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CNN Talkback Live

Free-for-All Friday

Aired February 15, 2002 - 15:07   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ALISON STEWART, HOST: Are the Olympic judges skating on thin ice?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTON SIKHARULIDZE, OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST: I don't even understand what's going on, why it's such a big scandal from nothing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's what you're hearing, that the judges are trading votes, and I think that's sad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Certainly, there is cheating going on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEWART: Always, safe sex and TV, and the secretary of state.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: Forget about taboos, forget about conservative ideas with respect to what you should tell young people about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEWART: Well, maybe you can tell them about Rosie O'Donnell.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This may have been the longest outing on outing record.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEWART: Also on the record, a world first. This cloned cutie has the Humane Society howling. And so will we. The bell is back. It's free-for-all Friday!

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

STEWART: Hey, everybody, it is free-for-all Friday, and we have a foot-stomping and hand-clapping crowd here at the CNN center. I'm Alison Stewart. And like we said, the bell is back. That should help keep our talk show hosts on their toes this Friday. They're all ready to go.

Before we meet them, let's find out what is going on with the Olympic skating scandal out there in Salt Lake City, Utah. There was a surprise announcement just two hours ago: The Canadian team is going to receive a gold medal. And you want to see their reaction?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID PELLETIER, CANADIAN FIGURE SKATER: We're happy that justice was done. And it doesn't take away anything from Elena and Anton. This is not -- this was not something against them, it was something against the system. And we also hope that the inquiries won't stop here, that they will keep on going.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEWART: They're graceful off the ice as well as on the ice. We are going to go to CNN correspondent Rusty Dornin who is in Salt Lake City, Utah, because, Rusty, the news seems to be changing every minute. What's the latest?

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, just the latest is we now have a pair of gold medals that have been awarded, and it looks like the Canadians are taking them. They said they felt they gave a gold medal performance, now they have one.

They had appealed to a court of arbitration for sports that was supposed to meet this afternoon dealing with this issue. But it looks like public opinion -- the International Olympic Committee did admit the public opinion really pushed this along, and so a quick resolution was reached. Apparently, there was an emergency meeting last night at the International Skating Union, and they did come up with this resolution.

STEWART: Now, Rusty, will there be some sort of a ceremony for the medals being awarded?

DORNIN: Apparently there will be a ceremony, but they haven't really decided when. It's going to either be before or directly after the women's figure skating, which will be on the 18th of February. But there have not been any details released about that. David Pelletier did say he would hope that the Canadian flag would be raised during that ceremony, and I'm sure that's going to happen.

STEWART: Of course, some of the news of the day was that the French judge was suspended and accused of misconduct, but you can't really do that by yourself, you can't clap with one hand. Is this investigation going to keep going?

DORNIN: They said that it is going to continue. They refused to talk about the involvement of any other judges. As you know, it had been rumored that there was something going on with the Russian judges. They discounted that, but they did say the investigation will continue, and they said they will get to the bottom of it. But they wanted to settle this part now, and take away the shadow over the games and get the focus back on the other athletes.

STEWART: Do we know anything about the other medal winners? Will they be bumped up at all, or is it just going to be two golds and a bronze?

DORNIN: No, the thing that it's interesting is the way they handled this is, we thought maybe they would take out the French judge's marks and put in the Czechoslovakian judge's marks, which would have put the Canadians as the gold medal winners. But they didn't want to do that, because that would make them the winners and make Russians in second. They wanted to put them on equal footing.

So what they did was they threw out the French judge's marks, and they just kept the for four to four split. So they want to keep them on equal footing; they're both gold medal winners.

STEWART: Rusty, we have an audience member who'd actually like to ask you a question, seeing as you are on the scene. This is John. John, what's your question for Rusty?

JOHN: I'd like to know what they are going to do with the French judge. Should she be disciplined, or what are we going to do about that?

DORNIN: Well, she has been suspended, and what ends up happening out of this investigation will be determined later whether she will be suspended from life -- excuse me, for life from judging figure skating, or whether she will be allowed back in perhaps at some other time. So she has been suspended, but we do not know for how long.

STEWART: All right, Rusty Dornin, live from Salt Lake City, Utah, thanks for the update. We really appreciate it.

All right. Let's get back to the subject and to our other guests today. Lisa Evers, host of "Street Soldiers With Lisa Evers" on Hot 97 WHQT-FM in New York. She's also a reporter for WNIS in New York. We got Tom Marr, a radio talk show host from WCBN in Maryland. John McIntire, host of "Night Talk With John McIntire" on the Pittsburgh Cable News Channel. And Barry Farber, the syndicated radio talk show host on Talk Radio Network. He's also a columnist for Newsmax.com.

Welcome our guests, everybody.

(APPLAUSE)

Very excited to see you. OK, Tom, did the IOC make the right choice by giving an additional gold medal? TOM MARR, WCBN RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: No. Of course not. The entire world has witnessed a bank robbery here. The bank robbers have been caught. One of them has been given a suspended sentence. They've gotten away with it. There is only one gold medal. Only one gold medal should have been given out here, because there was only one gold medal performance. And it's typical of the elitist snobs that run the Olympics to try to stay there were two gold medal winning performances. There were not. The Russians should lose their gold medal. They should possibly get the silver medal. This is a terrible, terrible compromise.

STEWART: All right, John McIntire, how do you feel about this issue?

JOHN MCINTIRE, HOST, PCNC "NIGHT TALK": I'm really happy that the Canadians at least get to have a gold medal. They deserve it. I agree with Tom, you can't trust the Ruskis, and they ought to be slapped around to some extent. I also agree that they are not doing this to do some sort of noble thing; they are doing it to sweep it under the rug. This takes the spotlight away, the heat is off for a while. Then they can sweep it under the rug.

There is a Ukrainian judge, as I understand, who is going to be judging skating tonight who was already suspended in 1998 for cheating. Yet he is back here tonight! They have only suspended this French judge. She could be back in four more years judging. So I'm glad the Canadians got it, but otherwise it's ridiculous.

STEWART: Ruskis? It's 2002, isn't it, people?

MCINTIRE: Can't trust them Ruskis. I'm telling you, the Cold War mentality is still there. That's how we got into this mess in part, I think, in the first place.

MARR: You got it.

STEWART: All right, let's check in with Lisa.

LISA EVERS, 1010 WINS RADIO REPORTER: Alison, this is really a contradictory message. If the French judge is being suspended because of strong suspicions of misproprieties there, why are we awarding two gold medals? I agree with what Tom said about the silver medal. The Russians should get the silver medal. They should void the marks that were given by that French judge, or else just hold the event all over again, and let that gold medal have some meaning. It's a disgrace that the gold medal is now being robbed of the meaning that it has had up until this point, when you have athletes who trained for years and years and years to try and achieve it.

STEWART: All right. John, we'll let you weigh in. John McIntire.

MCINTIRE: I'm sorry, I already did...

(CROSSTALK)

Allison: Barry. Sorry, Barry.

BARRY FARBER, SYNDICATED RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: OK, good, thank you. No, first of all, I deny the rumor that this was all an Eastern European plot to take the spotlight off of Enron. If I were on a battlefield with Lisa and Tom, they would go all the way with the bayonet and I would sort of smile and be happy to take prisoners. I agree with what they say, but I say OK, OK, the Canadians got the gold.

But don't you love the way they investigate? It ends with the French connection! With the French Skaters Union! I would be much happier with the Olympic authorities if they had said, "nobody thinks for a moment that this initiated with the French connection." France loves Canada, that's the second language of Canada.

What really bothers me is the fixation upon this. Your beautiful show got off to a late start because the world cares so much about this. Meanwhile, on Page 189 of "The New York Times" today, it tells about a driver's license examiner in Tennessee who illegally gave five Middle Eastern males drivers' licenses and was found dead in a fire that was deliberately started. Nobody said...

(CROSSTALK)

MARR: Barry Farber, God bless you, you have singled in on a big topic here. The whole country, with their attention span limited to about 30 seconds, is not even going to think about that story, but they love the skating, so this is going to be the lead everywhere tonight, even though it's not the most important story in the world. More important where are the rest of the corrupt judges, the scam has been taken off the Olympics again, and instead of seeing clean wound we see more pus.

EVERS: And Alison, the other point is, who are -- I mean, where do these judges come from? When you look at professional sports, we don't see -- each team doesn't bring their own judge to the particular competition. Who are these judges? Who certifies these judges? Is this like every team can bring their own judge?

FARBER: Why are the Olympics sacred? There's nothing sacred. Until just the other day, I trusted accounting firms and I trusted Olympic judges.

MCINTIRE: Why is the Olympics have any credibility in the first place? There was a big scandal revolving around the choice of Salt Lake City in the first place. The IOC, which organizes, as you know, the whole thing, had so many scandals in recent years -- I can't even believe people still tune in in droves to see what is obviously inherently, at least in many cases, a corrupt process.

(CROSSTALK)

MARR: ... and your wife and your girlfriends about the skating, it's going to be -- it's going to get good ratings, everybody loves it. But there are more and more serious things in the world. But these snob who run the Olympics are terribly corrupt, at least skating unions part of it, that is a sea of corruption as well. But you are right, they are going to try to bury it under the rug now. They'll get the toadies at NBC tonight to try to pretend like let's make it all go away.

STEWART: Wait, but you're sending a mixed message here. You're saying it's going to go under the rug and on the back page, but then Barry said it needs to be on the back page, that important issues need to be on the front page. Which is it, is it a silly issue or an important issue?

MCINTIRE: I think it's a silly issue, but as long as it's getting all this attention we may as well try to correct the thing and make it -- and not the scandal-ridden horribly corrupt thing it has been for years. It's time to finally figure out a way to fix the Olympics. But even that will never happen, because the people running it, as they have shown in recent years, with even the selection controversies are invariably corrupt.

MARR: You're going to have to talk to your bosses at CNN who are going to make it the number one story all day long.

STEWART: Lady and gentlemen, we'll be back with more of TALKBACK LIVE. That's been the bell, and we will be back with more on another subject.

Coming up on TALKBACK LIVE: Safe sex and the secretary of state.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POWELL: I encourage their use by young people who are sexually active.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEWART: But isn't the administration pushing abstinence? We'll see if we can send the right message, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, I think the secretary made it perfectly plain, and so did the questioner. The question was in the context of for people who practice sex. There was not a question about everybody in our society; it was a question just those who are sexually active.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(APPLAUSE)

STEWART: Welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE and free-for-all Friday. What is this, the secretary of state talking about sex? Colin Powell went on MTV last night, advocating that young people use condoms to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted disease. This might strike some folks as odd, since the administration's position is that abstinence is the best projection -- protection, that's the word, protection -- against STDs.

All right, to our guests today. We've got two issues on the table. The first is -- I will throw this one to you, John -- was the secretary of state correct in sort of becoming a renegade and just giving his independent thought? Or is that a wrong thing to do? If your administration says this is the party line, you tow it -- you tow it.

MCINTIRE: Well, since Colin was on MTV, I still want to know if he is wearing boxers or briefs, but apparently we will never be able to find that out.

STEWART: He told the audience, don't even think about asking.

MCINTIRE: Oh, I see that. I'm really happy that Mr. Powell is light-years ahead of some of the more Neanderthal members of the Bush administration. He is a smart man. He is smart enough to know that just by preaching abstinence you can't talk people out of wanting to have sex. They have been wanting to have sex for generation, they will be wanting to have sex hopefully for generations more. It is a realistic fact, you can't ignore it.

You can't -- even some of the more cynical members of the Bush administration are only preaching abstinence to keep the right-wing base intact. They don't really necessarily believe it either. Thank goodness Mr. Powell is separating himself from the rest of those people. Somebody has to stop the spread of AIDS, and somebody has to help stop the spread of unwanted pregnancies. I commend Colin Powell.

STEWART: Tom Marr, was Colin Powell a renegade?

(CROSSTALK)

MARR: ... last long.

STEWART: Tom, was Colin Powell a renegade last night? Should he have stayed in line with the administration.

MARR: He absolutely was a renegade. If the secretary of state of the United States is going to be talking about condoms, he should be suggesting that they put a huge one on Yasser Arafat, and throw him into the nearest sewer in Ramallah. The administration has a position on this. The secretary should have made his position clear that it was personal, and he should have also warned young people about the dangers of condoms. Their failure rate in birth control alone is 15 to 20 percent.

But he went on, and he deliberately threw salt into the wound by talking about don't pay any attention to conservative views. Since when, General Powell -- the problem with General Powell is there is not enough General Patton in him.

MCINTIRE: 75 percent to 80 percent is better than zero percent.

EVERS: Plus, that number -- I mean, that number...

MARR: Yes, but he could also stress the administration's position.

STEWART: Lisa, your point?

MARR: He failed to do that.

EVERS: Alison, I think it's outrageous that even talking about condoms and advocating safer sex is still controversial in the year 2002. By the government's own statistics, these came out of the White House a couple of years ago. Every two hours, a young person under the age of 21 is infected with the HIV virus, which may not show up for years and years and years down the road.

So the fact that young people are using condoms is a positive thing. The secretary of state is entitled to his opinion. He is obviously a realist, and he understands that if young people are going to practice abstinence, that is their choice, that's their decision, but the reality is the drive to have sex, that urge to merge is one of the most basic human desires.

(APPLAUSE)

MCINTIRE: Let's hear it for sex!

FARBER: I'm not against sex, I have heard it highly spoken of.

(LAUGHTER)

FARBER: I grew up with the urge to merge, too. I disagree completely, completely with General Powell on the facts. I don't disagree with him for taking a different stance from the administration. I think there is something kind of nice and American about that, as long as he doesn't implement a policy. Opinion, yes, policy, no.

In other words, let Colin Powell play but don't let him score. But on the facts, I got to tell you something -- I'm talking about my childhood, not about the prehistoric ages -- we -- I'm not saying there was no premature -- premarital sex in North Carolina when I grew up. I know...

(CROSSTALK)

FARBER: There were two cases in North Carolina, and I think three in South Carolina, maybe one in Virginia, rumors from Tennessee. But there was not one case of teenage pregnancy in my entire school year! Credit the girls, don't credit us.

(CROSSTALK)

EVERS: ... shotgun marriages at age 14, come on.

FARBER: I'm sorry, there were none of those either. They had -- the girls worked out the perfect oral contraceptives. They opened their mouths and said no. And we pleaded, and wined, and complained, and we threw pianos through plate glass windows. There was very little incidence -- absolutely impossible. MARR: Barry, you know, Barry...

MCINTIRE: Would you please tell us -- would you please give us the magic solution that allowed your school to have that miracle, because everywhere else in the universe millions of people are having sex.

FARBER: Yes. I don't know. I'll give it to you, but I don't know if you can take it: Religion, morality, parents, the boy scouts, older boys, good role models and good teachers. That all helped.

STEWART: In our audience today, we actually have somebody born after 1980 who might want to step in on this subject. A high school student from Mississippi. Eric (ph), let me know what you think about this.

ERIC: I think it's good that the government is talking about sex, instead of having sex themselves.

MARR: Well, obviously Lisa cited some figures that came out of the Clinton White House, so they're suspect to begin with. But you know, there is the area of responsibility. The general should have stressed that. And in this day and age, it seems the more condoms they hand out, the more condom-mania people like General Powell get into, the higher the rates go of sexually transmitted disease. Condoms aren't the answer to everything, for goodness sakes.

MCINTIRE: Well, you can only believe the rate would be higher.

STEWART: Is abstinence the answer?

MARR: No, you don't. You don't know that for a fact.

MCINTIRE: Well, how -- it's a logical conclusion. What are you, kidding me?

(CROSSTALK)

MARR: You're telling the kids to play Russian roulette -- you're telling them to play Russian roulette with three bullets instead of five.

MCINTIRE: I'm telling them to protect themselves, instead of having unprotected sex, which is just foolish.

FARBER: But that gives an illusion.

EVERS: The message from educators -- first of all, the statistic I gave about one young person under the age of 21 every two hours, that did come out of the Clinton White House, but those are numbers that were supported nationally from various cities that came out of health departments from various cities. So it wasn't just a magic number that the White House, the Clinton White House made up.

MARR: But they're giving away all these condoms, Lisa, why is there such a big problem? EVERS: But may I make the point, the second thing is I have never, ever heard a public health educator talk about using condoms without also saying that this is safer sex, that the safest sex -- if you want really safe sex, the only way to have safe sex is to abstain. It's always in the context of you have choices, these are the choices you make and these are the potential consequences. But to just make condoms this controversial issue at this particular stage is ridiculous.

STEWART: Barry Farber, Barry, we have an audience member who would like to respond to you, actually.

FARBER: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Barry, your comment to me is actually quite interesting, because I think if you think that girls at your high school weren't getting pregnant, I think you are probably not aware that they were perhaps crossing state lines, getting abortions on their own, and having to do some other things, perhaps getting sent away when this kind of thing happened to them, and most certainly did.

FARBER: Teenagers talk a lot, just like everywhere else in the world. Don't you think we would have gotten inkling if Betty Anne or Sally Jo disappeared for a while? Come on!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Girls can be very...

FARBER: I'm telling you, we would have found out. We were a small town; everybody knew everything.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I really fell that you're wrong. Girls will do -- kids will do whatever they need to do to protect themselves, and to protect themselves from parents that they might be afraid of. They will do almost anything to take care of...

FARBER: If only those who said, "Give peace a chance," would say, "Give abstinence a chance." I come from a childhood where it worked. Here I am; lock me up.

MARR: Well, you know, General Powell's wife and Dick Cheney's wife are both working in a program that stresses abstinence to young ladies. And if we're just going to have...

STEWART: Can we say, it's young gentlemen as well when we talk about abstinence.

MARR: Well, and if we just have the attitude that the last lady in the audience did that, they're all doing it anyway-- ma'am they're not all doing it, because the rate of illegitimacy has skyrocketed since the '60s, and sexually transmitted diseases have skyrocketed. It didn't always go on to the extent it's now going on.

STEWART: I'd love to take a phone call if we could at this time. I believe it's from Georgia. Is it Tanya?

TANYA: Yes, it is. STEWART: OK, go ahead, Tanya, you're on the air.

TANYA: I would like to ask the man that's sitting there from the South: What fairy tale do you live in, sir? I am southern born and bred, and just because you did not hear these things happening does not mean that they didn't happen.

FARBER: Well, I think I probably have suits older than you are. And I'm telling you that that is the area and the arena I grew up in. There was certainly attempt at premarital sex -- and I'm kidding; there was quite a bit -- but it was all apparently at such a lower rate than today that, I'm telling you, it is our duty as older people who remember those days to come charging back at General Powell, Secretary Powell, and saying, "Come on. At least say something nice about abstinence." Abstinence is certainly one of the alternatives, and in my experience, the best one.

MARR: Is anybody familiar -- anybody familiar with MTV should just ask the producers of MTV the following question: Does your programming foster sexual activity in young people or does it lean towards abstinence? We all know what the answer is.

MCINTIRE: We can't talk young people out of wanting to have sex. You cannot talk young people out of wanting to have sex.

MARR: No, but you can talk them into it on MTV where you've got all these boom box singers grabbing their crotch all the time and these young women shaking their boobs all over the place.

MCINTIRE: But even if that's true, that's a reason to put more condoms out.

EVERS: But just...

STEWART: Hey, that's the bell, so we're going to leave this safe-sex talk behind. Up next, a secret no one really bothered to keep. Find out what it is.

Up next on the "Friday-Free-For-All," Rosie's not-so-secret secret.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's been one of those kind of two-track secrets: not a secret and yet a secret because nobody has acknowledged that we know it's not a secret."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEWART: Just come out and say it or maybe just come out. Does anybody really care?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

STEWART: Hey, welcome back to "Free-for-all Friday." Of course, we have four very opinionated talk show hosts which means there'll be no dead air, which is a good thing in live TV.

Rosie O'Donnell is gay, and Barbara Walters outed her, sort of. It's not as if it's a really big shocker to a lot of people. It's just that no one has publicly said it before. Here's what Barbara Walters said on "The View," and this is with Rosie's blessing: "What concerns Rosie is that she has three adopted children and a foster child herself, and because she is gay would not be able to adopt this child in Florida."

So we have got two issues on the table. First of all, Rosie O'Donnell coming out, will this affect her marketability or will her fame protect her?

What do you think, Lisa?

EVERS: I think her fame will definitely protect her, because the fact that her -- of her sexual orientation is something that many people suspected for a long, long time, and it really had nothing to do with her popularity. Many of her fans are women, are homemakers, women with small children in heterosexual, traditional marriages, so it didn't affect her popularity up until this point.

STEWART: John McIntire, what do you think?

MCINTIRE: I think it's tremendous. For whatever reason, millions of Americans are scared to death of homosexuals. There's nothing to fear. They exist. They won't harm you. They won't try to convert you. They cannot convert you. It's genetic; it's not a learned behavior. And the more people that people already like that are already very popular like Rosie O'Donnell who come out, the more it's going to be accepted in society, and we can move on to other more important issues.

STEWART: Now, Tom Marr, if orange juice company J decides they want to use Rosie O'Donnell as a spokesperson, do you think they're going to think twice now now that she has come out as a lesbian or about to come out as a lesbian?

MARR: Well, first of all, Dr. McIntire apparently has scientific evidence on the gay genes that the rest of us don't have.

MCINTIRE: I have it right here.

MARR: Yeah, well, you can produce a lot of right heres. You know that you don't have any. Secondly, Rosie O'Donnell is really a great performer. I don't like her politics, but she has a wide, wide following in this country. To say that she's gay is like saying: Did you realize that McDonald's is in the hamburger business? I think a lot of people knew it. I don't think they care. She's a great performer. The whole issue of gay adoption is something else, but I don't care about Rosie's personal sex life. I just wish her a lot of luck in the future, and I think she's probably a good mom, too.

STEWART: What do you think, Barry?

FARBER: If I were a terrorists -- if I were a terrorist, would I have a great report for my leader. It hasn't even been six months since we left 3,000 Americans buried under the rubble and a field in Pennsylvania and already, not even six months later, all they can worry about are what color medal skaters win at the Olympics and whether a certain substantial looking woman on TV is heterosexual or homosexual. I say back into the closet. I don't know who invented the closet, but what a great place for sex. That's where sex belongs. I don't care what Rosie O'Donnell wants to do sexually. I don't care what your desires are sexually, and you're never going to find out mine unless you are directly relevant to the implementation thereof.

MARR: Way to go, Barry.

MCINTIRE: I hope to avoid that category, but Dr. McIntire...

STEWART: I was going to say, that's not going to be an issue I don't think. Hey, we have Oscar over here, and Oscar actually understands why we're interested in Rosie O'Donnell and has an opinion about it, anyway.

MARR: I'm not.

OSCAR: What I was saying is that I think it's going to cause probably a blip on the radar for her publicly. People are going to be concerned about her for a little bit, but then they're not going to be bothered. It's not going to be a big issue forever. It's just going to come and then it's going to go away. And like I was saying earlier, I said, you know, as far as people keeping their private lives to themselves, she's a celebrity, and here in America, we die to have our celebrities disclose their personal and private lives to us. Most people really want to know. So I think that after that, it's just going to go away and nobody's going to be that concerned with it anymore.

MARR: I think that thing in your lip is more interesting than Rosie O'Donnell's sex life. What on earth are you doing with that thing in there?

MCINTIRE: Well, now we finally know what excites him.

FARBER: Alison, Alison...

STEWART: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

FARBER: ... back to my beloved old South for the moment.

STEWART: All right.

FARBER: I remember, we grew up thinking in the south that a lesbian was a confused woman who hadn't met us yet.

EVERS: Alison...

STEWART: Yes, Lisa.

EVERS: This idea that gays and lesbians should go back into the closet and that heterosexuals, we shouldn't be bothered with their sexual orientation, we have to be bothered by it. We have to pay attention to it. You look at young, gay teens who are coming up now, they have a very high incidence of suicide. You look at families where there are gay sons and gay daughters, and those families, there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of trauma, there are a lot of issues that have to be dealt with there, where a society was much more comfortable with it. A person who is comfortable in their own sexual orientation is not intimidated and is not afraid of someone else's sexual preferences and orientation is different from theirs. If you're insecure...

STEWART: Lisa, you bring up an interesting point for Rosie O'Donnell. Does she have to become a spokeswoman now? I mean, Ellen DeGeneres kind of got that thrust upon her.

MARR: You're right.

STEWART: What do you think about that, John?

MARR: Go ahead, John.

MCINTIRE: Oh, well, I don't know whether or not she should have to become a spokeswoman, but I think she's going to have to become a spokeswoman whether she likes it or not. And there's a lot of pressure in the gay community for more prominent gays to come out so that they become a spokesman, so that they can become more accepted in mainstream society. And I think that's a good thing, and I think Rosie is obviously willing to do that. She's not stupid. She knows the inherent risks involved in coming out like this. And I would hope that that's one of the reasons she's doing it.

STEWART: I'm sorry, Tom, I cut you off before. Why don't you make your point?

MARR: I was going to say I don't think people care about this. And from what Lisa was saying, things were far better in the homosexual community, apparently, when people were in the closet, now when they're out of it. And the problem is not only do they want to come out of the closet, but they want to run up that rainbow gay flag and ask all of us to salute it. And I don't think we should have to. Just let people do what they're going to do. I don't want to salute the homosexual rights movement.

EVERS: Tom, you're mischaracterizing what I'm saying, and allow me to express it myself, please. The fact of the matter is you look at violence that's directed against gays, you look at the incidents of suicide, you look at the psychological problem, if society was more accepting of people who are homosexual, a lot of these problems would simply not exist. And the fact that people feel intimidated by somebody else saying, you know what? Their sexual orientation is different from yours or different from mine, if you're comfortable with your sexual identity, it's not a big deal.

MARR: Well, now, there's more gay...

STEWART: Let's go -- we've got a phone call from... MARR: ... there's more gay-on-gay violence than there is heterosexual-to-gay violence, and I just don't really care about the whole issue nor do I think we should always run it up a flagpole.

STEWART: Let's talk to a phone caller from the heartland, from Indiana.

Caller, are you there? Georgette?

GEORGETTE: Yes.

STEWART: Let's hear it.

GEORGETTE: I think Rosie O'Donnell is doing an exceptional thing by coming out, showing that she's a good parent, she adopts children. She's setting a great example for homosexuals. We are good people. We're around the world. And her coming out says a lot, that there's probably a lot more gay entertainers out there and they don't want to come forward because they're afraid that people are going to be talking about it or lose, you know, their backing. And it's terrible because she's setting a fabulous example for an adopted mother. She's fabulous. What more can you say?

STEWART: All right, thanks, Georgette, for your call from Indiana.

And that is the bell. And when we come back, we're going to have a cat fight, more of a cat fight, I should say.

Still ahead on TALKBACK LIVE, "Free-For-All Friday," ain't she sweet? This cloned cutie has pet owners purring. Now tell us, if you could clone your pet, would you do it?

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STEWART: Welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE's "Free-For-All Friday." Those savvy scientists at Texas A&M have managed to clone a cat. Look at her. She's really cute. They've named her CC, but that stands for carbon copy, and it's the first time anyone's cloned a pet. She's really cute. Now to tell you, some funding to this project came from Arizona millionaire John Spurling (ph). He's anxious to have his blub dog Missie cloned, and he's not the only pet owner aching to reproduce a lost pet.

Now I want to go to a woman in our audience, because believe it or not, we have a molecular biologist who is here today, so she's really an expert on this.

And you're not happy about this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wouldn't say that I have that strong of an opinion. I just think it's a very poor application of very good science, that we should be using molecular methods in order to improve the quality of life, whether if it's for crops, whether it's for domestic animals, or for human beings. But I think in this case, in order to take advantage of people's remorse, I think it's a bad marketing ploy for -- to make the American dollar. And I think it's a bad application.

STEWART: We have a guest over here who would like to ask you a question, actually.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Earlier, you had said that the process was inhumane, and I didn't really understand in what way it was inhumane. I could understand if you had a problem with ethics or morals with it, but I don't understand inhumane.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because in many ways, we don't know what some of this cloning technology may lead to. We don't know if it's going to exacerbate many diseases. And in actuality, with many of these genetic methods, whenever you clone someone, we realize that genetics is only one component of what makes the final product. And so you cannot assume just because you clone an animal that you're going to get the same animal out. It's all a function of nurturing and environment as well. And so I think it's really taking advantage of how little we all know as the average American know about science.

STEWART: Let's go to some of our talk show hosts.

EVERS: Alison...

STEWART: Lisa, what do you think about this issue?

EVERS: I mean, first of all, does anyone in your audience know anyone who has cats, who has just one cat? It's not -- they don't. They have many, many cats. Aren't there enough cats already? If we want to clone things, let's start cloning George Clooney, clone Wesley Snipes, you know, clone people for us single ladies.

MARR: You know, I do have a cat and her name is Katie, and she has a great existence, the most spoiled woman in the entire world. I love her dearly. And that cat, I think, the whole world's going to fall in love with that cat, but there's something scary about this. There's a Joseph Mengla-like (ph) atmosphere to it all, and I'm afraid of what the next 50 to 75 years will bring if we start this cloning business. I'm really worried about it.

FARBER: If you really care about animals, you should be concerned with animal overpopulation as you are with human overpopulation. There's a resort very close to here in New York called Fire Island. Everybody's there in the summer; nobody's there in the winter except abandoned pets dying from the cold and from lack of food. My grandson's, 7-year-old, favorite creature in the world is his little cat, Mickey. If God forbid anything happened to Mickey, it would be so seductive to say, "Jeremy, we're going to get you a whole new Mickey," but read the data. A cat cloned doesn't have to look anything like the cat it's cloned from. They may die very young or of some hideous disease. I don't want a law. Just let it fail in the marketplace.

MCINTIRE: Much to my significant other's disappointment, I have three cats. She is a cat hater and she has to grin and bear it. But when these -- I took one in, it was pregnant, I didn't know, and then it started popping them out, and what are you going to do? But I would never want to clone them because it would be some sort of weird, freaky-deaky Stepford cat, like a shell of its former self. That's just too science fiction strange. I think the whole thing is a little too spooky for me, and I totally agree with Barry the cat overpopulation problem is a real one. The last thing we need is more cats.

MARR: Yeah, but, you know, we get beyond this to the cloning of people, though, and that's where it really gets scary. I mean, I agree with all -- I love Katie the cat, I really do, but it gets very scary when you think about somebody working toward a master race or something like that and doing it through cloning. I just think we're messing with Mother Nature there enough that most of the world now wants to believe that God meant for Adam and Steve to have children instead of Adam and Eve. But my goodness, we've gone a bridge too far with this kind of thing.

FARBER: Notice this is the one issue that brings us all together.

STEWART: Tom, you made a really interesting point, talked about how cute that little cat is. Tom, you've seen the sheep, we've seen the pigs, and it quite hasn't evoked the same idea. People think -- they see that cute little kitten and go, "Yeah, I'd do that."

MARR: Well, look at it.

EVERS: I wonder about the...

STEWART: Sure, Lisa, go ahead.

EVERS: I wonder about the personality, too, because people who are close to their pets, you know, whether they're dogs, whether they're cats or other pets, there's a certain bonding there and you see that different animals have different personalities if you want to call it that. So I'm really curious about this cloned cat, CC, what her or his personality is like.

STEWART: Let me...

MARR: Well, a cloned Lisa wouldn't be bad at all. They could clone you, Lisa. That'd be good.

STEWART: Would any of you clone your pet? Who would clone their pet?

MARR: No, she drives me crazy. I wouldn't clone her. I mean, she drives me nuts.

STEWART: All right, actually, we have a guest in the audience who said he would clone his pet.

Steven, why would you clone your pet?

STEVEN: If it was sick or something. Simply because if he's going to pass away, I could clone him and have another pet if I'm attached to him that way. But then again, there's the ramifications of knowing that that's going to still be that same pet. You might have a Frankenstein or something. I don't know.

MARR: How come we can't get people interested on the human end of this? We're always talking about cloning. Doesn't it scare you that they might want to do this with human beings? That's the scary part of this to me.

FARBER: Tom, the article in the "New York Times" today indicated that they've already ascertained there's not going to be a demand for human cloning but there might be a commercial success...

EVERS: Oh, come on.

FARBER: Yes, read the "New York Times," page one.

MARR: Yeah, it's in. But you never can tell. Just cause it's in the "Times" doesn't make it gospel.

STEWART: We've got one last comment from Layla.

LAYLA: I was going to say, with the amount of an overwhelming, like abandoned pets and pets in shelters, you don't need more just, you know, to be left alone like in the gutter to die, because that's all that's going to happen to it.

MARR: Well, you don't think that cloned cat is not going to be left there. That cloned cat's going to be around for a while. For all we know, it's got arthritis like a hundred-year-old cat, but that cat's not going to wind up in the gutter, I guarantee. It's to cute. I'll take it tonight.

STEWART: Well, hey, you know what? I think we're ending on a unified note. That was the bell, and we're about out of time. Our big thanks to Lisa Evers, Tom Marr, John McIntire and Barry Farber. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks to the audience and everybody at home, too, who e-mailed and called in. I'm Alison Stewart. I had a great time being your host this week on TALKBACK LIVE. The show is back Monday at 3:00. You go out and have a great, safe weekend. Judy Woodruff is next with a look at what's ahead on "Inside Politics." Have a great weekend.

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