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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

The Best of "Segment Seven"

Aired December 24, 2002 - 22:00 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.

AARON BROWN, HOST: Good evening again and happy holidays. I'm Aaron Brown. And we start off by admitting that I'm not really here.
Thanks to the miracle of videotape, much of the NEWSNIGHT staff is at home tonight or scattered around the country somewhere spending time with family reconnecting. And so tonight on this special edition of NEWSNIGHT, we want to spend all our time reconnecting in a way as well, reconnecting with a different kind of family, but one we cherish around here, the family of people we've met over the past year.

This will be sort of like segment seven taking over the entire program. These are the people who got us to choke up or crack up or forced us to think about something new and unfamiliar, something cool. The people, in short, who gave our year much of the unique flavor it had. Not a bad way to end this year. But before we do that, we turn things over to people who are actually working today, to bring you the latest news.

And for that we go to CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.

(NEWSBREAK)

BROWN: We begin our special NEWSNIGHT about 200 miles to the northeast of Los Angeles, just short of independence, a mile west of reward. There you'll find a spot in a valley with a Spanish name that means apple orchard, but to thousands of Americans who arrived there 60 years ago the name Manzanar meant something else.

Sixty years ago, those same Americans were taken from their homes in the West Coast. They were shipped to Manzanar and places like it because they looked like the enemy and there was a war on. Tonight, the country is once again at war, and to at least some people in the country, an awful lot of Americans do look like the enemy again.

So we revisit Manzanar tonight with three Americans who once lived there; a not so gentle reminder that 60 years ago feels a lot closer now than it did a year ago. And Manzanar is still short of independence and not that far down the road.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MAS OKUI, MANZANAR RESIDENT: I was 10. I was in fifth grade.

BO SAKAGUCHI, MANZANAR RESIDENT: I was 16 in 11th grade. SUE EMBREY, MANZANAR RESIDENT: I was 19. The U.S. Army came around into the area and posted notices on telephone poles and store fronts. They just said you've got to go and go. If you didn't go, they would probably arrest you and put you in jail. So what alternative did you have?

SAKAGUCHI: There was a caravan of several buses leaving from Burbank.

OKUI: Yeah.

SAKAGUCHI: And it rained that morning.

OKUI: All I know is when we got there, it was really gray and dark.

SAKAGUCHI: And the lady who was boarding the bus said, look, even the sky is crying for us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The time: Spring and summer of 1942. The relocation centers are supervised by the War Relocation Authority, which assumed responsibility for the people after they had been evacuated and cared for temporarily by the Army. The entire community bounded by a wire fence and guarded by military police.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAKAGUCHI: Well, you know, you're an American, though you're of a different color and features from those from Europe. And so though you know you're an American and you're an American citizen, here we were being herded away into a desolate camp.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Naturally, the newcomers looked about with some curiosity. They were in a new area, on land that was raw, untamed, but full of opportunity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAKAGUCHI: Manzanar -- those who have lived here had experienced all sorts of emotions and experiences. It was very significant; 220,000 people who lived in the United States.

OKUI: Anyone who was here, two things that they were denied were privacy and protection from the wind. It was always windy and there was never any privacy.

EMBREY: The lights used to follow us at night, remember that? As soon as you opened your door and you started out, the lights would follow you, either to the latrine or to a neighbor or wherever you were going, and then they would follow you back again. And I think that's what most people remember the most about camp, the searchlight at night (ph). And people keep saying that there were no guard towers, but there were eight of them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are protecting ourselves without violating the principles of Christian decency. We won't change this fundamental decency no matter what our enemies do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EMBREY: We got our three meals a day...

OKUI: Three meals a day...

(CROSSTALK)

EMBREY: ... but we had no freedom. We had no rights. We were there without any charge. Without a trial.

SAKAGUCHI: I don't remember these trees here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What department number were you in?

SAKAGUCHI: 11-7-4. It would be right about here.

OKUI: I remember the whole place was absolutely barren when we got here. Everything was bulldozed. There was nothing here.

EMBREY: The first night is kind of blanked out of my mind. We were lucky, because the others had to go out and, you know, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) mattress (UNINTELLIGIBLE) with hey. But my brother had already done it for us, so when we got there my mother kind of sat down and said, oh, my, what a place. And that was it. She told me years later that she used to walk up to the apple orchards from block 20, which is quite a ways, every day, and cry under the trees.

SAKAGUCHI: September 11, I watched it on TV. I wasn't aware who had caused it. And then once we found out, I think, then we worried, because those were only special people who are brought into this country to try to destroy this country. And the average Muslim is probably a very loyal to this country.

EMBREY: I had heard FBI had gone into Detroit, where there is a large Middle Eastern population and had talked to people. And I thought, well, that's what happened on the night of December 7.

SAKAGUCHI: The Arab-Americans -- or the Muslims were lucky. At least the president...

EMBREY: He did say that we have to not make them scapegoats, right.

SAKAGUCHI: That every Muslim is not a terrorist. I wish they would have said that about us.

EMBREY: No, not that president.

SAKAGUCHI: Emotions are emotions. And time changes people. And time tends to people forget.

EMBREY: But I hope, you know, Americans have learned -- at least those who know about it have learned from the experience.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up: the headliners of the odd couple tour of the spring of 2002: Bono and the former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There's a class of people, a very exclusive lot, who tend to get picked on mercilessly by the press. Those known as the celebrity do-gooder, means well, knows nothing.

Then there's Bono. This is a guy who does his homework. Even top policy makers agree on that. And one of them was Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who thought Bono knew enough and cared enough to travel with him for 10 days in a place that needs both of their help.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BONO, MUSICIAN: Well, these trips, I've taken a few of them. I don't really know what to expect every time I go. I sort of don't want to go. Usually, that's my feelin, is just, I just don't want to go.

This time, though, I was quite hung over. I do remember that. Edge is getting married, and we had his bachelor party. And I promised myself I wouldn't drink, because I knew we had important business, but, you know what I mean. So I was kind of holding my head a little as I came over here, and just thinking, you know, "Is this going to be jive? Or are we actually going, to quote the secretary of the treasury, get some results?"

PAUL O'NEILL, TREASURY SECRETARY: When I go on the road, I really want to learn and see things. It really helps me a lot to be able to have a more personal understanding of what lives are like in different places around the world, when I'm thinking about either business or governmental policy issues.

BONO: I love being in Africa, because no one knows who I am here.

My name is Bono. I'm a rock star.

Or if they do know who I am, I'm the debt cancellation guy. I'm the "drop the debt" guy.

O'NEILL: As a general rule, I don't take my family with me. This is the first time my daughters ever traveled with me on an official trip, either in the public or the private sector.

BONO: When I'm on these trips, you know, I don't feel I'm an entertainer. I'm an activist. And I may appear friendly, and I may, you know, try to turn on what little charm I have.

But deep down, I'm very, very serious about these things, and I'm very angry.

(SINGING)

BONO: I don't know why I sang there. I just saw these people who, really, I'm sure, hadn't a clue who I was, probably been told, you know, when you do this, this is the Bono song, this is the U2 song. And I just felt for them.

(SINGING)

BONO: The only thing that I regret is I didn't get to the verse that I wanted to get to, which is "I believe in the kingdom come, then all the colors will bleed into one, but yes we're still running." I wanted to sing that for them.

If we really thought these lives have a meaning day to day in Ghana, in Uganda, in South Africa, in Soweto, if we thought they were as valuable as ours, we couldn't let them die a death to AIDS because they can't afford a dollar-and-a-half a day. Truly, this is about equality.

O'NEILL: My daughter handed me this -- must have been a three- month old, a little girl in a pink sleeper. And she had the most sparkly brown eyes and the most trusting manner. That was really a tear provider for me.

BONO: He's getting angrier by the day as he sees the great potential of this cause and how it's not been used. Is that fair?

O'NEILL: That's fair.

BONO: That's fair.

O'NEILL: But I think now an essential part for me to do as much it is possible, to transmit to the president of what we saw and how to communicate in a way that it really grabs other people. And it's not just our experience, which never gets communicated.

BONO: Some people say to me you're being used. I say, I'm here to be used, you know? It's really at what price. I really believe these people when they tell me they're serious about starting a new relationship with Africa and with the developing world. They're either lying to me or they are serious. I believe they're serious.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up on this special holiday NEWSNIGHT, the hotrod and the spiderman. Part of the cast of characters we revisit tonight. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We continue with our special edition of NEWSNIGHT with the first of our "On the Rise" segments for the night. Entrepreneurs doing something new in a different way, and even making some money in the process.

We'll start out with a guy who is turning out the kind of motorcycles that every James Dean wannabe in Hollywood seems to want. Who brings a sort of wild west spirit to it all. Something he just may have gotten from a renegade ancestor who shares his name.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JESSE JAMES, WEST COAST CHOPPERS: My name is Jesse James. This is West Coast Choppers.

I build motorcycles. I kind of build them, every one of them, like I'm building it for myself. It's hard for me to let them go, which means that I'm pouring a lot into it, you know. I'm doing everything just the way I like it. And I guess, you know, people think that's cool.

We make our own chassis, tanks, fenders, front end, exhaust, wheels. You know, everything but the motor and transmission we make right in the shop here. This is where I work up here. This is like kind of where I do my thing. This is like a blank sheet of canvas where I start.

I used to be a bodyguard. You know, one day came home and said, you know what? I really want to do something I love. And I never thought this would ever pay my bills. I rented a little corner of a friend of mine's shop, which was about the half the size of a garage. And I remember like two days after I was there, two of my friends came in, Jim and Fast Eddie (ph), and I remember exactly what they said. He'll be out of business in a month.

My first clients were a lot of just friends and acquaintances until like people I've never met or seen face--to--face would like send me a check. Did a bike for Shaq, Keanu Reeves, Goldberg, Tony Martin from the Falcons and then just a bunch of other people with lots of money.

Kid Rock and I have actually went back and forth for about a year and we've never really hooked up until finally, you know, a few weeks ago when he came down to see the shop. When someone that walks in here that's never been here and doesn't really know what to expect, it's like Willy Wonka and the motorcycle factory.

KID ROCK, MUSICIAN: Every time you see a bad--ass chopper pull up, everyone is going, is that a Jesse James? Is that a Jesse James? His name just is getting out there. It's all over, man. Guy's like a mini rock star at this point.

JAMES: I get like 20 people a day come in asking how much it is to build them a bike. Have to say they average between three, if I really like you, to like 125 grand.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can buy a brand new Harley for $16,000. That's a down payment on one of these. JAMES: Bill Harley and Willy (ph) Davidson aren't actually out there making the gas tanks for their bikes or they're not actually out there bending pipes and designing wheels and stuff like that. It's just a name. You know, if someone walks in that door with 100 grand tomorrow and wants a Jesse James bike, Jesse James is actually going to be making it.

It takes a few weeks, but that's so fulfilling. And then what even takes it a step further is when you could jump on it, and I'm going down the freeway and I feel the acceleration and the way the bike works and then I could look down and see my reflection in something that I made. How many people can say that?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: On to a different trailblazer now. This one is known as spiderman; a real one, minus the fancy suit and a mountain of hype. This one is the master of a lot more spiders, itsy bitsy and otherwise. Here's Beth Nissan's report, as shot by the third camera crew she requested. The one that finally said "yes." They may still be regretting it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Norm Platnick is spiderman.

NORM PLATNICK: Now this is a nice spider.

NISSEN: He's the spider curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

PLATNICK: We have the largest collection of spiders, well over a million specimens here.

NISSEN: 50,000 of them are in his office, preserved in little vials and mason jars. Most of these spiders are tiny. He has some bigger ones in the hall.

PLATNICK: Spiders can be as small as the period at the end of a sentence or as large as a dinner plate, like span. NISSEN: He likes spiders.

PLATNICK: They're nice animals.

NISSEN: Animals? Most people think animals are insects.

PLATNICK: Not at all. These -- insects have six legs. Totally group of arthropods.

NISSEN: All spiders have eight legs. And all spiders spin silk, wonderous stuff.

PLATNICK: A strand of spider silk has a tinsel strength that's greater than steel of the same diameter.

NISSEN: Yet highly elastic.

PLATNICK: Spider silk is -- can easily stretch to three or four times its original dimensions and then snap back.

NISSEN: Only about half of all spiders weave webs. And those aren't always the Halloween style orb webs. There are also sheet webs and funnel webs. Spiders use webs to catch food. They set up sticky mid air traps, drop webs like a net, lasso and tie up prey like a cowboy with a rodeo calf. Spiders that don't weave webs, hunt.

PLATNICK: Some are sit and wait hunters. They wait for the prey to come to them. Some are more active, go and chase it.

NISSEN: And then start digesting.

PLATNICK: It's rather gory, actually. They'll first inject venum to paralyze it. And then they will secrete digestive enzymes, which liquify the prey. And then they suck up the liquid.

NISSEN: Ew.

PLATNICK: Well, you have to make a living somehow.

NISSEN: They'll eat almost anything they can catch. Butterflies, other spiders, even small snakes and fish, but not humans. Although if threatened, spiders such as this tarantula will bite.

PLATNICK: Watch out. You're getting too close to the jaws.

NISSEN: There are only two poisonous spiders in North America, the black widow and the brown recluse. Still, many people react to spiders the way a CNN sound man did, when this Brazilian tarantula momentarily got away from its handler. Those with arachnophobia, fear of spider, can't avoid them. They're almost everywhere.

PLATNICK: You're probably seven or eight feet of a spider, no matter where you are. The only place on earth that has no spider at all, as far as we know, is Antarctica. NISSEN: He says as far as we know, because so little is known about spiders. Scientists have identified 36,000 species of spider, but they estimate that's only half the actual number.

PLATNICK: And we're destroying their habitat, so that we're losing them before we even know what we're losing.

NISSEN: While many people might say good riddance to spiders, Platnick says humans should say thank you.

PLATNIC: The fact is if there were no spiders, we probably won't be here. Spiders eat an enormous number of insects. And without that, the insects would have devoured all our crops long ago. We would have no food.

NISSEN: Something to keep in mind the next time you see a daddy long legs on the sidewalk or a spider in the bathtub, or cobweb in the corner.

Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up: the latest news from CNN Center. And then later, the definitive voice of the Detroit Tigers, Ernie Harwell, who called them like nobody else.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: As many of you know, the program has a love affair for still photographers, and a little bit of envy, too, because, for all of our high-tech year and all of our talents for bringing sound and pictures into your home, we're really not that good at capturing the moment.

Moving pictures move, but sometimes it takes a still photo to move us. A single picture can bear witness in ways a million photos cannot. So, tonight, we pay tribute to Ernest Withers, who bore witness to the struggle of civil rights in this country, camera in hand.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TONY DECANEAS, DIRECTOR, PANOPTICON GALLERY: I think one of the most powerful images is the image of Martin Luther King being arrested at Medgar Evers' funeral. The expression on his face is so pained. I knew the image. I had seen it in "Life" magazine, probably, or "TIME."

And yet there had never been a connection between that image and Ernest Withers. And it turns out that Ernest oftentimes would sell exposed rolls of film to UPI and AP stringers and they would get the byline. And Ernest got his money. And he was happy with that arrangement and was never envious of their fame. To him, the message getting out was more important.

ERNEST WITHERS, PHOTOGRAPHER: This is the very beginning of the "I'm a Man" label.

The black newspapers that didn't get wire service, they hired me to go throughout the South when racial incidents occurred. The murder of Emmitt Till, the original bus ride, Martin Luther King. Even protests within our own city.

DECANEAS: A lot of Ernest's photographs are good, simply because he had the courage to take them. There were times when Ernest got beat up, his cameras were smashed, his film was destroyed. It never, ever got in the way of taking pictures.

WITHERS: Although I was frightened -- that is something in terms of the level of responsibility that you have to stick to it until the end.

BEVERLY ROBERTSON, EXECUTIVE DIR., NATL. CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM: I believe he probably has somewhat comprehensive body of work on the movement today.

When you look at his pictures you feel as if you where there. Because he captures sort of everyday faces and images in such a powerful way that it places you right next to the person.

WITHERS: ... Elvis Presley.

DECANEAS: He also photographed the entire music scene in Memphis. He has pictures of Elvis Presley. Kind of cracked the myth that Elvis wasn't grateful to the black community. He was breaking the law with black musicians. And Ernest has the photographs to prove it.

His photographs documenting the Negro Baseball Leagues -- something that existed because of segregation and no longer exists because segregation was banned.

ROBERTSON: That's a big one.

I was the baby in the stroller with my dad. My family was very active. You had to demonstrate for my rights -- the future rights of the next generation.

What I find striking is the facial expressions of the police officers. It's not one of, We're all glad we're out here together. I've had a lot friends and family that have seen photographs, and I hope when they look at the picture, they realize where we were in '61 at a people. Where we've come to today. The courage that it's taken to come this far. So it gives me pride.

I think it takes many, many years to understand the value of history and for us to understand the value of his work and for us to understand the value of the movement.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think of you very often when I see your work around -- how are you?

WITHERS: Fine.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You look wonderful.

WITHERS: I can't find the fountain of youth! I'm looking for it.

DECANEAS: He lovers being a photographer, and he loves life. And the two just coincide. Fortunately, he's got long life genes and he's living to enjoy it.

WITHERS: I've made more than six million to eight million pictures in a lifetime, and that's a lot of pictures. Each day that I'm Ernest Withers the photographer, I'll be expected to make pictures. So I'll be making pictures until I get 105.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Forget for a moment that the last of the mild days have come and gone and remember instead a magician. For, who else but a magician could, by incantation alone, conjure up the magic of a summer evening full of warm breezes and hope and make it appear miles away quite literally out of thin air?

For all of my life and most of his, until he retired this fall, a magician named Ernie Harwell did just that. He did it with a microphone from the ballpark.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERNIE HARWELL: There's a drive hit to deep short, gloved there by Santiago.

BROWN (voice-over): Perhaps only cars are more Detroit than Ernie Harwell, who has called play-by-play of 8,400 major league games, most of them for the Tigers.

HARWELL: Pitch on the way. It is a ball, high. He walked him, and that will load the bases.

BROWN: For 55 years, across seven decades. Harwell began in those days before the NFL and the NBA emerged in sport, back when baseball really was the American pastime.

HARWELL: When I started out with the old-timers, so to speak, we were the only game in town. And whether you liked us or not, you had to listen to us.

HARWELL: The pitch, last ball, strike. Right down the middle about so high.

BROWN: ... which is what America did with baseball back then: It listened, a radio sport. And we have listened to the gentle, southern voice of Ernie Harwell, who like the players he described, started out in the minors.

HARWELL: In 1948, I was broadcasting the Atlanta Cracker games in the southern league. And Red Barber, the great announcer for Brooklyn, went on a trip to Pittsburgh, and an ulcer perforated, and they had to rush him to the hospital in Pittsburgh. And they didn't know whether Red was going to live or die or how serious the ailment might be.

BROWN: Which is how Ernie Harwell got to the big leagues, how he got to Brooklyn, his first stop before moving on to Detroit, and how he got the chance to describe not just a ball game, but a piece of American history. The breaking of the color line and the emergence of Jackie Robinson.

HARWELL: It was wonderful to be there and see Jackie break the color line, which I think is the most significant thing to have happened, not only in baseball history, but in sports history.

BROWN: With its leisurely pace, baseball is an announcer's game.

HARWELL: It's a strike on the outside corner. Mr. Nelson said so; he's the plate umpire.

BROWN: And more than any other sport, the great play-by-play men of baseball, the Vin Scullys and Harry Carays, the Jack Bucks and the Ernie Harwells have been as much companions and friends to their listeners as they were broadcasters.

HARWELL: Long drive! Going back! It might be, it could be, and it is!

BROWN: They are the storytellers of warm summer nights, for kids with radios tucked under their pillows, and parents and grandparents who could never get near a major league park. And back before every game showed up on TV, they were the country's connection to the country's game.

HARWELL: The break down here. Ready to break loose. Three men on, two men out. Game tied on the bottom of the ninth inning.

HARWELL: And they took them everywhere. To the mountains, to the beaches, and the picnics, and the workplace, in the kitchen. It was sort of a Muzak, you know, in the background, this ball game on the radio.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was seven years old, I got my first transistor radio from my parents for my birthday. Took it outside and heard Ernie's voice, coming loud and strong over the AM airwaves, 760. It was my first Tiger game, my first transistor radio, and since then, Ernie's been first in my heart.

BROWN: During his 42 years with the Detroit Tigers, Ernie Harwell has seen two World Series champions. None more important, he says, than the team in 1968.

HARWELL: Kaline scores. The fans are streaming onto the field and the Tigers have won their first pennant since 1945.

HARWELL: People were pretty well divided along race and economics and so forth. And the papers went out on strike in 1967, right around Thanksgiving. And the only way for people to follow the Tigers was radio and television.

BROWN: It's been said, and is likely true, that it was the one thing that held the city together in those angry hot summer nights of '68. That everywhere you went in Detroit, you heard the sound of Ernie Harwell's voice.

(APPLAUSE)

BROWN: And now this season is ending, like so many others in Detroit, more losses than wins. But the old Georgian will leave the game in style, lauded on the field, a statue at the stadium, honored by the people who listened to his broadcasts and the players he described.

AL KALINE, HALL OF FAMER: If you show me one person that dislikes Ernie Harwell, I'll live forever. Because there's no way you're going to find anybody that's going to dislike Ernie Harwell.

BROWN: The kind of person you'd invite into your home 162 times a year, on good days and bad, championship seasons and losing years, for the whole of your life. Your connection to the game, and more.

HARWELL: I have a lot of people say that "I used to sit on the porch with my grandfather and listen to the game. He's been dead now 15 or 20 years, but when I hear on the radio, when I hear the ball games, it reminds me of my grandfather."

And you know, that really makes me feel great.

HARWELL: Hi, everybody. Baseball greetings from Comerica Park, in downtown Detroit.

It's a fly ball into center field, Lombard is there, cruises over and makes the catch.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up on this special NEWSNIGHT: the little red robot that could.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Another of our favorite entrepreneurs of the year: a guy in his 20s who saw a perfect place for advertising, a place where you have a very captive audience of other guys just like him at least a few times a day, almost like clockwork.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're looking for Mark Miller.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, I will let him know that you're here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone loves the story. Everyone loves to know about the 21-year-old who had an idea, wrote a business plan, tried to make it go at it and began a success.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: While at the University of Michigan, I had the idea of advertising in restrooms at bars and nightclubs. There are really two places where the idea came from. One was there was a Dana Carvey movie called "Opportunity Knocks" and they played on the whole idea of restroom advertising.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS")

DANA CARVEY, ACTOR: The average person spends seven-and-a-half minutes of every day staring at the back of a bathroom door.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the second thing was, in men's rooms, they would often -- bar owners would often tack up the sports pages. My feeling, though, was that, you know, 11:30, 12:00, 12:30 at night when you're in a bar, you have already read the sports pages. So, it's sort of old news -- great idea, because everyone loves to read when they're in the restroom. But the idea was, let's put something in front of people that's fresh, that's new.

So then, I graduated college in June of 97 and went to go at it, started to pound the pavement in New York. Bars were digging it. The advertisers was digging it. And slowly but surely, we were able to build up a pretty sizable portfolio.

This is just a sampling of some of our clients that we've put out. When you're able to see an ad, when you're captive, one on one, you can't turn the page, you can't change the channel and they're see advertising that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see, but yet it's talking to you.

Advertising in our own bathroom. If we can't convince ourselves to have it up, probably we won't be successful convincing venue owners to have the ads up. I've really surrounded myself with just really great people who enjoy the culture, enjoy the spirit that goes along with a small company like ours. Greg Liberts (ph), Christine Rauchford (ph), Janet Budnick (ph), Liz Hart (ph), Carolyn Heskin (ph), Randy and Crista (ph). We've got two of my advisers, beefcake and mini-me.

My idea, my vision of the company was really national, hip, trendy cool. You want to be in the coolest, the trendiest, the hippest nightclubs. And you want to go where sort of -- where trends are beginning.

So here we are in Union Bar, one of my very first bars that I ever signed up, been a client ever since. We are now on our way to the restrooms.

Research shows that while in a bar, the average person goes to the restroom 3.2 times. This is my first time in the night, 2.2 to go. Eye level, law dictates that for a man standing at a urinal, you have to look straight ahead. You know, to look to the left, to the right, you become a liability. So here you are standing straight ahead, and this is the marketer's chance to get you, uninterrupted, for one to three minutes.

They say that the average person sees 3,000 advertising messages a day, but how many do they really remember? Well, I'm telling you, you know, if you're standing here for one to three minutes, and you're not looking at anything else other than this ad, this will be one of the impressions that you'll remember in the day. And, you know, obviously, that's our job and that's what we believe. And that's what we're selling.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Finally from us tonight: a bedtime story.

You've heard of the little engine that could. Well, this is a fable of its own, really, the tale of the little red robot.

And, once again, here's CNN's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Once upon a time in the urban kingdom of Brooklyn, there was a public school that decided to enter a robot competition, even though the students had no robotics background, no workshop, no tools.

MIKE DENCH, ROBOTICS INSTRUCTOR: We didn't have a lathe. We didn't have a drill press. We didn't have a band saw. The only table saw we had, I brought in. We didn't have the basic machine tools that you really need to build a decent robot.

NISSEN: The would-be robot makers -- eventually 50 students would take part -- held fund-raisers, begged corporate sponsors, scrounged together the $5,000 competition entry fee, and got in exchange a robot starter kit of basic electronics.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They just opened the boxes and dumped everything out on the table and just spread it out. And I was like, "What is all this"?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we were like, "How are we going to make something out of this?

NISSEN: The students had six weeks to design and build a robot for the competition known as FIRST. This year's FIRST contest required robots that could fill moving goals with soccer balls, maneuver goals into scoring position, or do both.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We wanted to build a simple, efficient design. Basically, all it does is that it just latches on to the goal so we can maneuver it to wherever we need to.

NISSEN: They built their robot out of wood, reluctantly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We all wanted metal. We were like metal, metal, metal.

NISSEN: But metal was too expensive. And they didn't have the tools for cutting or drilling it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our mentor, Dench, he just told us, stick with wood. Wood is stronger than metal in some cases.

NISSEN: Students borrowed tools from the school janitor, from teachers, parents, even this day from a CNN sound man. They turned a classroom into a makeshift shop, worked on the robot after school, on weekends, often late into the night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we have free time at lunch, come straight to this room, start working on the robot.

NISSEN: Many of the students' families, friends and peers in other schools doubted the rookie Brooklyn team could do it. RICO ST. JUSTE, 12TH GRADER: There were a lot of stereotypes, thinking that, since this was a minority school, that we were going to do really badly and that we were going to be lazy. We probably wouldn't even complete the robot in time.

NISSEN: But they did, just in time for the regionals in Manhattan last month. They were amazed and unsettled when they saw the robots built by other schools with greater resources: complex robots, multifunctional robots, sleek, expensive robots made of Plexiglas and metal, metal, metal.

DENCH: They were all like, "Oh, God, look at all these." I said, "The more pieces a machine has, the more there is to go wrong."

NISSEN: The team gamely put its plain red robot into play. They'd painted it red with leftover fire hydrant paint.

ANNOUNCER: Skills Tech Team from Brooklyn pushing the goal.

NISSEN: The game is far too complex to explain here in full, but trust us, the little plywood robot did well against the other fancier robots.

ANNOUNCER: And the Skills Tech Team with the little red robot that could moving across the field, moving into scoring position. Ten points.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Theirs were made out of metal. So, their robots were a little slower than ours. And so we can grab the goal...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Way before they can.

NISSEN: Other robot teams scored more points, so the team from Science Skills High School wasn't expecting anything at the awards ceremony. Then the award for exceptional design was announced.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congratulations to the defensive tank the judges dubbed the little red robot that could.

(APPLAUSE)

NISSEN: The team qualified for the national finals to be held this weekend at Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida: a storybook ending in itself for these teenagers, most of whom plan for college and careers in science and technology.

(on camera): Is there a moral to this story?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Looks can be deceiving.

ST. JUSTE: Never underestimate the power of a rookie team. Determination beats ability every time.

(LAUGHTER)

NISSEN (voice-over): And that's the story, so far, of the little robot made with epoxied plywood, borrowed pliers and a lot of heart: the little red robot that could.

Beth Nissen, CNN, Brooklyn, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And that's this special edition of NEWSNIGHT. We're pleased that you joined us. Hope your holidays are terrific as well.

I'm Aaron Brown in New York. Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

Aired December 24, 2002 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, HOST: Good evening again and happy holidays. I'm Aaron Brown. And we start off by admitting that I'm not really here.
Thanks to the miracle of videotape, much of the NEWSNIGHT staff is at home tonight or scattered around the country somewhere spending time with family reconnecting. And so tonight on this special edition of NEWSNIGHT, we want to spend all our time reconnecting in a way as well, reconnecting with a different kind of family, but one we cherish around here, the family of people we've met over the past year.

This will be sort of like segment seven taking over the entire program. These are the people who got us to choke up or crack up or forced us to think about something new and unfamiliar, something cool. The people, in short, who gave our year much of the unique flavor it had. Not a bad way to end this year. But before we do that, we turn things over to people who are actually working today, to bring you the latest news.

And for that we go to CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.

(NEWSBREAK)

BROWN: We begin our special NEWSNIGHT about 200 miles to the northeast of Los Angeles, just short of independence, a mile west of reward. There you'll find a spot in a valley with a Spanish name that means apple orchard, but to thousands of Americans who arrived there 60 years ago the name Manzanar meant something else.

Sixty years ago, those same Americans were taken from their homes in the West Coast. They were shipped to Manzanar and places like it because they looked like the enemy and there was a war on. Tonight, the country is once again at war, and to at least some people in the country, an awful lot of Americans do look like the enemy again.

So we revisit Manzanar tonight with three Americans who once lived there; a not so gentle reminder that 60 years ago feels a lot closer now than it did a year ago. And Manzanar is still short of independence and not that far down the road.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MAS OKUI, MANZANAR RESIDENT: I was 10. I was in fifth grade.

BO SAKAGUCHI, MANZANAR RESIDENT: I was 16 in 11th grade. SUE EMBREY, MANZANAR RESIDENT: I was 19. The U.S. Army came around into the area and posted notices on telephone poles and store fronts. They just said you've got to go and go. If you didn't go, they would probably arrest you and put you in jail. So what alternative did you have?

SAKAGUCHI: There was a caravan of several buses leaving from Burbank.

OKUI: Yeah.

SAKAGUCHI: And it rained that morning.

OKUI: All I know is when we got there, it was really gray and dark.

SAKAGUCHI: And the lady who was boarding the bus said, look, even the sky is crying for us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The time: Spring and summer of 1942. The relocation centers are supervised by the War Relocation Authority, which assumed responsibility for the people after they had been evacuated and cared for temporarily by the Army. The entire community bounded by a wire fence and guarded by military police.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAKAGUCHI: Well, you know, you're an American, though you're of a different color and features from those from Europe. And so though you know you're an American and you're an American citizen, here we were being herded away into a desolate camp.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Naturally, the newcomers looked about with some curiosity. They were in a new area, on land that was raw, untamed, but full of opportunity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAKAGUCHI: Manzanar -- those who have lived here had experienced all sorts of emotions and experiences. It was very significant; 220,000 people who lived in the United States.

OKUI: Anyone who was here, two things that they were denied were privacy and protection from the wind. It was always windy and there was never any privacy.

EMBREY: The lights used to follow us at night, remember that? As soon as you opened your door and you started out, the lights would follow you, either to the latrine or to a neighbor or wherever you were going, and then they would follow you back again. And I think that's what most people remember the most about camp, the searchlight at night (ph). And people keep saying that there were no guard towers, but there were eight of them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are protecting ourselves without violating the principles of Christian decency. We won't change this fundamental decency no matter what our enemies do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EMBREY: We got our three meals a day...

OKUI: Three meals a day...

(CROSSTALK)

EMBREY: ... but we had no freedom. We had no rights. We were there without any charge. Without a trial.

SAKAGUCHI: I don't remember these trees here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What department number were you in?

SAKAGUCHI: 11-7-4. It would be right about here.

OKUI: I remember the whole place was absolutely barren when we got here. Everything was bulldozed. There was nothing here.

EMBREY: The first night is kind of blanked out of my mind. We were lucky, because the others had to go out and, you know, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) mattress (UNINTELLIGIBLE) with hey. But my brother had already done it for us, so when we got there my mother kind of sat down and said, oh, my, what a place. And that was it. She told me years later that she used to walk up to the apple orchards from block 20, which is quite a ways, every day, and cry under the trees.

SAKAGUCHI: September 11, I watched it on TV. I wasn't aware who had caused it. And then once we found out, I think, then we worried, because those were only special people who are brought into this country to try to destroy this country. And the average Muslim is probably a very loyal to this country.

EMBREY: I had heard FBI had gone into Detroit, where there is a large Middle Eastern population and had talked to people. And I thought, well, that's what happened on the night of December 7.

SAKAGUCHI: The Arab-Americans -- or the Muslims were lucky. At least the president...

EMBREY: He did say that we have to not make them scapegoats, right.

SAKAGUCHI: That every Muslim is not a terrorist. I wish they would have said that about us.

EMBREY: No, not that president.

SAKAGUCHI: Emotions are emotions. And time changes people. And time tends to people forget.

EMBREY: But I hope, you know, Americans have learned -- at least those who know about it have learned from the experience.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up: the headliners of the odd couple tour of the spring of 2002: Bono and the former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There's a class of people, a very exclusive lot, who tend to get picked on mercilessly by the press. Those known as the celebrity do-gooder, means well, knows nothing.

Then there's Bono. This is a guy who does his homework. Even top policy makers agree on that. And one of them was Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who thought Bono knew enough and cared enough to travel with him for 10 days in a place that needs both of their help.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BONO, MUSICIAN: Well, these trips, I've taken a few of them. I don't really know what to expect every time I go. I sort of don't want to go. Usually, that's my feelin, is just, I just don't want to go.

This time, though, I was quite hung over. I do remember that. Edge is getting married, and we had his bachelor party. And I promised myself I wouldn't drink, because I knew we had important business, but, you know what I mean. So I was kind of holding my head a little as I came over here, and just thinking, you know, "Is this going to be jive? Or are we actually going, to quote the secretary of the treasury, get some results?"

PAUL O'NEILL, TREASURY SECRETARY: When I go on the road, I really want to learn and see things. It really helps me a lot to be able to have a more personal understanding of what lives are like in different places around the world, when I'm thinking about either business or governmental policy issues.

BONO: I love being in Africa, because no one knows who I am here.

My name is Bono. I'm a rock star.

Or if they do know who I am, I'm the debt cancellation guy. I'm the "drop the debt" guy.

O'NEILL: As a general rule, I don't take my family with me. This is the first time my daughters ever traveled with me on an official trip, either in the public or the private sector.

BONO: When I'm on these trips, you know, I don't feel I'm an entertainer. I'm an activist. And I may appear friendly, and I may, you know, try to turn on what little charm I have.

But deep down, I'm very, very serious about these things, and I'm very angry.

(SINGING)

BONO: I don't know why I sang there. I just saw these people who, really, I'm sure, hadn't a clue who I was, probably been told, you know, when you do this, this is the Bono song, this is the U2 song. And I just felt for them.

(SINGING)

BONO: The only thing that I regret is I didn't get to the verse that I wanted to get to, which is "I believe in the kingdom come, then all the colors will bleed into one, but yes we're still running." I wanted to sing that for them.

If we really thought these lives have a meaning day to day in Ghana, in Uganda, in South Africa, in Soweto, if we thought they were as valuable as ours, we couldn't let them die a death to AIDS because they can't afford a dollar-and-a-half a day. Truly, this is about equality.

O'NEILL: My daughter handed me this -- must have been a three- month old, a little girl in a pink sleeper. And she had the most sparkly brown eyes and the most trusting manner. That was really a tear provider for me.

BONO: He's getting angrier by the day as he sees the great potential of this cause and how it's not been used. Is that fair?

O'NEILL: That's fair.

BONO: That's fair.

O'NEILL: But I think now an essential part for me to do as much it is possible, to transmit to the president of what we saw and how to communicate in a way that it really grabs other people. And it's not just our experience, which never gets communicated.

BONO: Some people say to me you're being used. I say, I'm here to be used, you know? It's really at what price. I really believe these people when they tell me they're serious about starting a new relationship with Africa and with the developing world. They're either lying to me or they are serious. I believe they're serious.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up on this special holiday NEWSNIGHT, the hotrod and the spiderman. Part of the cast of characters we revisit tonight. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We continue with our special edition of NEWSNIGHT with the first of our "On the Rise" segments for the night. Entrepreneurs doing something new in a different way, and even making some money in the process.

We'll start out with a guy who is turning out the kind of motorcycles that every James Dean wannabe in Hollywood seems to want. Who brings a sort of wild west spirit to it all. Something he just may have gotten from a renegade ancestor who shares his name.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JESSE JAMES, WEST COAST CHOPPERS: My name is Jesse James. This is West Coast Choppers.

I build motorcycles. I kind of build them, every one of them, like I'm building it for myself. It's hard for me to let them go, which means that I'm pouring a lot into it, you know. I'm doing everything just the way I like it. And I guess, you know, people think that's cool.

We make our own chassis, tanks, fenders, front end, exhaust, wheels. You know, everything but the motor and transmission we make right in the shop here. This is where I work up here. This is like kind of where I do my thing. This is like a blank sheet of canvas where I start.

I used to be a bodyguard. You know, one day came home and said, you know what? I really want to do something I love. And I never thought this would ever pay my bills. I rented a little corner of a friend of mine's shop, which was about the half the size of a garage. And I remember like two days after I was there, two of my friends came in, Jim and Fast Eddie (ph), and I remember exactly what they said. He'll be out of business in a month.

My first clients were a lot of just friends and acquaintances until like people I've never met or seen face--to--face would like send me a check. Did a bike for Shaq, Keanu Reeves, Goldberg, Tony Martin from the Falcons and then just a bunch of other people with lots of money.

Kid Rock and I have actually went back and forth for about a year and we've never really hooked up until finally, you know, a few weeks ago when he came down to see the shop. When someone that walks in here that's never been here and doesn't really know what to expect, it's like Willy Wonka and the motorcycle factory.

KID ROCK, MUSICIAN: Every time you see a bad--ass chopper pull up, everyone is going, is that a Jesse James? Is that a Jesse James? His name just is getting out there. It's all over, man. Guy's like a mini rock star at this point.

JAMES: I get like 20 people a day come in asking how much it is to build them a bike. Have to say they average between three, if I really like you, to like 125 grand.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can buy a brand new Harley for $16,000. That's a down payment on one of these. JAMES: Bill Harley and Willy (ph) Davidson aren't actually out there making the gas tanks for their bikes or they're not actually out there bending pipes and designing wheels and stuff like that. It's just a name. You know, if someone walks in that door with 100 grand tomorrow and wants a Jesse James bike, Jesse James is actually going to be making it.

It takes a few weeks, but that's so fulfilling. And then what even takes it a step further is when you could jump on it, and I'm going down the freeway and I feel the acceleration and the way the bike works and then I could look down and see my reflection in something that I made. How many people can say that?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: On to a different trailblazer now. This one is known as spiderman; a real one, minus the fancy suit and a mountain of hype. This one is the master of a lot more spiders, itsy bitsy and otherwise. Here's Beth Nissan's report, as shot by the third camera crew she requested. The one that finally said "yes." They may still be regretting it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Norm Platnick is spiderman.

NORM PLATNICK: Now this is a nice spider.

NISSEN: He's the spider curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

PLATNICK: We have the largest collection of spiders, well over a million specimens here.

NISSEN: 50,000 of them are in his office, preserved in little vials and mason jars. Most of these spiders are tiny. He has some bigger ones in the hall.

PLATNICK: Spiders can be as small as the period at the end of a sentence or as large as a dinner plate, like span. NISSEN: He likes spiders.

PLATNICK: They're nice animals.

NISSEN: Animals? Most people think animals are insects.

PLATNICK: Not at all. These -- insects have six legs. Totally group of arthropods.

NISSEN: All spiders have eight legs. And all spiders spin silk, wonderous stuff.

PLATNICK: A strand of spider silk has a tinsel strength that's greater than steel of the same diameter.

NISSEN: Yet highly elastic.

PLATNICK: Spider silk is -- can easily stretch to three or four times its original dimensions and then snap back.

NISSEN: Only about half of all spiders weave webs. And those aren't always the Halloween style orb webs. There are also sheet webs and funnel webs. Spiders use webs to catch food. They set up sticky mid air traps, drop webs like a net, lasso and tie up prey like a cowboy with a rodeo calf. Spiders that don't weave webs, hunt.

PLATNICK: Some are sit and wait hunters. They wait for the prey to come to them. Some are more active, go and chase it.

NISSEN: And then start digesting.

PLATNICK: It's rather gory, actually. They'll first inject venum to paralyze it. And then they will secrete digestive enzymes, which liquify the prey. And then they suck up the liquid.

NISSEN: Ew.

PLATNICK: Well, you have to make a living somehow.

NISSEN: They'll eat almost anything they can catch. Butterflies, other spiders, even small snakes and fish, but not humans. Although if threatened, spiders such as this tarantula will bite.

PLATNICK: Watch out. You're getting too close to the jaws.

NISSEN: There are only two poisonous spiders in North America, the black widow and the brown recluse. Still, many people react to spiders the way a CNN sound man did, when this Brazilian tarantula momentarily got away from its handler. Those with arachnophobia, fear of spider, can't avoid them. They're almost everywhere.

PLATNICK: You're probably seven or eight feet of a spider, no matter where you are. The only place on earth that has no spider at all, as far as we know, is Antarctica. NISSEN: He says as far as we know, because so little is known about spiders. Scientists have identified 36,000 species of spider, but they estimate that's only half the actual number.

PLATNICK: And we're destroying their habitat, so that we're losing them before we even know what we're losing.

NISSEN: While many people might say good riddance to spiders, Platnick says humans should say thank you.

PLATNIC: The fact is if there were no spiders, we probably won't be here. Spiders eat an enormous number of insects. And without that, the insects would have devoured all our crops long ago. We would have no food.

NISSEN: Something to keep in mind the next time you see a daddy long legs on the sidewalk or a spider in the bathtub, or cobweb in the corner.

Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up: the latest news from CNN Center. And then later, the definitive voice of the Detroit Tigers, Ernie Harwell, who called them like nobody else.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: As many of you know, the program has a love affair for still photographers, and a little bit of envy, too, because, for all of our high-tech year and all of our talents for bringing sound and pictures into your home, we're really not that good at capturing the moment.

Moving pictures move, but sometimes it takes a still photo to move us. A single picture can bear witness in ways a million photos cannot. So, tonight, we pay tribute to Ernest Withers, who bore witness to the struggle of civil rights in this country, camera in hand.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TONY DECANEAS, DIRECTOR, PANOPTICON GALLERY: I think one of the most powerful images is the image of Martin Luther King being arrested at Medgar Evers' funeral. The expression on his face is so pained. I knew the image. I had seen it in "Life" magazine, probably, or "TIME."

And yet there had never been a connection between that image and Ernest Withers. And it turns out that Ernest oftentimes would sell exposed rolls of film to UPI and AP stringers and they would get the byline. And Ernest got his money. And he was happy with that arrangement and was never envious of their fame. To him, the message getting out was more important.

ERNEST WITHERS, PHOTOGRAPHER: This is the very beginning of the "I'm a Man" label.

The black newspapers that didn't get wire service, they hired me to go throughout the South when racial incidents occurred. The murder of Emmitt Till, the original bus ride, Martin Luther King. Even protests within our own city.

DECANEAS: A lot of Ernest's photographs are good, simply because he had the courage to take them. There were times when Ernest got beat up, his cameras were smashed, his film was destroyed. It never, ever got in the way of taking pictures.

WITHERS: Although I was frightened -- that is something in terms of the level of responsibility that you have to stick to it until the end.

BEVERLY ROBERTSON, EXECUTIVE DIR., NATL. CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM: I believe he probably has somewhat comprehensive body of work on the movement today.

When you look at his pictures you feel as if you where there. Because he captures sort of everyday faces and images in such a powerful way that it places you right next to the person.

WITHERS: ... Elvis Presley.

DECANEAS: He also photographed the entire music scene in Memphis. He has pictures of Elvis Presley. Kind of cracked the myth that Elvis wasn't grateful to the black community. He was breaking the law with black musicians. And Ernest has the photographs to prove it.

His photographs documenting the Negro Baseball Leagues -- something that existed because of segregation and no longer exists because segregation was banned.

ROBERTSON: That's a big one.

I was the baby in the stroller with my dad. My family was very active. You had to demonstrate for my rights -- the future rights of the next generation.

What I find striking is the facial expressions of the police officers. It's not one of, We're all glad we're out here together. I've had a lot friends and family that have seen photographs, and I hope when they look at the picture, they realize where we were in '61 at a people. Where we've come to today. The courage that it's taken to come this far. So it gives me pride.

I think it takes many, many years to understand the value of history and for us to understand the value of his work and for us to understand the value of the movement.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think of you very often when I see your work around -- how are you?

WITHERS: Fine.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You look wonderful.

WITHERS: I can't find the fountain of youth! I'm looking for it.

DECANEAS: He lovers being a photographer, and he loves life. And the two just coincide. Fortunately, he's got long life genes and he's living to enjoy it.

WITHERS: I've made more than six million to eight million pictures in a lifetime, and that's a lot of pictures. Each day that I'm Ernest Withers the photographer, I'll be expected to make pictures. So I'll be making pictures until I get 105.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Forget for a moment that the last of the mild days have come and gone and remember instead a magician. For, who else but a magician could, by incantation alone, conjure up the magic of a summer evening full of warm breezes and hope and make it appear miles away quite literally out of thin air?

For all of my life and most of his, until he retired this fall, a magician named Ernie Harwell did just that. He did it with a microphone from the ballpark.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERNIE HARWELL: There's a drive hit to deep short, gloved there by Santiago.

BROWN (voice-over): Perhaps only cars are more Detroit than Ernie Harwell, who has called play-by-play of 8,400 major league games, most of them for the Tigers.

HARWELL: Pitch on the way. It is a ball, high. He walked him, and that will load the bases.

BROWN: For 55 years, across seven decades. Harwell began in those days before the NFL and the NBA emerged in sport, back when baseball really was the American pastime.

HARWELL: When I started out with the old-timers, so to speak, we were the only game in town. And whether you liked us or not, you had to listen to us.

HARWELL: The pitch, last ball, strike. Right down the middle about so high.

BROWN: ... which is what America did with baseball back then: It listened, a radio sport. And we have listened to the gentle, southern voice of Ernie Harwell, who like the players he described, started out in the minors.

HARWELL: In 1948, I was broadcasting the Atlanta Cracker games in the southern league. And Red Barber, the great announcer for Brooklyn, went on a trip to Pittsburgh, and an ulcer perforated, and they had to rush him to the hospital in Pittsburgh. And they didn't know whether Red was going to live or die or how serious the ailment might be.

BROWN: Which is how Ernie Harwell got to the big leagues, how he got to Brooklyn, his first stop before moving on to Detroit, and how he got the chance to describe not just a ball game, but a piece of American history. The breaking of the color line and the emergence of Jackie Robinson.

HARWELL: It was wonderful to be there and see Jackie break the color line, which I think is the most significant thing to have happened, not only in baseball history, but in sports history.

BROWN: With its leisurely pace, baseball is an announcer's game.

HARWELL: It's a strike on the outside corner. Mr. Nelson said so; he's the plate umpire.

BROWN: And more than any other sport, the great play-by-play men of baseball, the Vin Scullys and Harry Carays, the Jack Bucks and the Ernie Harwells have been as much companions and friends to their listeners as they were broadcasters.

HARWELL: Long drive! Going back! It might be, it could be, and it is!

BROWN: They are the storytellers of warm summer nights, for kids with radios tucked under their pillows, and parents and grandparents who could never get near a major league park. And back before every game showed up on TV, they were the country's connection to the country's game.

HARWELL: The break down here. Ready to break loose. Three men on, two men out. Game tied on the bottom of the ninth inning.

HARWELL: And they took them everywhere. To the mountains, to the beaches, and the picnics, and the workplace, in the kitchen. It was sort of a Muzak, you know, in the background, this ball game on the radio.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was seven years old, I got my first transistor radio from my parents for my birthday. Took it outside and heard Ernie's voice, coming loud and strong over the AM airwaves, 760. It was my first Tiger game, my first transistor radio, and since then, Ernie's been first in my heart.

BROWN: During his 42 years with the Detroit Tigers, Ernie Harwell has seen two World Series champions. None more important, he says, than the team in 1968.

HARWELL: Kaline scores. The fans are streaming onto the field and the Tigers have won their first pennant since 1945.

HARWELL: People were pretty well divided along race and economics and so forth. And the papers went out on strike in 1967, right around Thanksgiving. And the only way for people to follow the Tigers was radio and television.

BROWN: It's been said, and is likely true, that it was the one thing that held the city together in those angry hot summer nights of '68. That everywhere you went in Detroit, you heard the sound of Ernie Harwell's voice.

(APPLAUSE)

BROWN: And now this season is ending, like so many others in Detroit, more losses than wins. But the old Georgian will leave the game in style, lauded on the field, a statue at the stadium, honored by the people who listened to his broadcasts and the players he described.

AL KALINE, HALL OF FAMER: If you show me one person that dislikes Ernie Harwell, I'll live forever. Because there's no way you're going to find anybody that's going to dislike Ernie Harwell.

BROWN: The kind of person you'd invite into your home 162 times a year, on good days and bad, championship seasons and losing years, for the whole of your life. Your connection to the game, and more.

HARWELL: I have a lot of people say that "I used to sit on the porch with my grandfather and listen to the game. He's been dead now 15 or 20 years, but when I hear on the radio, when I hear the ball games, it reminds me of my grandfather."

And you know, that really makes me feel great.

HARWELL: Hi, everybody. Baseball greetings from Comerica Park, in downtown Detroit.

It's a fly ball into center field, Lombard is there, cruises over and makes the catch.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up on this special NEWSNIGHT: the little red robot that could.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Another of our favorite entrepreneurs of the year: a guy in his 20s who saw a perfect place for advertising, a place where you have a very captive audience of other guys just like him at least a few times a day, almost like clockwork.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're looking for Mark Miller.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, I will let him know that you're here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone loves the story. Everyone loves to know about the 21-year-old who had an idea, wrote a business plan, tried to make it go at it and began a success.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: While at the University of Michigan, I had the idea of advertising in restrooms at bars and nightclubs. There are really two places where the idea came from. One was there was a Dana Carvey movie called "Opportunity Knocks" and they played on the whole idea of restroom advertising.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS")

DANA CARVEY, ACTOR: The average person spends seven-and-a-half minutes of every day staring at the back of a bathroom door.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the second thing was, in men's rooms, they would often -- bar owners would often tack up the sports pages. My feeling, though, was that, you know, 11:30, 12:00, 12:30 at night when you're in a bar, you have already read the sports pages. So, it's sort of old news -- great idea, because everyone loves to read when they're in the restroom. But the idea was, let's put something in front of people that's fresh, that's new.

So then, I graduated college in June of 97 and went to go at it, started to pound the pavement in New York. Bars were digging it. The advertisers was digging it. And slowly but surely, we were able to build up a pretty sizable portfolio.

This is just a sampling of some of our clients that we've put out. When you're able to see an ad, when you're captive, one on one, you can't turn the page, you can't change the channel and they're see advertising that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see, but yet it's talking to you.

Advertising in our own bathroom. If we can't convince ourselves to have it up, probably we won't be successful convincing venue owners to have the ads up. I've really surrounded myself with just really great people who enjoy the culture, enjoy the spirit that goes along with a small company like ours. Greg Liberts (ph), Christine Rauchford (ph), Janet Budnick (ph), Liz Hart (ph), Carolyn Heskin (ph), Randy and Crista (ph). We've got two of my advisers, beefcake and mini-me.

My idea, my vision of the company was really national, hip, trendy cool. You want to be in the coolest, the trendiest, the hippest nightclubs. And you want to go where sort of -- where trends are beginning.

So here we are in Union Bar, one of my very first bars that I ever signed up, been a client ever since. We are now on our way to the restrooms.

Research shows that while in a bar, the average person goes to the restroom 3.2 times. This is my first time in the night, 2.2 to go. Eye level, law dictates that for a man standing at a urinal, you have to look straight ahead. You know, to look to the left, to the right, you become a liability. So here you are standing straight ahead, and this is the marketer's chance to get you, uninterrupted, for one to three minutes.

They say that the average person sees 3,000 advertising messages a day, but how many do they really remember? Well, I'm telling you, you know, if you're standing here for one to three minutes, and you're not looking at anything else other than this ad, this will be one of the impressions that you'll remember in the day. And, you know, obviously, that's our job and that's what we believe. And that's what we're selling.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Finally from us tonight: a bedtime story.

You've heard of the little engine that could. Well, this is a fable of its own, really, the tale of the little red robot.

And, once again, here's CNN's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Once upon a time in the urban kingdom of Brooklyn, there was a public school that decided to enter a robot competition, even though the students had no robotics background, no workshop, no tools.

MIKE DENCH, ROBOTICS INSTRUCTOR: We didn't have a lathe. We didn't have a drill press. We didn't have a band saw. The only table saw we had, I brought in. We didn't have the basic machine tools that you really need to build a decent robot.

NISSEN: The would-be robot makers -- eventually 50 students would take part -- held fund-raisers, begged corporate sponsors, scrounged together the $5,000 competition entry fee, and got in exchange a robot starter kit of basic electronics.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They just opened the boxes and dumped everything out on the table and just spread it out. And I was like, "What is all this"?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we were like, "How are we going to make something out of this?

NISSEN: The students had six weeks to design and build a robot for the competition known as FIRST. This year's FIRST contest required robots that could fill moving goals with soccer balls, maneuver goals into scoring position, or do both.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We wanted to build a simple, efficient design. Basically, all it does is that it just latches on to the goal so we can maneuver it to wherever we need to.

NISSEN: They built their robot out of wood, reluctantly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We all wanted metal. We were like metal, metal, metal.

NISSEN: But metal was too expensive. And they didn't have the tools for cutting or drilling it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our mentor, Dench, he just told us, stick with wood. Wood is stronger than metal in some cases.

NISSEN: Students borrowed tools from the school janitor, from teachers, parents, even this day from a CNN sound man. They turned a classroom into a makeshift shop, worked on the robot after school, on weekends, often late into the night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we have free time at lunch, come straight to this room, start working on the robot.

NISSEN: Many of the students' families, friends and peers in other schools doubted the rookie Brooklyn team could do it. RICO ST. JUSTE, 12TH GRADER: There were a lot of stereotypes, thinking that, since this was a minority school, that we were going to do really badly and that we were going to be lazy. We probably wouldn't even complete the robot in time.

NISSEN: But they did, just in time for the regionals in Manhattan last month. They were amazed and unsettled when they saw the robots built by other schools with greater resources: complex robots, multifunctional robots, sleek, expensive robots made of Plexiglas and metal, metal, metal.

DENCH: They were all like, "Oh, God, look at all these." I said, "The more pieces a machine has, the more there is to go wrong."

NISSEN: The team gamely put its plain red robot into play. They'd painted it red with leftover fire hydrant paint.

ANNOUNCER: Skills Tech Team from Brooklyn pushing the goal.

NISSEN: The game is far too complex to explain here in full, but trust us, the little plywood robot did well against the other fancier robots.

ANNOUNCER: And the Skills Tech Team with the little red robot that could moving across the field, moving into scoring position. Ten points.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Theirs were made out of metal. So, their robots were a little slower than ours. And so we can grab the goal...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Way before they can.

NISSEN: Other robot teams scored more points, so the team from Science Skills High School wasn't expecting anything at the awards ceremony. Then the award for exceptional design was announced.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congratulations to the defensive tank the judges dubbed the little red robot that could.

(APPLAUSE)

NISSEN: The team qualified for the national finals to be held this weekend at Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida: a storybook ending in itself for these teenagers, most of whom plan for college and careers in science and technology.

(on camera): Is there a moral to this story?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Looks can be deceiving.

ST. JUSTE: Never underestimate the power of a rookie team. Determination beats ability every time.

(LAUGHTER)

NISSEN (voice-over): And that's the story, so far, of the little robot made with epoxied plywood, borrowed pliers and a lot of heart: the little red robot that could.

Beth Nissen, CNN, Brooklyn, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And that's this special edition of NEWSNIGHT. We're pleased that you joined us. Hope your holidays are terrific as well.

I'm Aaron Brown in New York. Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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