supply of imagination. I think that we use it up --

MR. MacNeil: But collectively, as a nation, has the nation lost its imagination, its sense of reaching further and the possible - -

MS. GILCHRIST: It's terrifying to me that we don't have the imagination as a culture to create a great educational system, but which scientist was it, was it Stephen Jay Gould last night who said that if you really want to change education, double the salaries of all the teachers in the United States and excellence will follow? I've carried that around with me all day.

MR. STERN: That's very true. It's a perfect phrase. Bravo.

MR. WILSON: I was going to say the imagination is the people and the culture is the people and the culture is an alive, organic, it changes every day, ever changing thing, and I think that as a people that we have been continually as Americans and also as black Americans debating the character of our culture, but I don't see any lack of imagination as long as there are people.

MR. MacNeil: How about you, Mr. Gilliam?

MR. GILLIAM: I think the fact that attendance have increased greatly during the 80's is the sign that we have not lost our imagination, but the real test for the 90's will be whether or not the homeless, whether or not the persons who are victims of drug addiction and things like this will be saved because of America's imagination and the American population's imagination.

MR. MacNeil: Anyone want to come in on this?

MR. STERN: Yes. I think there is a world of imagination out there, it's the support of imagination and the encouragement of imagination which is sometimes lacking. Really, the very essence of support for the art is to get, to give the creative artist the right to fail, wouldn't you think?

MR. GILLIAM: Absolutely, it's certainly necessary.

MS. WASSERSTEIN: The problem is in terms of mass media, the decision by who's ever, you know, president of Paramount or whatever deciding oh, yes, there's a common denominator and we must bring this down or, you know, this particular thing will be written by five different writers, rather than an individual voice. But that doesn't have to do with the lack of imagination in terms of the artist. I think the artist will prevail. I know even in terms of why people continue to write for the theater, that's one of the reasons.

MR. MacNeil: You said at the beginning wasn't it exciting that Vaclav Havel had just been made president of Czechoslovakia. Do you come, as a playwright yourself, do you come out of the 1980s feeling more involved with or interested in the governance of your own country or more detached from it, alienated it, whatever?

MS. WASSERSTEIN: I've become more interested in it definitely, and also more interested in the world. That's really what's happened in the past four months. It's a lack of isolation and a beginning to see what's happening other places and not focusing here. For myself, I hope that would be reflected in my plays and in other plays.

MR. MacNeil: Anybody else want to comment on that, a feeling as artists of your government and your connection with it and how the country is run being something that is directly relevant to you and --

MR. WILSON: It's certainly been something I as a black American have always been concerned with, because the government has never really been in my corner so to speak. But I think that the Americans are perhaps among the people in the world that are the least politically sophisticated people and if the events in Eastern Europe over the past couple of months or as Wendy said, allowing us to look at the world, I think we need to keep the focus on our society, because we are seeing that it is possible to change the society, it is possible to change the way we live. We are responsible for the world that we find ourselves in and if we do not like that world, it is possible by accepting an individual responsibility to effect a change.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Stone.

MR. STONE: I think there is a responsibility that artists have to intrude their thoughts into politics. I think artists have a responsibility to their country in a way to try and serve it by thinking, by creating.

MR. MacNeil: Have the 80's made it easier or harder for you to do that?

MR. STONE: I don't think there's been much of a change in terms of the effect of American artists on the body politic, I don't think things have changed very much. I don't think things are ever going to be with the way they are in Eastern Europe, and in a way we're lucky because we haven't really as a class, as intellectuals, had it that bad. On the other hand, Czechoslovakia, for example, is a small country where everybody knows everybody else in which intellectuals have always been very important people and that's not the case here.

MR. MacNeil: How do you feel, Ellen Gilchrist, about the government of your own country and your connection with it as a creative artist?

MS. GILCHRIST: I want to be Secretary of Education. No, I think that the artist's role is what it has always been, to hold a mirror up to the culture, to tell the truth as hard as we can and as well as we can about whatever little part of reality that we know and not get into politics, although I want to every day.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Gilliam, you and government.

MR. GILLIAM: I feel very good. I think during the 60's and the 70's and possibly now in the 80's, I think that I've been able to with groups exercise a certain amount of free will over things that concern me.

MR. MacNeil: Well, I'd like to thank you all, Mr. Gilliam, Ms. Gilchrist, Mr. Stone, Mr. Stern, Mr. August Wilson, and Ms. Wasserstein, thank you very much all of you.

MR. LEHRER: We will end the 1980 series Monday night with a conversation among five historians. ESSAY - KITSCH AS KITSCH CAN

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight some end of the year comments about the art of collecting from Essayist Penny Stallings.

MS. STALLINGS: How many times have you come across something at a flea market that you've just thrown out, a dime store dish or a jelly jar that's become an instant collectible? Andy Warhol knew the secret. Andy Warhol understood. Tomorrow's collectibles are all around you, not fancy antiques or mega buck art, but common everyday objects, particularly those that are definitive of a period. With the 80's drawing to a close, now's your chance to stock up on those items that future generations will regard as art or camp while the price is still right. For instance, what says more about the 80's than Trump, the Game, or this certificate entitling you to become one of Elvis's daughters? Smart collectors have already put aside Jim and Tammy products like Tammy pantyhose and Tammy blusher, the "Free Zsa Zsa" T-shirt and the Donna Rice, no excuse, jeans. [JEANS COMMERCIALS]

MS. STALLINGS: Stores like this one make things easy by putting everything in one place, like these rock'n roll flowers, the pet rock of the 80's, or the Gorbachevs, Bushes and Reagans on comfy bedroom slippers, Princess Di, Maggie and Her Majesty the Queen key rings, your own piece of the Berlin Wall conveniently labeled and packaged, and these Ron and Gorby paper weights, and companies like the Franklin Mint crank out limited editions by the millions like this Elvis decanter. You don't have to lay out a lot of money to see your investment flourish. These Sonny and Cher dolls were strictly K-mart issue when I bought them back in the 70's but they've skyrocketed in value now that Cher's won the Oscar and Sonny's mayor of Palm Springs. The 80's had all sorts of toys based on TV and movie heroes, Rambo, Mr. T, and Alf. But I'm going with the Michael Jackson Doll. Affordable and non-durable in non- biodegradable plastic, it'll outlast the pyramids. 80's memorabilia can be found in all sorts of unlikely places; the 2000 page, 2 volume Pornography Commission Report can be ordered directly from the government, as can the Iran-Contra Report. Other musts include: Jim Wright's book, My Turn, by Nancy Reagan, and Vanna Speaks, the Oral Roberts bookmark and Jimmy Swaggart's motel room key. Fashion is cyclical, so why not stash vintage 80's looks now and avoid buying expensive copies later? Wearable collectibles include shoulder pads, suspenders, yellow power ties, and Galanos dresses, preferably in red, that is, if there are any left, and the buttons and T-shirts that announce the issues and sensibilities of the era. Of course, some of the most compelling keepsakes of the 80's can't be stashed in the attic and yet, they too speak to the age, Madonna, MTV, Miami Vice, heavy metal, tabloid TV, Married With Children, and Michael Jackson's hair catching fire during a Pepsi commercial. If these 80's collectibles seem shallow and superficial, that's only because they are. They're emblematic of a decade that had more hype than heart, more glitz than soul. Still we should hold onto them, if only to remind future generations of what the 80's were all about. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Once again, Friday's top stories, Vaclav Havel, dissident playwright and onetime political prisoner was elected president of Czechoslovakia and the Vatican said it is urging Manuel Noriega to leave its embassy in Panama City. Good night and happy new year, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Thank you, Robin. Same to you. Have a nice weekend and a happy new year. We'll see you on Monday night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.