The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. The year is ending on a grim and a hopeful note. In Europe, the first of NATO's new nuclear missiles are declared ready for action. Moscow and Washington have agreed to high-level talks. Closer to home, the city of Minneapolis has passed, after not debate, a novel law against pornography. We examine its pros and cons. And we look at professional basketball's new tough measures for players on drugs.

LARRY O'BRIEN: Drugs and the NBA do not mix. If you want to get involved in drugs, you will not be involved with the NBA.

MacNEIL: Jim Lehrer is off; Judy Woodruff's in Washington. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Also tonight we prepare for the new year with Roger Rosenblatt's special look back at the small events of '83 and sit in on a holiday tradition that puts some of the nation's finest young musicians in one of its most famous concert halls. We also mark the advent of 1984 with a past and present look at the future -- classic art and brand new video art.

MacNEIL: The West Germans said today that the first battery of U.S. nuclear missiles deployed there is ready to be fired, and British defense officials said the missiles based there will have operational capability on Sunday. Thus the first of the 572 intermediate-range missiles the U.S. has begun delpoying to counter a Soviet buildup will be ready by the deadline NATO set in 1979. Deployment began in November when the U.S.-Soviet talks on these weapons in Geneva failed to make progress. The deployment caused widespread protest demonstrations in West Germany and Britain. When all the Geneva arms talks later broke down, the NATO allies pressed U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz to try to arrange a meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Today the State Department announced that such a meeting has been arranged, during the 35-nation conference on European security in Stockholm. State Department spokesman Alan Romberg.

ALAN ROMBERG, State Department spokesman: We have been in touch through diplomatic channels with the Soviet Union, and it has been agreed that the Secretary and Prime Minister Gromyko will meet in Stockholm on the afternoon of January 18th.

MacNEIL: The Shultz-Gromyko meeting will be the first high-level talks between the superpowers after months of deteriorating relations. In California, where President Reagan is on vacation, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said the President is pleased this meeting has been arranged. He added, "We do regard it as a positive element in the sense that it will continue the dialogue we've had with the Soviets and continue it at a higher level."

Judy?

WOODRUFF: Some of the key congressional supporters of President Reagan's policy in Lebanon are reconsidering their positions. In the wake of the Pentagon commission report criticizing Reagan policy, House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill has called a meeting for next Tuesday of his so-called Lebanon monitoring group -- 14 House Democrats. There are reports the Speaker is far more skeptical about the presence of U.S. Marines than he was just a few months ago. O'Neill's support was instrumental in the administration's originally winning congressional support for giving the President an 18-month time limit for the Marines to stay. But since the bombing at the Beirut Marine headquarters in October and, more recently, reports by a House subcommittee and the Pentagon commission critical of the Marine mission, O'Neill has come under increasing pressure from his fellow Democrats to reconsider. O'Neill's aides told reporters the Speaker now thinks that a six-month limit would be much wiser. They also say he believes the administration has seriously misread the situation in Lebanon.

In Lebanon there were nationwide sit-ins and demonstrations today staged by Moslems protesting the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The spiritual heads of Lebanon's Sunni and Shiite Moslem communities led the sit-ins from Beirut. At one mosque Moslem youths set fire to an Israeli flag. Others chanted anti-Israeli slogans. A Moslem religious leader complained that Israeli troops had searched his home and taken his son away for questioning. And near the southern port of Tyre, gunmen fired on an Israeli army unit, catching a United Nations convoy in the crossfire.

Robin?

MacNEIL: There was violence on the Israeli-occupied West Bank today and an incident was avoided when a bomb was spotted on a bus in a crowded market in Jerusalem and safely detonated. In Hebron, Muslims were the intended victims at mosques on their day of prayer.Here is a report fromJohn Eason of Visnews.

JOHN EASON, Visnews: Two mosques in Hebron on the West Bank were bombed, allegedly by a group of Jewish extremists. An organization calling itself "Terror Against Terror" claimed it had placed two hand grenades outside the mosques. Although there have been allegations of attacks on Arabs in the West Bank by Jewish vigilantes, a police spokesman said that the bombs might not have been planted by Jewish terrorists but by Arabs trying to stir up trouble. Whoever planted the bombs, it is certain that there will be more trouble on the West Bank, which will make it even harder for the government to push through the Knesset plans for cuts in spending on defense and new settlements.

MacNEIL: One Palestinian was wounded in those attacks. In Jerusalem, the Israeli Cabinet met to consider a new austerity program aimed at sharply cutting state spending to revive the country's economy. With a 200% inflation rate there is growing labor unrest in Israel over wages and the fall in purchasing power. Israel television said the fight over budget reductions was the biggest challenge Yitzak Shamir has faced since becoming prime minister in October.Three of the small parties in the Likud coalition have made public their unhappiness over certain proposed cuts and at least one has threatened to quit. With only a four-seat majority in Parliament, the withdrawal of any coalition partner could set off another government crisis.

Judy?

WOODRUFF: The wife of presidential candidate Jesse Jackson was making some news today. On a tour of Nicaragua with several other American women, Mrs. Jackie Jackson said that she is very sympathetic to the leftist Sandinista government and that Nicaragua's most critical problem is the threat of a U.S. invasion. The women, who were also visiting Honduras and El Salvador, say they want to counterbalance the activities of President Reagan's special Central American study commission due to issue a report next month. As Mrs. Jackson toured Nicaragua's capital city, fierce fighting continued in that country's northern provinces, and the government reported 25 rebels were killed. In neighboring El Salvador, leftist guerrillas shelled a government army installation some miles north of the capital city of San Salvador. There were no reports of casualties.

Robin?

MacNEIL: The toll in lives and damage from the extraordinary spell of severe winter weather continues to mount. By late today the Associated Press had counted 432 deaths attributed to the last two weeks of storms and freezing temperatures. Damage to fruit and vegetable crops in Florida, Texas and Louisiana exceeded $400 million.Meanwhile, the cold continued to break records for December, from the Midwest into the South. Another freeze settled on the citrus groves and vegetable fields of southern Texas.San Antonio had an all-time low for December 4th at 10 degrees. A reading of eight degrees in Dallas broke a 66-year-old record. An ice storm closed some bridges and highways along the Gulf Coast while heavy snow blocked major highways in Oregon, forcing stranded drivers into motels, churches and a National Guard Armory. Florida escaped this cold snap.It was 85 in Palm Beach yesterday, but parts of the state got rare winter tornadoes and heavy rains instead.

Judy? Minneapolis Against Pornography

WOODRUFF: A controversial first-of -its-kind law dealing with pornography appeared today. The city council of Minneapolis approved an ordinance that says pornography violates a woman's civil rights, and therefore any woman may go to court to have pornographic material outlawed. By a narrow seven-to-six vote the city council came up with a new definition of pornography as the sexually explicit subordination of women. The debate at today's city council meeting was heated and at times emotional.

BARBARA CARLSON, city councilwoman: I was the victim of a violent rape when I was 19 years old. I have a member of my family that was brutally molested as a child. I know that that rape was not caused by pornography. I know that that rape, in which I personally was a part of, was caused by alcoholism.

SALLY HOWARD, city councilwoman: We're saying we are ready to define what you can and can't do. And let me remind all the council members that are still in the chambers that we did that with child pornography, and if you recall, there were all kinds of arguments from First Amendment freedom people who said, "People ought to be able to view whatever they want to view," and the court said, "No, you can't have a child manipulating a sexual organ of an adult. That's illegal."

WOODRUFF: Before we examine the issue in a little more detail, we have some background on the situation in Minneapolis that led to today's vote by the city council.

[voice-over] Minneapolis is one of many cities that has had to deal with the growth of the pornography industry. Adult bookstores and X-rated movie houses have encroached on neighborhoods to the dismay of such residents as Cheryl Allen.

CHERYL ALLEN, Minneapolis resident: I really don't walk in my community anymore. I don't walk past this corner anymore. I don't walk in my neighborhood anymore. I scurry.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: The city first passed a zoning law to fight pornography, but some critics wanted to go further, pushing for the law that was passed today. Their premise is that pornography is the cause of many violent crimes against women. One of the law's big supporters is feminist author Andrea Dworkin.

ANDREA DWORKIN, feminist author: You can't make a distinction when you talk about pornography between sex and violence. In pornography, sex and violence are one word; they are one act; they are one point of view. I have seen pornography as an injury to the civil rights of women.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But not everyone agrees that pornography leads to violence.

Dr. SHARON SATTERFIELD, University of Minnesota Medical School: Pornography is fantasy fulfillment. That's what it's designed for. The notion that the bulk of pornographic material is violent is ridiculous. In fact, legitimate erotic filmmakers won't touch violence.

WOODRUFF: The mayor of Minneapolis has questioned whether the ordinance gives too broad a definition of pornography and won't say whether he'll sign it into law or not. Even more vocal criticism is coming from the American Civil Liberties Union, and in a moment we will hear from someone speaking for the Minneapolis chapter of the ACLU, Linda Ojala. But first we talk with the sponsor of the ordinance, Charlee Hoyt, who has been a city councilwoman for the past eight years. They both join us from public station KTCA in Minneapolis. Ms. Hoyt, what exactly will a woman be permitted to do as a result of this ordinance, assuming it is signed into law?

CHARLEE HOYT: This will give a woman an opportunity for redress against the discrimination and the discriminatory practices which she observes or experiences. It is also possible for that to happen for a man.

WOODRUFF: But could this lead, for example, to wiping out all pornography in the city of Minneapolis?

Councilwoman HOYT: Pornography as defined in this ordinance, yes, we are hoping to wipe out the discrimination against women that occurs in Minneapolis.

WOODRUFF: Can you just take us through step by step? What would a woman do, I mean, if, say, she sees a magazine that she finds offensive, then what would she do? Go to court to take the bookstore owner to court?

Councilwoman HOYT: First let me correct you. It is not just a woman. It can be a man --

WOODRUFF: All right, fine.

Councilwoman HOYT: -- that also is against the discrimination. But what a person would do is if they saw some material which they thought was discriminatory under our ordinance, they could go to the civil rights commission, as they go with any other concern about a discriminatory practice, and see if it is indeed under our ordinance discrimination. If so, open to them is either the civil rights commission making a ruling or they can go directly to the civil courts.

WOODRUFF: How do you define pornography? What are you saying is causing the problem exactly?

Councilwoman HOYT: The council finds that pornography is central in creating and maintaining the civil inequality of the sexes, and they define pornography as a systematic practice of exploitation and subordination based on sex which differentially harms women.

WOODRUFF: What --

Councilwoman HOYT: Then there is a section that has a very specific definition.

WOODRUFF: But, I mean, can you be anymore -- I mean, is it Playboy magazine, Hustler magazine? For the audience, I mean, can you give us any idea of exactly what you're talking about?

Councilwoman HOYT: It is material that is often found in Hustler magazine, but we are not speaking about the generic name of a magazine or book or movie. We are talking about the material contained therein and the treatment thereof.

WOODRUFF: Well, one of your principal points is that pornography leads to violence -- to violent attacks against women. How do you know that this is the case?

Councilwoman HOYT: You know, our major principal point is that pornography as we have defined it leads to discrimination against women, which takes place in the form of violence in some instances.

WOODRUFF: All right, let's speak now with Ms. Ojala, Linda Ojala, who is with the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Ms. Ojala, what is your primary complaint about the ordinance?

LINDA OJALA: Well, we believe that the ordinance violates the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and freedom of press, that it singles out certain ideas for censorship and makes it very difficult for certain kinds of ideas to be either read or viewed in the city of Minneapolis.

WOODRUFF: What about the point that Ms. Hoyt just made, and that is that pornography discriminates against women in that it protrays women in a subordinate role?

Ms. OJALA: Well, there are all kinds of groups in this society that have been oppressed and discriminated against. There are blacks, Hispanics, Asians, homosexuals, to name just a few groups. And our Constitution says that speech is not controlled by anyone. There is no one, no one in government, no city council can tell us what we can read. And I would ask the city council, are they prepared to give equal treatment now to other minority groups who are oppressed and what kinds of standards are going to be made available for these other oppressed groups? It is a very, very difficult problem, and it's the reason why we have an absolute guarantee of free speech.

WOODRUFF: Well, can you be a little more specific? How exactly are you saying this restricts freedom of speech, the ordinance?

Ms. OJALA: Well, for example, the law says that prnography is something that presents women as subordinates and as sex objects. There are two problems with that. First, there is a wide range of literature, pictures and other items that might be viewed by some as presenting women as sex objects. You think about what you see in magazines and TV. It's almost a regular daily occurence. So the censorship would be massive. The second problem is that the definition is very vague. Most people don't know what in the world that means, and it would have a chilling effect on what would be available for citizens to read, because we think that booksellers would steer clear of anything they think that might be covered by this law.

WOODRUFF: Ms. Hoyt, let me ask you then about Ms. Ojala's point, and that is that this would lead to massive censorship, that you could define many things as discriminating against women.

Councilwoman HOYT: You must remember that what we are writing is a civil rights ordinance. In fact, it passed today; it's an amendment to the civil rights ordinance and the city of Minneapolis per se will not be censoring anything. We have described a condition of discrimination which will allow individuals to take that case to court and to have redress. That, I think, is very different from censorship or a ban of materials.

WOODRUFF: Ms. Ojala?

Ms. OJALA: Well, the law allows an individual to go into court and get a judge to rule that a particular item may not be sold or distributed in the city of Minneapolis. That's censorship. It's also censorship if people who sell books or films begin to remove those materials from their stores or movie theaters because they fear liability for damages. So this is censorship and it's in a different form, but as we have seen throughout our country's history, censorship does pop up at different times for different reasons and in different forms, and this is a 1984 version of censorship.

WOODRUFF: Ms. Hoyt, how do you respond to that?

Councilwoman HOYT: That it's not. That all stores now have the right to choose what they will and will not sell. They get to make those choices based on anything. What they will be sued for, what won't sell, what will offend their clientele, therefore they won't carry those magazines, etc. And this is just another one of the things which they will take into consideration or else they have to be prepared that if it is discrimination, there will be redress.

WOODRUFF: But, again, there are so many things in society that I think we would all agree could be defined as discriminating against women, how can you formulate a definition that is not going to result in an unfair interpretation?

Councilwoman HOYT: Because we have defined sexually explicit subordination of women, graphically depicted, whether in pictures or words, that also includes one or more of the following, and there's a list of nine. It has to be proven by the person bringing the case that it meets all of those criteria.

WOODRUFF: Ms Ojala, you're not saying that the pictures that appear in pornographic material don't portray women in subordinate positions, do you?

Ms. OJALA: No. We agree that there are some kinds of literature and speech that show women as being subordinate to men, and our point is not that we agree or disagree with that content, but we say that the First Amendment means it has to be available, that we can't have the government or the courts or any other citizens deciding what we may all read. That's the issue.

WOODRUFF: Is there any definition of pornography, Ms. Ojala, that you would agree should be outlawed?

Ms. OJALA: I don't think that there is any way that it can be defined, and I think that the First Amendment prohibits the banning of that information.

WOODRUFF: Ms. Hoyt, do you believe that this ordinance is going to stand up in court? Are you optimistic?

Councilwoman HOYT: I'm very optimistic that it will stand up in court.

WOODRUFF: Why? I mean, you've heard the arguments that Ms. Ojala has been making.

Councilwoman HOYT: Ms. Ojala and the Civil Liberties Union made those arguments on child pornography and said it wouldn't stand up in court, and it did. We believe in the hearings that we held that we gave the background necessary to substantiate the ordinance.

Ms. OJALA: Well, I think we're going to win, and I think that the precedents that the U.S. Supreme Court has set support our arguments. This is not child pornography. This is information available for adults. It has nothing to do with children.

WOODRUFF: And are you saying, Ms. Ojala, that the ACLU is probably going to file suit? Can you say that now?

Ms. OJALA: Yeah, we will be involved in litigation, in what form it's not quite clear yet, but we will be in the courts and we will be challenging this law.

WOODRUFF: All right, thank you both for being with us, Ms. Ojala and Ms. Hoyt.

Robin? Rosenblatt's 1983

MacNEIL: The government found a cheery new economic statistic to end the year with. Sales of new single-family houses rose in November by half a percent to a level 17% higher than a year ago. Home sales fell last summer when mortgage rates began climbing, but have now stabilized. Mark Riedy, executive vice president of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said, "It's just kind of a nice way to go out of 1983, with these kinds of numbers." Everyone else has been going out of 1983 with reviews of all the big things that happened this year. We have an essay by Roger Rosenblatt which he calls "Some Small Remaining Matters of 1983."

ROGER ROSENBLATT [voice-over]: You can't miss the big events of a given year. You couldn't miss them if you wanted to, and why would you want to, there being no sin in standing out from the crowd or making a splash or a boom. No shortage of loud noises in 1983. The bombings in Lebanon and at Harrod's; the storming of Grenada; Hawaii's Kilauwea volcano erupts for much of the year. Missiles are set in place; the space shuttle goes up; the Korean airliner is shot down, as is Aquino in the Philippines. Reagan glowers at the Soviets, the Soviets glower back. By such sizeable items were we duly impressed, shocked, scared.

Yet oddly it isn't the big events we remember when a year is over. It is the small beer, the small potatoes of a year's activity that burrow in the memory and hibernate. The two-inch notes that fill out the column of a newspaper, the fleeting image in a photograph of a homeless family intent on their food in a soup kitchen, or a dog sniffing the ashes of a burned-out house. Last week a blind man froze to death in St. Louis because the utility company refused to turn his heat back on. One remembers that event of 1983.

Eubie Blake died in 1983, as did Balanchine and Tennessee Williams and Ira Gershwin -- Small matters, relatively. They had to go sometime. But with their going went a lot of wonderful words and music. David Niven died this year as well. Dwell on David Niven for a moment. Charm seemed an empty quality except in him. In him charmwas connected to integrity, valor, kindness. Far less celebrated deaths occurred. Did one pay proper attention to them, so many in a crowd? All the deaths in Lebanon, for instance. Did a single one of them matter, really matter, even in a place like Lebanon, where people seem to come to die? Did their deaths count? Does any man's death diminish you?

There was smaller change than that.In 1983 she said she loved you. No headlines followed. You didn't hear it on TV, but there is was. In 1983, he didn't lose his temper at a crucial moment. And that letter you meant to write, didn't you write it in 1983? Several bad novels were published in 1983; several good ones were not. The novels that were not published were not published in 1983. That was the year, all right, which was also the year you missed the three-foot put and did not look up from your desk when you should have. All the things that did not happen happened.

Who was born in 1983? Which one in the newest batch of babies looks like Eubie Blake or Balanchine? Small fry are always mysterious. Maybe that is why the small events remain with us -- because we have to poke at them to find their meaning. Big events benumb and overwhelm us. Small ones beckon us to them, form personal attachments to us who are, after all, pretty small matters ourselves.

Pope John Paul was shot by Ali Agca in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981. You remember that. It was one of the big events of the year. This past Tuesday the Pope sat down with Ali Agca in prison and forgave him in person as he had forgiven him in public earlier. That was a smaller event than the near-assassination, yet it will rest in the mind longer than the gunshots, even though it was merely a conversation and no one could make out what the two men were saying. The Pope called it a secret between brothers, huddled together as they were in one cell. In that small place ends the year.

[Video postcard -- Deception Pass, Washington]

WOODRUFF: The holidays wouldn't be holidays without traditions like plum pudding and the Nutcracker ballet. New York City's Carnegie Hall served up a treat last night that it can call a tradition all its own. Charlayne Hunter-Gault can explain. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: The Playbill doesn't give it away. All it says is Carnegie Hall presents New York String Orchestra, Alexander Schneider, music director; Isaac Stern, violin; Yo-Yo Ma, cello. The real surprise is that the orchestra behind these world-famous musicians is made up of 47 high school and college-age musicians from all over the country, who happily gave up their Christmas vacations for a chance to play on this very special stage. They are a part of an annual seminar organized by Mr. Schneider, known universally as Sasha. "Sasha's kids," as the students are called, range in age from 14 to 20 and compete for spaces. For those chosen it is a big boost to their careers; many of them go off to the country's great orchestras and become soloists. Before their final concert, we went to a rehearsal to find out what it meant to them, having some of the world's greatest musicians as mentors.

[voice-over] For two exhausting weeks over Christmas vacation the best young musicians in the country rehearse 10 hours a day, seven days a week, leading to two concerts at Carnegie Hall. One of them is Sarah Parkins from Detroit.

SARAH PARKINS, student: It's probably the best musical experience I've had. I didn't come to the seminar thinking that it was going to better my career. I just came for thelove of music.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Rebecca Young, from New Jersey, plays viola.

REBECCA YOUNG, student: It was the best Christmas I've ever spent because I learned so much from Sasha, and I know that the musicians who take part is this are all just the highest level, and I wanted to be a part of that.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Patricia Davis comes from a musical family in Charlotte, North Carolina.

PATRICIA DAVIS, student: It's a situation where we all get together and enjoy music together. I don't think I've experienced such an incredibly high level of playing in my life because everyone is so serious about what we're doing, and I've never had a chance to make music with a large group of people who all feel the same way about music.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Stephen Frucht goes to high school in New York City.

STEPHEN FRUCHT, student: Well, my teacher told me about it, and just said that I should try it because it was a really great seminar and if I got in I'd have a great time and learn a lot. Mr. Schneider holds the auditions and you play for a panel of people, and he was really supportive in my auditioning because I came in there and was pretty nervous. When I first got out there I didn't know what was going on. Well, I was very happy to be selected because I didn't expect it, and when I got in I just like called my aunt and said, "I won't be coming to your house for Christmas." I find that I learn and am learning right now so much more about music and about what I have to do than maybe I would learn in a half year of just practice.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: At 75, Alexander Schneider is world famous for his work with young people although he has a busy career as a solo violinist and conductor. [scenes of Alexander Schneider conducting]

ALEXANDER "Sasha" SCHNEIDER, conductor and violinist: All my life I've wanted what you see. I think American kids are much more gifted than Europeans. We are but showgirls. They like to learn, they like to accept the auditions. Wonderful. That's a good quality.

SPEAKER: The bus leaves in 15 minutes from downstairs.

Mr. SCHNEIDER: Be ready, huh, so that we don't lose time.

Miss DAVIS: I get so tired by the end of the day because we go like several, like 10 hours of practicing a day, and by the end of the day you're just so exhausted, but I think we'll realize at the Carnegie Hall concert that it was all worth it.

Mr. SCHNEIDER: Our schedule is from, let's say, 10 o'clock in the morning 'til one, from two 'til five, and from seven 'til 10. Of course there are six hours which I do -- workwith the orchestra and three hours [unintelligible] by music. It's a schedule. But some of them start to read at eight, nine in the morning; some of them play [unintelligible] music after 10 o'clock at night, and God bless them, you know? That's exactly what they should do.

COACH: The way the swell is written it's a little bit deceiving because I know it looks like, you know, like you should begin here, but you're really going to --

Mr. FRUCHT: It's really quite phenomenal the coaches that they have here and the sessions that go on. I mean, I've learned so much about ensemble playing in just three coachings. Some of the people that they have are just unbelievable as coaches.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: One of them is world-reknowned violinist Jaime Laredo.

JAIME LAREDO, violinist: It's wonderful to work with these kids, and in the end I get a great joy out of it. What I feel is that if I Can instill in any of these kids a love for what they want to do and an enthusiasm, and that's really all I would like to accomplish, that they enjoy it, that they really love what they're doing.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Final preparations for the concert in Carnegie Hall include a rehearsal with the soloists, violinist Isaac Stern and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Miss DAVIS: Playing with Isaac Stern and Yo-Yo Ma has automatically just made me raise my expectations as a violinist. Just seeing these people and their expectations of themselves and of others has made me want to continue even a higher level now.

Mr. FRUCHT: Isaac Stern is a famous violinist. I realize how much work I would have to accomplish to get half the way to what he has accomplished, but it's also encouraging to know that it can be done.

ISAAC STERN, violinist: It's the most wonderful thing in the world to see young people, to touch them with music, to touch them with an idea and see the whole thing open up and see them do it themselves, and to open their ears, to make them hear not what they are doing but what is possible, what might be done, what might happen, and that they can do it. It is, in a sense, handing on that which gave you life. It's a way of giving birth to the next generation. By the time they get through the seminar -- when they step on the stage of Carnegie and they see this vastness and they hear the sound of it, suddenly they begin to sit up and they look out and they're doing it there, at Carnegie -- they're doing their thing on stage of Carnegie Hall, and something quite wondrous happens. [scenes of "Nutcracker Suite" concert] What we don't realize is this immense wealth that we have in this country of gifted young people in music. NBA Against Drug Abuse

MacNEIL: Of all the Americans making New Year's resolutions, there is one group with a big incentive to keep theirs -- professional basketball players.Last September the National Basketball Association resolved to wipe out drug abuse among players once and for all in the New Year. League Commissioner Larry O'Brien and Players Association President Bob Lanier announced severe sanctions for current drug abusers who don't give up and seek voluntary help. The deadline is tomorrow night.

LARRY O'BRIEN, commissioner, National Basketball Association [September 28, 1983]: Drugs and the NBA do not mix. If you want to get involved in drugs, you will not be involved with the NBA.

BOB LANIER, president, Basketball Players Association [September 28, 1983]: We hope that this has a dramatic effect and that hopefully will help the individual to help himself.That's why we have this amnesty period, to give them a chance to come in, seek help. We're all for them. We don't want to penalize anybody. Obviously we want people to be able to play and contribute to not only themselves and their families but to this league as an industry.

MacNEIL: The NBA program against drug abuse is by far the toughest in all the professional sports tainted by drug scandals. Any basketball player who is convicted or pleads guilty to using or dealing in cocaine or heroin will be permanently barred from the league. If the league itself discovers a player using, possessing or selling the drugs, he will be permanently barred.But the league and the players union can reinstate players after two years if they prove themselves to be rehabilitated. Players who voluntarily admit a drug problem will undergo treatment in a special drug abuse program. Those same players can return voluntarily a second time for treatment, but they'll be suspended without pay during the treatment. Any further relapses and they too will be permanently barred. The program was approved by player representatives from 22 of the 23 professional teams. Charles Grantham is executive vice president of the National Basketball Players Association. Mr. Grantham, first of all, why did the players' union get involved in this?

CHARLES GRANTHAM: Well, I think we all recognize that there was a problem. We certainly felt that we wanted to become in an active state as opposed to being reactive and sitting back and waiting for problems to come up and then learning how to deal with them. We thought that we needed a systematic way of handling drug use and drug abuse in our league. The players also were very tired of being stereotyped as being drug users and abusers. I think about three or four years ago we had a very large article in the L.A. Times that came out and said that 75 or 85 percent of the players currently in the NBA were using drugs.That happened about the same time that we were having NBA players representative meetings, and the guys were really, really upset about that.

MacNEIL: Was that estimate right in the players' view?

Mr. GRANTHAM: No, that estimate was definitely not right. We felt that the larger majority of our players certainly are drug-free, and it was time that we took an active part in re-establishing a firm image that we are drug-free and that the players would take an active role in making sure that the league was drug-free.

MacNEIL: Let's go through some of this. Why are the penalties so severe? I mean, being permanently barred from the game, that's the end of a career for somebody who might be a tremendous star earning hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mr. GRANTHAM: Yeah. I think if you go back and think that and look at the players as a product, which, essentially, NBA basketball is, first of all you recognize that as individuals, as people, we would like to help all individuals in the league. But we do have a responsibility. We've got a responsibility to the industry, we have a responsibility to fans, and our players certainly feel very strongly that they have a responsibility to young people. Drugs --

MacNEIL: You mean as role models?

Mr. GRANTHAM: As role models, certainly. And we felt very strongly that the whole concept of drug abuse in basketball and sports in general don't mix. Now, you will notice that there is a very harsh penalty, a permanent ban; however, there are several steps leading up to that, that are heopful, they're not punitive. And our whole concept is to get those people in the league help as quickly as possible to --

Mac NEIL: How is the league going to investigate this and find out whether players are on drugs or not?

Mr. GRANTHAM: Well, we will have a third party arbiter, so to speak, who will review evidence as it's gathered on players and their use.

MacNEIL: I mean, but how is that evidence going to be gthered? Is there some systematic way of doing that?

Mr. GRANTHAM: Well, currently there is certainly a -- we do have a security office in the league and information from the local authorities and other people does surface about players and their use.

MacNEIL: Well, are you just relying on people to come forward who suspect a player is using drugs, to come forward and volunteer information? Or are you going to give, like they do in the Olympics, tests for drugs?

Mr. GRANTHAM: We will not test. The primary responsibility of that third party arbiter, who will be a drug enforcement, a drug detection-type of individual, would be determined -- to determine who is likely to be a drug user, abuser, and only at that point will be permission granted to be tested.

MacNEIL: I just wonder whether the -- because the penalty is so severe, that the fellow players, knowing somebody is on drugs, might be hesitant to come and tell you because they know that they risk ruining the player's career.

Mr. GRANTHAM: Well, the data will be collected from many sources, and it's going to have to be substantial evidence and substantial information to lead one to believe that an individual player is going to use drugs or is using drugs. And only at that time would he be brought forth to be tested.

MacNEIL: Now, many other pro-sports -- baseball, for example -- the players there not only don't approve of such drastic measures but are actually fighting such drastic measures. Why are National Basketball Association players different?

Mr. GRANTHAM: Well, I think it goes back to what I termed earlier as being in an active state or a reactive state. We are far more interested in establishing a procedure to handle a problem which is worldwide, certainly nationwide here in the United States, and developing a procedure to handle a problem that we hope, a) we can help the individual solve. It's a branch of an employee assistance program, basically what it is.

MacNEIL: But are basketball players because of their age, because of their race -- a very high proportion are black, among the stars, because of the very large amounts of money they earn at a very young age, the amount of traveling they do, I mean, are they more susceptible to drug -- falling into drugs than, say, baseball players, who can be older and more experienced?

Mr. GRANTHAM: Well, I would say that two of the three are correct. I don't think race is certainly an area that I would say more susceptible. I will say that the NBA players, given the fact that we are 75, 80 percent black, felt very, very stongly about the poor image that we were attracting -- namely drugs and black and how that affected the overall industry, the overall dollars, the overall bottom line, as you say. And we felt very strongly that we had to come forward as a players' union to help resolve that issue.

MacNEIL: You think the fans are really turning off baskeball because of the drug image? Is that affecting business, box office and so on?

Mr. GRANTHAM: I think maybe three years ago it was starting to. I think it was a combination of factors that we read then, one, being the possibility of drug use; two, being a predominantly black league; three, being just not enough interest, excitement, etc., and putting all those things together, we though that the interest in baskeball was starting to decline. As we begin to look at our products -- i.e., the players -- and how do you invest in them to make sure that they maintain a drug-free existence, that they help attract new audiences and that they increase ratings, we started looking at all kinds of programs and of course, the employee assistance program was one of them.

MacNEIL: Mr. Grantham, thank you very much.

Mr. GRANTHAM: Thank you.

MacNEIL: Judy?

WOODRUFF: More than 1 1/2 million White House documents left behind when Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 will not be made public on Tuesday as scheduled. Today a federal trial judge in Washington blocked the government's plan to release the documents. District Judge Thomas Hogan said that parts of the law permitting public access to the papers were unconstitutional. Twenty-nine former Nixon administration officials had sued to halt the planned release of the documents, said to include some of the most politically sensitive papers in the Nixon White House.

And in another ruling today, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Warren Burger, refused to stop refund payments to natural gas customers. Justice Burger had been asked to halt the natural gas refund until an appeal was heard by the entire Supreme Court. The federal appeals court in Washington had decided that the Federal Energy Commission has allowed gas producers to set ceiling prices for natural gas that are too high. The case, which covers natural gas sales since 1978, could lead to hundreds of millions of dollars of refund to natural gas consumers.

And, in a different sort of energy and finance story, Gulf Oil has won a round in its battle against a takeover attempt masterminded by the chairman of Mesa Petroleum, T. Boone Pickens. Today's action in the highly publicized financial duel came in a proxy fight. Gulf management won the right to move the legal home of the nation's fifth-largest oil company from Pennsylvania to Delaware. There state law will make it tougher for the Pickens group to win a seat on the Gulf board of directors. Pickens wants Gulf to sell some of its oil reserves so that the value of the corporation's share will rise. Gulf management has been resisting the restructuring effort.

And we will be back in a moment.

[Video postcard -- St. Paul, Minnesota]

WOODRUFF: In 1948 George Orwell wrote his bleak portrayal of life in the future, the novel 1984. As we have been constantly reminded in the past few weeks, that milestone begins Sunday. Orwell's vision had been shared in the modern art world, where it has been reflected in the work of anti-utopian artists. Their perspective sharply differs from a more optimistic sense of the future expressed by artists earlier in this century.For more on these two views of the future, we visited the Hirshorn Museum here in Washington and talked to curator Valerie Fletcher.

VALERIE FLETCHER, curator, Hirshorn Museum: The first group of artists that radically proclaimed to all who would listen to them their idea of a new Utopia based on technology was a group of artists called the Italian Futurists around 1909, 1910, and one of the things they tried to do in their art to proclaim this love of technology was to depict subjects, such as speeding automobiles. Another concept that the futurists introduced was the idea of renovating the entire environment, and an artist named Giacomo Balla was central to that. He was interested in what he called the reconstruction of the universe along futurist lines, including some interesting futurist flowers, which you could use as house plants or put them outside for totally artificial, beautiful, aesthetic gardens. You could take these flowers apart and put them together in any different way you wanted -- moving the petals around for different color combinations. And so in that way mankind asserted his control over his entire environment in a creative way.

After the Utopians literally had the spotlight for several decades, the disillusionment that set in after the Depression, after World War II, particularly with the development of the nuclear bomb, the disillusionment has largely replaced the earlier optimism and the Distopianism -- a modern word, in fact, that had to be created to account for this new negative outlook -- in fact rejects precisely some of the principles that were promoted by the Utopians. Some Distopian artists have created works in which the machine man recurs, but in a very negative light, sometimes without facial features or without arms, and often without the power to move or control his environment.

Among the Distopians are certain recurrent themes, just as there were recurrent themes among the Utopians, and one of the things that the anti-Utopian artists attacked was the possibility of the Orwellian Big Brother is watching you, the all-controlling political totalitarian state. For example, in one called "The Prisoner," you have an anonymous figure being taken away by two more anonymous figures in their trench coats and hats while other equally anonymous figures flee away -- literally the concept of the secret police. Another concept, in fact, perhaps one of the most pervasive concepts among Distopian artists is the possible loss of individual personality in mass civilization, including a society dominated by mass media. Consequently artists such as the two German video artists named Hartmut Lerch and Klaus Holtz have created a video tape in which they photographed over 30,000 individual faces and then put them together at varying speeds, moving gradually from very individual portraits through a rapid projection of faces into a totally anonymous, somewhat idealized, but totally anonymous face and then back again to the individual. Perhaps the most frightening affect of this piece is not just the visual image itself, but the fact that the anonymity of the face is done and taken away, given to us and taken away without our control. It's just done in the mass media there in front of our eyes without us being able to stop it at any time.

WOODRUFF: It was Orwell whose concept of the future included 300 million people, all with the same face. The exhibit we've just seen, "Utopian Visions in Modern Art: Dreams and Nightmare," will be at the Hirshorn Museum in Washington until February 12th, 1984.

MacNEIL: Viewers of public television will be able to see quite another artistic vision of the future this Sunday. At noon on New Year's Day, PBS will be airing a special called "Good Morning, Mr. Orwell," linking avant-garde musicians and other artists in Paris, San Francisco and New York. Here's an excerpt from one of the many features called "Act III," a video work by Dean Winkler and John Sanborn to music by Philip Glass.

MacNEIL: Back in the present, here once again are the main news stories of the day.

The new American medium-range missiles in West Germany are ready to be fired and those in Britain will be ready by Sunday, New Year's Day.

Secretary of State Shultz and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko of the Soviet Union will meet in Stockholm on January 18th, their first meeting since arms control talks were suspended.

Jesse Jackson is in Damascus to ask for the release of a captured Navy pilot, and they'll meet the President of Syria tomorrow.

The number of deaths attributed to the extreme cold of the last two weeks has passed 432. Damage to fruit and vegetable crops in the South is now estimated at more than $400 million.

Good night, and Happy New Year, Judy.

WOODRUFF: Good night, Robin. That's our NewsHour for tonight. I'm Judy Woodruff. We hope you have a safe and happy new year.