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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Congress Debates Decency Of Media; Wesley Clark Drops Out Of Presidential Race; Bush Calls For International Community To Crack Down On WMD Proliferation

Aired February 11, 2004 - 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, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
At the risk of causing myself a lot of trouble, it seems to me the only thing worse than the Super Bowl Halftime Show is Congress getting involved in the Super Bowl Halftime Show, which it did today.

Believe me it is not that I thought the halftime show was some wonderful expression of American values. I thought the whole thing, including the clothes ripping, was pretty tasteless and offensive. It's just that my Libertarian side believe the marketplace will handle it all just fine.

TV is the most democratic business in the world. You all vote hundreds of times a day with your remote controls and I trust you and your remotes, at least I trust you a lot more than I trust the members of Congress in an election year.

Not surprisingly, Congress did not ask for my advice on this, so we begin with Congress an indecency in the media.

CNN's Elaine Quijano starts us off with a headline.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, lawmakers held two hearings today on the timely topic of broadcast decency rules and enforcement. They all agree the Janet Jackson display was offensive but what's not clear is how far officials should go to punish or prevent such incidents.

BROWN: Elaine, thank you. We'll get to you at the top tonight.

The president took up the question of keeping nuclear weapons away from the bad guys. CNN's Suzanne Malveaux with the duty this evening, a headline from you Suzanne.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, President Bush once again is calling on the international community to cooperate, to help, this time to crack down on the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The question here is are those countries that are still smarting over the Iraq War will they cooperate this time?

BROWN: Suzanne, thank you.

Lawmakers in Massachusetts battling over gay marriage, CNN's David Mattingly on Beacon Hill tonight, David your headline. DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, a State Supreme Court in Massachusetts says yes to gay marriages and now the state legislature looks for a way to say no with a constitutional amendment -- Aaron.

BROWN: David, thank you.

And finally, Wisconsin, where the Democratic field will be smaller come the next primary. CNN's Kelly Wallace there for us tonight, Kelly a headline.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, smaller because Wesley Clark is getting out. Howard Dean and John Edwards are staying in but John Kerry remains the man to beat, a new poll showing him leading by more than 30 points here -- Aaron.

BROWN: Kelly, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up we'll talk with General Wesley Clark live later in this hour.

Also on the program tonight a huge takeover offer for the Disney Company. A cable giant tries to move into content, as we say in the business.

We'll have a really cool look at the Beatles' arrival on the American scene 40 years ago. These are the pictures Larry was talking about, taken through the eyes of a photographer who recorded it. It's very cool stuff.

And what would Wednesday be like without a heaping helping of Thursday morning's papers to send you to bed with. Well, all that and more in the hour ahead. You probably could think of something better than that.

We begin with the Super Bowl, television, decency, politics and a flashback, if you will. Forty-two years ago when FCC Commissioner Newton Minnow called the medium a vast wasteland, he was talking about television then, "Bonanza," "The Flintstones," "Mr. Ed." The first Super Bowl was six years off and Janet Jackson wasn't even a twinkle in her future agent's eye.

Forty-two years later television is either just as good or just as awful as its always been but it remains on the books, at least, a public trust. Networks in theory still answer to the FCC and both answer to Congress. Politics still apply. The culture war rages on.

Here's CNN's Elaine Quijano.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

QUIJANO (voice-over): A week and a half after the revealing Super Bowl Halftime Show aired on national TV, lawmakers sent broadcasters a clear message of their own. REP. HEATHER WILSON (R), NEW MEXICO: You knew what you were doing. You knew what kind of entertainment you're selling and you wanted us all to be abuzz here in this room and on the playground in my kid's school because it improves your ratings. It improves your market share and it lines your pockets.

QUIJANO: But at that House hearing, the head of Viacom, CBS' parent company, said he didn't know what was going to happen.

MEL KARMAZIN, PRESIDENT AND CEO, VIACOM: Everyone at Viacom and everyone at CBS and everyone at MTV was shocked and appalled and embarrassed.

QUIJANO: He, along with NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue apologized. But at a Senate committee hearing, lawmakers said the Janet Jackson episode was not isolated.

SEN. FRANK LAUTENBERG (D), NEW JERSEY: During the Super Bowl, we were bombarded with ads featuring flatulent horses, crotch-biting dogs, a monkey making sexual advances to a woman.

QUIJANO: Senators also grilled members of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC chairman promised tougher action but said others should take part in policing content.

MICHAEL POWELL, FCC CHAIRMAN: The time has come for the commission, the Congress and the industry and the public, as Senator Graham said, to take the necessary steps to prevent allowing the worst of television and all that it has to offer from reaching unsuspecting children.

QUIJANO: Concerns over broadcast decency rules have already prompted the networks to take action. NBC edited out a shot of an elderly woman's breast on the medical drama "ER" and ABC announced it might be editing two versions of its hit police show "NYPD Blue" to include one with less sexual content but some warn those measures could go too far.

JEROME BARRON, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: I think what we have to be careful is that we don't draw the line so that it cuts too deeply into First Amendment freedom.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

QUIJANO: Now, lawmakers are considering a House bill to increase the fine for indecency violations from $27,500 to $275,000 per violation and they could go further with some suggesting revoking licenses and having broadcasters forfeit advertising profits. But it's important to note that none of those fines would impact cable networks like MTV, which regularly air suggestive content -- Aaron.

BROWN: Elaine, thank you. Thank you.

So, a morality play or Washington's longest running farce? James Poniewozik writes about culture, politics, the business of television for "Time" magazine and we're pleased he's with us tonight. So what do you make of all this? It's an election year. Are you that cynical or is there more to it than that?

JAMES PONIEWOZIK, MEDIA CRITIC, "TIME" MAGAZINE: There's something more to it than that. I mean it's not as though the political powers that be could have caused Janet Jackson's breast to pop out at the Super Bowl and, you know, therefore there were extraneous events that were driving this.

But, obviously you know the FCC pressures were in the works. The hearings were in the works. Certainly, you know, there are interests on all sides that, you know, have some hay to make in election years by getting us all really afraid of that evil box in our living room or wherever else.

BROWN: Look, there is a perception, I don't think it's absolutely untrue that the society itself is in all sorts of places is simply too coarse, has gotten too coarse in the way we talk to one another, in the movies we see, the television we watch, all of that. Is that an area the government ought to regulate?

PONIEWOZIK: Well, I mean you hit on an interesting thing which is that there are actually two conversations that you can be having here. One, what sort of culture should we be living in? What sort of culture do we want our kids growing up in and so forth? And you can have a lot of interesting discussions about that.

The other question is, is there one standard of that that any government body should be enforcing and do we want John McCain, Dianne Feinstein, whoever it is, determining what that is for us?

I mean, you know, we are not only intelligent we're in a 500 channel universe but, you know, we're sort of in a 500 channel culture. I mean it's kind of hard to say what is the community standard on anything in a time when, you know, even the biggest broadcasters only serve a minority at any given time.

BROWN: But in terms of this conversation or, at least in what the Congress was dealing with today, we're really not in a universe of 500 channels. We're in a universe of four channels, aren't we? And we're really talking about the broadcast networks because clearly...

PONIEWOZIK: Six or seven depending on how you define them, yes. Yes.

BROWN: I'm sorry. To those I didn't mention, I apologize. Cable clearly is a different universe and that in an odd way is part of the broadcast network's problem.

PONIEWOZIK: It's the broadcast networks' major problem. It's their first, second and third problem which is that, you know, whatever ratings problems they have are exacerbated by the fact that people can go to cable, that in fact people choose to go to cable. You used to have in broadcasting something called least objectionable programming.

BROWN: Yes.

PONIEWOZIK: The idea that, you know, as a broadcaster, one of the big three, you want to give people as few reasons as possible to change the channel and so you would try to put the thing on that offends as few people as possible.

Well now, if you do that, you have a lot of people who want most objectionable programming who are going to go off to MTV or, you know, VH1 or whatever other option out there if you don't give that to them and there just, there isn't this big wide (UNINTELLIGIBLE) down the middle that you can pitch to anymore.

And, in a sense, you know, what we saw disastrously at the Super Bowl was, you know, CBS, Viacom sort of trying to bring the edge to the mainstream and one of the few remaining big mainstream broadcasting events and it all sort of blew up.

BROWN: It sure did that. It sure did that. There was a piece in the "New York Times" I think a couple of years ago about broadcast programmers desperately trying to figure out how they could take a "Soprano's" like program or "Sex in the City" like program and put it on their network and they can't.

PONIEWOZIK: Yes.

BROWN: And it's killing them.

PONIEWOZIK: It's almost a contradiction in terms because what, you know, makes "Soprano's," "Sex in the City," whatever it is what it is, is in part because those, HBO for instance, is able to do what it does by getting a relatively small number of people, a few million, whatever, so interested in a particular show that they will pay to watch it.

But, you know, if you're ABC you're still in the business of trying to get 15, 20 million people to, you know, kind of like something enough not to change the channel and the thing is something like "Sex in the City," "The Soprano's" is going to turn a lot of people off and, again, you know, bringing MTV to the Super Bowl halftime was just that large.

BROWN: Well, I don't think they'll be back next year. That's my guess.

PONIEWOZIK: I'm not going to count anything out.

BROWN: Well, that's true. It's television. We shouldn't guess. Nice to meet you, thank you.

PONIEWOZIK: Oh, thank you.

BROWN: Thanks for coming in.

On to proliferation of an all together different sort, we would say, weapons of mass destruction. The president, who has been on the defensive some of late about WMDs yet to be found in Iraq, went on the offensive today. In a speech in Washington he delivered the equivalent of a dressing down Congress gave the FCC.

Reporting the story from the White House, CNN's Suzanne Malveaux.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (voice-over): President Bush is calling for the world to crack down on the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We and our friends are determined to protect our people and the world from proliferation.

MALVEAUX: Mr. Bush introduced new proposals to stop the spread of weapons, including focusing on the black market, adopting stricter interdiction protocols and giving greater responsibilities to the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog group.

Mr. Bush says current international treaties have failed to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Example, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, AQ Khan, was able to sell nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya, North Korea through a global black market network.

Though Mr. Bush praised U.S. intelligence, European allies and Pakistan's leader Pervez Musharraf for recently bringing Dr. Khan down, he had a warning for countries not so cooperative.

BUSH: Continuing to seek those weapons will not bring security or international prestige but only political isolation, economic hardship and other unwelcome consequences.

MALVEAUX: Mr. Bush commended Libya for agreeing to give up its weapons program, pressed Iran to cooperate with more stringent inspections, and he called on North Korea to continue talks to abandon its nuclear ambitions. One nuclear expert says raising the profile of weapons proliferation may encourage countries to cooperate.

DAVID ALBRIGHT, PRESIDENT, INSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY: WE could end up with a much better nonproliferation regime with stronger treaties, stronger agreements, more political commitment by countries to make the world safer against the spread of nuclear weapons.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: The announcement doesn't come in a vacuum. Mr. Bush is eager to portray himself as a war time president with bold vision during this election year, the White House saying that they of course are building on the cooperation they've gotten from countries regarding WMD -- Aaron.

BROWN: How does this all translate ultimately into policy, international policy or national policy? It needs to be both.

MALVEAUX: Well, it certainly is going to be difficult to convince some of these countries to actually cooperate. You have the situation with Russia. It has always been providing nuclear technology to Iran. That is something that really is going to have to be worked out diplomatically with this administration.

You also have the case of Israel as well. There will be questions coming from other countries, from Arab nations, saying well why don't you have an open policy when it comes to the nuclear weapons in Israel?

These are the type of things that diplomatically the administration is going to have to work out. They are also going to have to work with the international community, the IAEA, in trying to strengthen some of those protocols when it comes to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. There's a lot of work that's involved here.

BROWN: Suzanne, thank you, Suzanne Malveaux at the White House tonight.

Iraq next and the central fact of life there, helping Americans is just about as dangerous as being an American. In the space of two days at least 100 Iraqis have lost their lives in a pair of suicide bombings.

The latest came outside an army recruiting center in Baghdad today. Forty-seven people died. An American commander called it part of a pattern that is expected to worsen as the date approaches to hand over sovereignty to an Iraqi government.

Hamas is calling for more suicide bombings in Israel, retaliation a spokesman says for a pair of Israeli raids today in Gaza. At least 15 Palestinians died in the operations, including a senior member of the military wing of Hamas. Eight of the 12 people killed in one of the raids were civilians, according to Palestinian sources. An Israeli commander says all of them were armed.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, Massachusetts takes up the issue of gay marriage. Can the legislature fashion a compromise that satisfies both sides? We'll talk about that with Andrew Sullivan in a minute.

And later, a magical mystery tour with the Beatles through the eyes of the photographers who were with them as they came to America 40 years ago, we take a break first.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In the Massachusetts State House today, an amendment restricting marriage to straight couples vaulted to the top of an agenda planned months ago. It was originally eighth on the list of issues for consideration at the session but that was before the State Supreme Court ruled last week that Massachusetts must allow gay marriages by this coming May.

Another measure of the intensity of the debate the crowds. Outside and inside the State House, thousands of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder in many cases right next to their ideological enemies. Reporting for us tonight, CNN's David Mattingly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY (voice-over): Shouting in the streets, shouting in the hallways, it all adds up to one pressure-filled day for Massachusetts legislators as they try to craft a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

DAVID FLYNN (D), MASSACHUSETTS STATE REPRESENTATIVE: It's a gut wrench. It's a gut test. I've had over 4,000 e-mails on this subject matter.

MATTINGLY: After Senators followed an escort in ceremonial top hat into the House chamber, lawmakers immediately launched into a variety of amendments providing civil union protection for same-sex couples but prohibiting marriage, defining it between one man and one woman.

HARRIETTE CHANDLER (D), MASSACHUSETTS STATE SENATOR: I urge my colleagues to stand with me against discrimination today and to oppose this effort to amend our constitution.

MATTINGLY: Supporters, however, seem to be listening closely to the chant of people demanding a public vote, people angry over last week's ruling of the State Supreme Court making gay marriage legal in Massachusetts beginning in May.

BRIAN LEES (R), MASSACHUSETTS SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: All we are asking, I believe the people in the hall, the people that have written letters and others that have written say they would like to give the people a chance to vote. We are doing that.

MATTINGLY: But any proposed amendment to the State Constitution approved here would not appear on the ballot until late 2006 giving gay couples two years to marry legally and to continue to plead their case to voters.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a basic human right to marry. It's about love. We're all living in the same state and the same country. We should have the absolute equal rights.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: If the amendment eventually passes, all those marriages it's feared could be in jeopardy. There is one proposal before the legislature, however, that would simply reclassify those marriages later as civil unions -- Aaron.

BROWN: The amendment as it is being talked about, I just want to be clear here, allows for civil unions in the way that Vermont does but not marriage, that word.

MATTINGLY: That's correct. They are staying away from the marriage word. They are offering equal protection under the law as a civil union. But critics of that say that a civil union is a separate system from a marriage and therefore is not equal the same thing that the court said when it allowed for gay marriages.

BROWN: David, thank you very much, David Mattingly in Boston tonight.

Faith, politics, sexuality all converging into the culture war. Andrew Sullivan is the senior editor of "The New Republic," a "Time" magazine columnist as well, who also edited the book "Same Sex Marriage pro and con, a Reader." He has thought and written a lot about all of this. We are pleased to see him with us tonight, good to have you.

I guess I'm a practical person in a moment that isn't suited for a practical person. Why not accept the idea of a civil union as a step forward, as the best you can get in the political climate that exists now and not move on but just fight on another day?

ANDREW SULLIVAN, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE NEW REPUBLIC": Well, because the suits have been filed and the courts have already ruled. You can't stop couples who want to have equal rights from going to courts to seek redress. No one put them up to it. They did so.

The gay rights movement like 15 years ago told them not to but people do. They belong to families. They have loved ones. They've lived together their entire lives. They ask themselves a simple question. Why are we not equal? Why do we have to be put into this separate category and called civil union? Why can't we just have what our brothers and sisters have and our mothers and fathers have?

I mean people think that gay people belong in this other category outside of families but we were all born into families and we just want to have the same rights as our brothers and sisters.

BROWN: You make an argument that marriage, the word, not some other word, not civil union, not anything else but marriage is essential to the gay community I guess coming home, as you wrote about it, but also to the straight community understanding the issue.

SULLIVAN: Yes it is about the same thing, you know. I don't like this term gay marriage. It's marriage, marriage for all of us, two people. And right now, gay people have no options. Conservatives criticize gay people for being promiscuous and then they criticize gay people for having marriages and couples. What are we supposed to do? Where do we belong in the society?

I would say look ask yourself if you are heterosexual what if someone said your marriage is up for grabs. We're not going to call you married anymore. You're not going to have the right to have your own children. You're not going to have the right to share a home and income and be treated by the government like any body else.

I think most heterosexuals have never even thought for a second they didn't have that right. I also think that for gay people to be really fully part of this society, to be treated fully and equally to take on the same responsibilities you need that word.

It's a very conservative thing, Aaron, that's the great paradox here. We're arguing for the same conservative values of family and responsibility and monogamy that everybody else is. Somehow now we're not supposed to have that.

BROWN: It's seen as beyond liberal even and it's clearly being set up, I don't mean this in the pejorative, I'm just trying to report it, it seems like it's being set up to be a, fair or not, an important political issue for the next nine months.

SULLIVAN: Yes.

BROWN: The president seems ready to sign onto a Constitutional amendment.

SULLIVAN: Yes. He wants to go to the extreme measure of actually not even allowing Massachusetts to make up its own mind or the states to decide but actually pass a federal amendment that would ban not just gay marriage but also civil unions and domestic partnerships. That's what's now on the table.

But look you can't wait for civil rights. You know there was a great book written by Martin Luther King, Jr. "Why we Can't Wait" and I think the notion of equality, once you felt it inside, once you believed it for yourself, cannot be denied and we cannot wait because we are equal human beings and equal citizens and that's the bottom line.

I think that -- I think that this conflict is an awful wrenching conflict for everybody and I feel terrible that we have so much raw emotion on both sides when it's really about welcoming people into the same family and into the same society.

And, I can't apologize for standing up for equality. What else can I do? I can't -- I can't say we all want to be second class citizens. If you like that, that will be fine.

BROWN: Yes.

SULLIVAN: Of course you can't. So we have this conflict and I think it was going to happen. It is happening and we just have to make our case as clearly and as fairly and as compassionately as we can.

BROWN: Just as quickly as you can do you think that the country is listening to this?

SULLIVAN: Oh, yes.

BROWN: OK.

SULLIVAN: I'm amazed by how really positive and constructive people are. They want to hear the arguments. They want to make up their minds. They don't want to be reduced to pure emotion.

You know when they ruled interracial marriage a constitutional right the polls against it were far higher then than they are now about same-sex marriage, so I believe in this country and I believe in debate and I think we will move forward constructively without too much ranker.

BROWN: It is, as always, good to see you. I hope you'll come back to talk about this and a whole host of other things that you think about and write about very well.

SULLIVAN: Thank you so much, Aaron. I'm grateful to be here.

BROWN: Thank you, Andrew Sullivan with us tonight.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, one less candidate in the field. We'll talk with the man who called it quits today, Wesley Clark, who was with us the day he announced, will be with us tonight as well.

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Right near the top of the program last night we watched as retired General Wesley Clark made what for all the world sounded like a farewell address ending his presidential campaign. It was in everything but the actual farewell, which came today. We're shaping yet again the Democratic primary race.

Here's CNN's Kelly Wallace.

(BEGIN VIDETAPE)

WALLACE (voice-over): And now there are five. The retired general brings his first political race to a close.

WESLEY CLARK (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So, this is the end of the campaign for the presidency and it's not the end of the cause.

WALLACE: And it's not the end of the race. That's the message from John Kerry's remaining opponents, including Howard Dean. Now, 0- 14, Dean goes on the attack in Milwaukee after reports that a Kerry supporter, former Senator Robert Torricelli, contributed $50,000 to a secret group that ran these controversial anti-Dean ads last year.

ANNOUNCER: And Howard Dean just cannot compete.

HOWARD DEAN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is the kind of thing that's gone on in the Republican Party before. I'm sorry to see Senator Kerry introduce those techniques to the Democratic Party.

WALLACE: A Kerry spokesman said the Senator was not aware of Torricelli's involvement with the group and called Dean's attack "another day, another Dean act of divisive desperation."

John Edwards, also in Wisconsin, says there has been no pressure from Democrats for him to get out of the race. He sticks with his positive, playing up his southern roots message, even though Kerry beat him handily in his own backyard.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is a guy that can beat George Bush every place in America, in the north, in the west, in the Midwest and talking like this in the south.

WALLACE: A sign of the front-runner's confidence, after Tuesday's big wins, he took the day off to work the phones and get rid of a cold.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE: And John Kerry will be here in Wisconsin on Friday. The last time, though, he campaigned here was June of last year. That does not appear to be affecting his standing, though, because, according to one of the most recent polls, John Kerry is leading by more than 30 points -- Aaron.

BROWN: Is he running ads there, just not showing up? Is he running ads, though?

WALLACE: You know, that's a very good question. I believe he is, although I'm not 100 percent sure. I believe he is. John Edwards, though, we do see him running ads, contrasting his position on North American Free Trade Agreement with John Kerry's.

BROWN: Kelly, with the amount of traveling you've been doing lately, we're just pleased you know which state and what city you are in. Thank you.

WALLACE: I barely know which state we are in, that's right.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: Bring me home a bratwurst from Milwaukee. Thank you very much.

WALLACE: OK.

BROWN: It's tough business, politics is. At the end of a long and difficult day, there are people like me waiting to ask questions you would rather not respond to.

Mindful of that, we're especially pleased that General Wes Clark could join us tonight.

General, good to see you.

Not an easy day, I assume. But I said to you just off the air, this is not the kind of interview I like to do. And you said what?

WESLEY CLARK (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I said, why not?

I mean, listen, I've been thrilled to be in this race. I'm not a politician. I never planned to do this. A lot of people came to me and said, you've got to do this for the good of the country. And we put together, I think, a really great campaign. And it was up to the voters. I raised my hand. You know, I volunteered to serve.

They looked at me and they said, you know, we want somebody who was in Iowa and somebody who has done something else. That's fine. But we think we made a real impact on the race.

BROWN: Are you done with politics?

CLARK: I have no idea.

But I'll tell you what, I'm not done with the idea of changing the way the country is headed. We've been going the wrong direction, Aaron, abroad and at home. This is the end of an era. It is the end of the era when patriotic Americans could say, why, if it weren't for those lawyers and all those striped-pants diplomats, we'd let our boys loose on them. We'd teach...

BROWN: Yes.

CLARK: That's over. You can see what's happening in Iraq.

It's also the end of the era when people could say, well, just give those wealthy people tax cuts and they will make jobs for the rest of us. It's not happening. And I know Alan Greenspan's comments today are optimistic. But, listen, Alan Greenspan's comments were optimistic last year and the year before. Every year, they promise us two million more jobs.

Last year, we had a net negative minus-53,000 jobs last year. People are hurting in America. And tax cuts for the wealthy wasn't the solution.

BROWN: Would you be interested in being a vice president?

CLARK: Oh, I don't know. That's a long way ahead. Right now

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: It's not that long ahead, General.

(CROSSTALK)

CLARK: Well, right now, what I'm doing is, I'm thinking about all the issues and I'm just, you know, trying to get everything set here. I've got to get back into business.

I don't have an office. I gave up all my business to go into this race. And so we're going to do that and look at what the future holds. I'm really excited about it. I'm really proud of all the people that supported me. And we're still going to talk about the issues as much as I can.

BROWN: Are you going to endorse somebody?

CLARK: I'm certainly considering it.

BROWN: Do you have a timetable?

CLARK: Not really, no.

BROWN: Let's talk about -- I want to step back from all this, because, I think as regular viewers of the program know, we spent a lot of time together and we talked about this, whether you should run and how it would go, a lot before you got in. Did it surprise you how tough a business it is?

CLARK: No, not really. I mean, it's about what I expected.

BROWN: Anything about it surprise you?

CLARK: Lost my voice physically. I never had talked that much. And it was difficult. And I got sick because of losing the voice and shaking hands with a lot of people and talking real close to people. I got sick about a month into the race and I was down for five days.

BROWN: Yes. What did you learn about yourself?

CLARK: Well, it was about what I knew.

You have got to take a big-picture view of these things. You have got to have your ideas. You have got to have the courage to speak out. You've got to listen to the person who's asking the question. You've got to give them an answer they can understand. And you've got to harmonize disharmonious voices from all around. And that's what we did in the campaign. We put together a draft movement, a bunch of professional political activists and campaign workers and a bunch of my family friends that came down.

And, you know, we did something that had never been done before. We started with no money, no staff, no political experience, no position papers. And we were up and running in two days. And people said it couldn't be done. Well, we won a state. We got third -- or second in three other states. I think we did really, really well. And there was nothing whatsoever wrong with the campaign.

BROWN: When you -- well, let me work on that for a second.

I think there are people who are in my business who would say, early on, that it took you a while -- forget the campaign -- took the candidate a while to find his voice, to find his rhythm, to find that connection between voters, and that those weeks in New Hampshire, while, in their view, you were struggling to find your voice, proved to be very costly. Do you agree with that at all?

CLARK: Not really.

BROWN: OK.

CLARK: First of all, from the very first time I went to New Hampshire, I was at New England College in Henniker. And I did a town hall meeting there. I think it was a week after I had announced.

And people called in from all over the country, said it's the most fabulous town hall meeting we've seen since Bill Clinton's done one. A lot of the professional media people decided that they could look elsewhere. And we knew, after I got sick and we didn't do Iowa, and then McEntee, Gerry McEntee from AFSCME, endorsed Howard Dean, a lot of the focus went elsewhere. But it didn't matter. We just put together our campaign. I did a great series of interviews on Tim Russert in November and a bunch of other places. And the momentum began to come back into the campaign. We raised, oh, I think $10.5 million in the last quarter of 2003. We raised a total of $20 million-plus for the campaign. It's been an effort that's been, you know, very, very successful.

You do have to win the media war. There's a lot of really great reporters out there. They're very expert at judging politicians and political candidates. I'm not one of them.

BROWN: Yes.

CLARK: And, you know, I wasn't a political candidate. I had never run in a race before. But I think I had a real identification with the voters. I felt really good about it.

BROWN: Just, finally, a week ago, a week and a day ago, you stood up there a winner in Oklahoma. Did you allow yourself -- you're a very disciplined man, as I know -- did you allow yourself that night to think, maybe we're going to win this whole thing?

CLARK: No, I never thought that.

BROWN: OK.

CLARK: Because I knew exactly what was happening after Iowa.

What was happening after Iowa was a huge tidal wave of determination in the Democratic Party to just vote for the front- runners and get Bush out of there.

BROWN: Yes.

CLARK: And it grew and grew and grew.

And, you know, you were asking Kelly whether -- who is doing paid media. Listen, no matter how much paid media you do, nothing accounts, nothing overcompensates for what is the unpaid, the free media from just the winning and the front page in the newspapers.

BROWN: Yes.

CLARK: And that's the way this race has been.

I think every race is different. I don't draw any generalizations. And I'm not being critical. It's the way electorate is. The same anger at President Bush which really drew me into this race is what so many Americans feel. And they want this primary -- I think they want it over.

BROWN: Yes.

CLARK: I think they want to pick a candidate. I think they want to get on with the election and change this government.

BROWN: General, if you just want to come out and hang out with us, you're always welcome, always.

CLARK: Well, it's been a lot of fun, Aaron. And I've enjoyed it. And I don't intend to be quiet. I intend to continue to add my voice wherever it is possible to do so.

BROWN: I expect you will. It's good to see you, sir.

CLARK: Thank you. Thank you very much.

BROWN: Best of luck. Thank you very much.

Still to come on the program, the Disney piece of business, big offer on the table, a company boardroom in an uproar, and, later, a wonderfully fascinating look at the Beatles storming America 40 years ago in still life.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A funny thing happened on the way to Disney board of directors meeting. Someone tried to hijack the company. Actually, Comcast, the cable giant, tried to buy the company, $50-plus-billion for Disney.

Here's CNN's Jen Rogers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEN ROGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The keys to the Magic Kingdom could be changing hands. In a bold move, cable giant Comcast made an unsolicited $66 billion bid for the Walt Disney company, a merger that would create the world's largest media company.

BRIAN ROBERTS, CEO, COMCAST: We do believe that this is a very compelling offer to the shareholders of Disney. This is a fair offer for both sides.

ROGERS: The Disney board says it will carefully evaluate the proposal, but it's unlikely it would stand as is.

The bigger question is what this means for Michael Eisner. He's fended off critics and corporate raiders before, but today, his rank in Hollywood's hierarchy took its biggest hit yet with the surprise move by Comcast. Under pressure from a Disney heir and another former board member who resigned last year, Eisner also is doing damage control over last month's failed attempt to extend a highly profitable partnership with Pixar.

JACK MYERS, MEDIA ANALYST: Michael Eisner, of course, has weathered a lot of storms and has been a battler his whole life, but this is going to be a tough fight.

ROGERS (on camera): Hollywood is a town built on happy endings. Whether Michael Eisner will be able to orchestrate one for himself is still an open question. Jen Rodgers, CNN Financial News, Burbank, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A few more business items before we go to break, starting once again with Martha Stewart.

Her lawyers today asked for a mistrial. They argued, without a chance to call witnesses to shoot down allegations of insider trading, they can't defend against charges Ms. Stewart lied about it to investigators. Since Ms. Stewart isn't in fact charged with insider trading, the judge said no to the witness and no to the mistrial.

The drug at the center of the Martha Stewart scandal may, in the end, be the only winner at the end of the day. Having shown promise against certain forms of cancer, the drug is expected to gain FDA approval as early as tomorrow.

KLM and Air France have gotten European approval for their plans to merge. The combination will result in one of the world's largest airlines. But it needs an OK from American regulators to move on.

And on Wall Street today, a slam dunk across the board, the Dow particularly looking strong. Just got to get back in those Internet stocks, you know?

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, back to the '60s. Now, that I do understand, the Fab Four invasion in still life.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK, this is one of those moments that will either make you feel like an old geezer, a high school sophomore, or maybe both; 40 years ago tonight -- 40 years -- the Beatles played their first American concert in Washington, D.C.

"LIFE" magazine photographer Bill Eppridge covered the lads backstage, as well as their arrival in New York City and their performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." The pictures are intimate, funny, telling, and, until now, largely unseen. They went on display recently, along with the work of CBS network photographers in the Smithsonian in Washington and the Museum of Television and Radio here in New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL EPPRIDGE, PHOTOGRAPHER: They stepped off the plane and walked down the steps. There were people on every level yelling and screaming and hollering. And I didn't know what to think. I hadn't expected that much.

And then the press, members of the press came down and photographed them there on the ground. And they seemed like very respectable gentlemen. QUESTION: Will you please sing something?

BEATLES: No!

VICKIE REHBERG, EXHIBIT CURATOR: There were a select group of reporters that were privileged to have really very close ties to all the events. Bill was one of those that was right in their hotel rooms in the Plaza Hotel.

EPPRIDGE: They didn't pay us any attention. They had their own things to do. They were calling home. They were calling friends, telling them about the plane ride and telling them about their first view of the United States.

And they're sitting, watching themselves arrive at the airport. I would consider it quite amazing, but these guys were just going, it's all right, just like that, very quiet.

Outside the Plaza, the hotel was ringed with police. There were crowds of people, mostly young girls, just wanting to see them. Well, the chauffeur of the limo who had brought them from the airport opened the trunk of the car. And there were a couple of guitar cases in there. And kids came up. This little girl, all she wanted to do was touch the guitar case.

REHBERG: Studio 50 was the first live "Ed Sullivan Show."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW")

ED SULLIVAN, HOST: Now the Beatles, here they are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EPPRIDGE: Ed Sullivan seemed to just amazed as we were at them. Actually, by the end of that show, he started looking a few years younger. I think they had that effect on everybody. They brought you back a little bit.

REHBERG: Washington was their very first concert in America. There were big snowstorms. They took a train instead of a plane, so we got some great candid shots of them.

This photo is a closeup of predominantly women fans rushing the stage. The Beatles had thrown jellybeans on the stage, so they were all fighting to grab on to those jellybeans. Two staff photographers from CBS were assigned to cover the Miami Beach appearances.

This photograph is part of the second live "Ed Sullivan Show." And this is the stage that was in the Napoleon Ballroom, where "The Ed Sullivan Show" was produced live.

EPPRIDGE: I didn't think that their power would hold for so long, and it has. That's what's made it very, very special. There's classical music that happens in every era. And their music just sort of drew so many people together. It's become classical.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Lovely innocence in it all, compared to where we started the program tonight, halftime show.

Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydokey, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world, beginning, as we do, with "The International Herald Tribune." We would actually begin with "The New York Times," but they don't send it to us anymore. I don't know why they're angry, but they are.

Here's "The International Herald Tribune," knowing it's basically the same thing. "Cable TV Operator in Bid for Disney, Comcast Unsolicited, $51.4 Billion Offer, If Successful, Would Reshape Industry." Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote the story. We hear a lot of different numbers about what Comcast is willing to pay. I guess it depends on the share price of the stock.

It was also front-page news in "The Guardian," though it's hardly a bold headline, though what more do you need to say than just show Mickey, right? "Disney in Peril." That's, I guess, $54.1 billion in English for troubled empire. That's how they have headline it in "The Guardian."

"The Boston Herald." "Civil War," civil as in civil unions. and the debate has been civil. "Divided Pols, Mixed Compromises on Gay Marriage." Well, it depends how you look at that, I guess.

"The Philadelphia Inquirer" leads with "Comcast Bids For Disney." I believe they're a Philadelphia company. I may be wrong about that. I wish I hadn't said it now. Anyway, that's their lead. It's not the first time I wish I hadn't said something.

Another merger story, if you will. "The Chattanooga Times Free Press." "Local Grocery Chain For Sale. Parents Company Seeks Buyer This Year for Chattanooga's Biggest Supermarket," the Bi-Lo chain. OK?

How we doing on time there? Thirty? That's all? I was just getting into this.

"The Richmond Times-Dispatch" down at the corner here, if you can get it. "Clash of the Virginia Titans." John Warner -- the two senators, Warner and Senator Allen -- "Split Over an Effort to Tighten Federal Seat Belt Laws."

The weather in Chicago tomorrow, by the way, is "hogwash." I don't think that's good.

We'll wrap up the day in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Recapping our top story before we leave you for the night.

Lawmakers slam the man in charge of CBS and MTV for Janet Jackson's display during the Super Bowl halftime show. The NFL commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, also came in for a grilling, as did the FCC commissioner, Michael Powell, nobody very happy there.

Tomorrow night on this program, even after his death, diet guru Robert Atkins continue to stir up controversy. There's no doubt he has changed America's food landscape -- the Atkins effect tomorrow on NEWSNIGHT.

We'll be in Atlanta tomorrow, but you can watch from the comfort of your home. And I assume you will. We'll see you then.

Good night for all of us.

END

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Of Presidential Race; Bush Calls For International Community To Crack Down On WMD Proliferation>


Aired February 11, 2004 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
At the risk of causing myself a lot of trouble, it seems to me the only thing worse than the Super Bowl Halftime Show is Congress getting involved in the Super Bowl Halftime Show, which it did today.

Believe me it is not that I thought the halftime show was some wonderful expression of American values. I thought the whole thing, including the clothes ripping, was pretty tasteless and offensive. It's just that my Libertarian side believe the marketplace will handle it all just fine.

TV is the most democratic business in the world. You all vote hundreds of times a day with your remote controls and I trust you and your remotes, at least I trust you a lot more than I trust the members of Congress in an election year.

Not surprisingly, Congress did not ask for my advice on this, so we begin with Congress an indecency in the media.

CNN's Elaine Quijano starts us off with a headline.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, lawmakers held two hearings today on the timely topic of broadcast decency rules and enforcement. They all agree the Janet Jackson display was offensive but what's not clear is how far officials should go to punish or prevent such incidents.

BROWN: Elaine, thank you. We'll get to you at the top tonight.

The president took up the question of keeping nuclear weapons away from the bad guys. CNN's Suzanne Malveaux with the duty this evening, a headline from you Suzanne.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, President Bush once again is calling on the international community to cooperate, to help, this time to crack down on the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The question here is are those countries that are still smarting over the Iraq War will they cooperate this time?

BROWN: Suzanne, thank you.

Lawmakers in Massachusetts battling over gay marriage, CNN's David Mattingly on Beacon Hill tonight, David your headline. DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, a State Supreme Court in Massachusetts says yes to gay marriages and now the state legislature looks for a way to say no with a constitutional amendment -- Aaron.

BROWN: David, thank you.

And finally, Wisconsin, where the Democratic field will be smaller come the next primary. CNN's Kelly Wallace there for us tonight, Kelly a headline.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, smaller because Wesley Clark is getting out. Howard Dean and John Edwards are staying in but John Kerry remains the man to beat, a new poll showing him leading by more than 30 points here -- Aaron.

BROWN: Kelly, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up we'll talk with General Wesley Clark live later in this hour.

Also on the program tonight a huge takeover offer for the Disney Company. A cable giant tries to move into content, as we say in the business.

We'll have a really cool look at the Beatles' arrival on the American scene 40 years ago. These are the pictures Larry was talking about, taken through the eyes of a photographer who recorded it. It's very cool stuff.

And what would Wednesday be like without a heaping helping of Thursday morning's papers to send you to bed with. Well, all that and more in the hour ahead. You probably could think of something better than that.

We begin with the Super Bowl, television, decency, politics and a flashback, if you will. Forty-two years ago when FCC Commissioner Newton Minnow called the medium a vast wasteland, he was talking about television then, "Bonanza," "The Flintstones," "Mr. Ed." The first Super Bowl was six years off and Janet Jackson wasn't even a twinkle in her future agent's eye.

Forty-two years later television is either just as good or just as awful as its always been but it remains on the books, at least, a public trust. Networks in theory still answer to the FCC and both answer to Congress. Politics still apply. The culture war rages on.

Here's CNN's Elaine Quijano.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

QUIJANO (voice-over): A week and a half after the revealing Super Bowl Halftime Show aired on national TV, lawmakers sent broadcasters a clear message of their own. REP. HEATHER WILSON (R), NEW MEXICO: You knew what you were doing. You knew what kind of entertainment you're selling and you wanted us all to be abuzz here in this room and on the playground in my kid's school because it improves your ratings. It improves your market share and it lines your pockets.

QUIJANO: But at that House hearing, the head of Viacom, CBS' parent company, said he didn't know what was going to happen.

MEL KARMAZIN, PRESIDENT AND CEO, VIACOM: Everyone at Viacom and everyone at CBS and everyone at MTV was shocked and appalled and embarrassed.

QUIJANO: He, along with NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue apologized. But at a Senate committee hearing, lawmakers said the Janet Jackson episode was not isolated.

SEN. FRANK LAUTENBERG (D), NEW JERSEY: During the Super Bowl, we were bombarded with ads featuring flatulent horses, crotch-biting dogs, a monkey making sexual advances to a woman.

QUIJANO: Senators also grilled members of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC chairman promised tougher action but said others should take part in policing content.

MICHAEL POWELL, FCC CHAIRMAN: The time has come for the commission, the Congress and the industry and the public, as Senator Graham said, to take the necessary steps to prevent allowing the worst of television and all that it has to offer from reaching unsuspecting children.

QUIJANO: Concerns over broadcast decency rules have already prompted the networks to take action. NBC edited out a shot of an elderly woman's breast on the medical drama "ER" and ABC announced it might be editing two versions of its hit police show "NYPD Blue" to include one with less sexual content but some warn those measures could go too far.

JEROME BARRON, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: I think what we have to be careful is that we don't draw the line so that it cuts too deeply into First Amendment freedom.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

QUIJANO: Now, lawmakers are considering a House bill to increase the fine for indecency violations from $27,500 to $275,000 per violation and they could go further with some suggesting revoking licenses and having broadcasters forfeit advertising profits. But it's important to note that none of those fines would impact cable networks like MTV, which regularly air suggestive content -- Aaron.

BROWN: Elaine, thank you. Thank you.

So, a morality play or Washington's longest running farce? James Poniewozik writes about culture, politics, the business of television for "Time" magazine and we're pleased he's with us tonight. So what do you make of all this? It's an election year. Are you that cynical or is there more to it than that?

JAMES PONIEWOZIK, MEDIA CRITIC, "TIME" MAGAZINE: There's something more to it than that. I mean it's not as though the political powers that be could have caused Janet Jackson's breast to pop out at the Super Bowl and, you know, therefore there were extraneous events that were driving this.

But, obviously you know the FCC pressures were in the works. The hearings were in the works. Certainly, you know, there are interests on all sides that, you know, have some hay to make in election years by getting us all really afraid of that evil box in our living room or wherever else.

BROWN: Look, there is a perception, I don't think it's absolutely untrue that the society itself is in all sorts of places is simply too coarse, has gotten too coarse in the way we talk to one another, in the movies we see, the television we watch, all of that. Is that an area the government ought to regulate?

PONIEWOZIK: Well, I mean you hit on an interesting thing which is that there are actually two conversations that you can be having here. One, what sort of culture should we be living in? What sort of culture do we want our kids growing up in and so forth? And you can have a lot of interesting discussions about that.

The other question is, is there one standard of that that any government body should be enforcing and do we want John McCain, Dianne Feinstein, whoever it is, determining what that is for us?

I mean, you know, we are not only intelligent we're in a 500 channel universe but, you know, we're sort of in a 500 channel culture. I mean it's kind of hard to say what is the community standard on anything in a time when, you know, even the biggest broadcasters only serve a minority at any given time.

BROWN: But in terms of this conversation or, at least in what the Congress was dealing with today, we're really not in a universe of 500 channels. We're in a universe of four channels, aren't we? And we're really talking about the broadcast networks because clearly...

PONIEWOZIK: Six or seven depending on how you define them, yes. Yes.

BROWN: I'm sorry. To those I didn't mention, I apologize. Cable clearly is a different universe and that in an odd way is part of the broadcast network's problem.

PONIEWOZIK: It's the broadcast networks' major problem. It's their first, second and third problem which is that, you know, whatever ratings problems they have are exacerbated by the fact that people can go to cable, that in fact people choose to go to cable. You used to have in broadcasting something called least objectionable programming.

BROWN: Yes.

PONIEWOZIK: The idea that, you know, as a broadcaster, one of the big three, you want to give people as few reasons as possible to change the channel and so you would try to put the thing on that offends as few people as possible.

Well now, if you do that, you have a lot of people who want most objectionable programming who are going to go off to MTV or, you know, VH1 or whatever other option out there if you don't give that to them and there just, there isn't this big wide (UNINTELLIGIBLE) down the middle that you can pitch to anymore.

And, in a sense, you know, what we saw disastrously at the Super Bowl was, you know, CBS, Viacom sort of trying to bring the edge to the mainstream and one of the few remaining big mainstream broadcasting events and it all sort of blew up.

BROWN: It sure did that. It sure did that. There was a piece in the "New York Times" I think a couple of years ago about broadcast programmers desperately trying to figure out how they could take a "Soprano's" like program or "Sex in the City" like program and put it on their network and they can't.

PONIEWOZIK: Yes.

BROWN: And it's killing them.

PONIEWOZIK: It's almost a contradiction in terms because what, you know, makes "Soprano's," "Sex in the City," whatever it is what it is, is in part because those, HBO for instance, is able to do what it does by getting a relatively small number of people, a few million, whatever, so interested in a particular show that they will pay to watch it.

But, you know, if you're ABC you're still in the business of trying to get 15, 20 million people to, you know, kind of like something enough not to change the channel and the thing is something like "Sex in the City," "The Soprano's" is going to turn a lot of people off and, again, you know, bringing MTV to the Super Bowl halftime was just that large.

BROWN: Well, I don't think they'll be back next year. That's my guess.

PONIEWOZIK: I'm not going to count anything out.

BROWN: Well, that's true. It's television. We shouldn't guess. Nice to meet you, thank you.

PONIEWOZIK: Oh, thank you.

BROWN: Thanks for coming in.

On to proliferation of an all together different sort, we would say, weapons of mass destruction. The president, who has been on the defensive some of late about WMDs yet to be found in Iraq, went on the offensive today. In a speech in Washington he delivered the equivalent of a dressing down Congress gave the FCC.

Reporting the story from the White House, CNN's Suzanne Malveaux.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (voice-over): President Bush is calling for the world to crack down on the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We and our friends are determined to protect our people and the world from proliferation.

MALVEAUX: Mr. Bush introduced new proposals to stop the spread of weapons, including focusing on the black market, adopting stricter interdiction protocols and giving greater responsibilities to the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog group.

Mr. Bush says current international treaties have failed to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Example, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, AQ Khan, was able to sell nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya, North Korea through a global black market network.

Though Mr. Bush praised U.S. intelligence, European allies and Pakistan's leader Pervez Musharraf for recently bringing Dr. Khan down, he had a warning for countries not so cooperative.

BUSH: Continuing to seek those weapons will not bring security or international prestige but only political isolation, economic hardship and other unwelcome consequences.

MALVEAUX: Mr. Bush commended Libya for agreeing to give up its weapons program, pressed Iran to cooperate with more stringent inspections, and he called on North Korea to continue talks to abandon its nuclear ambitions. One nuclear expert says raising the profile of weapons proliferation may encourage countries to cooperate.

DAVID ALBRIGHT, PRESIDENT, INSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY: WE could end up with a much better nonproliferation regime with stronger treaties, stronger agreements, more political commitment by countries to make the world safer against the spread of nuclear weapons.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: The announcement doesn't come in a vacuum. Mr. Bush is eager to portray himself as a war time president with bold vision during this election year, the White House saying that they of course are building on the cooperation they've gotten from countries regarding WMD -- Aaron.

BROWN: How does this all translate ultimately into policy, international policy or national policy? It needs to be both.

MALVEAUX: Well, it certainly is going to be difficult to convince some of these countries to actually cooperate. You have the situation with Russia. It has always been providing nuclear technology to Iran. That is something that really is going to have to be worked out diplomatically with this administration.

You also have the case of Israel as well. There will be questions coming from other countries, from Arab nations, saying well why don't you have an open policy when it comes to the nuclear weapons in Israel?

These are the type of things that diplomatically the administration is going to have to work out. They are also going to have to work with the international community, the IAEA, in trying to strengthen some of those protocols when it comes to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. There's a lot of work that's involved here.

BROWN: Suzanne, thank you, Suzanne Malveaux at the White House tonight.

Iraq next and the central fact of life there, helping Americans is just about as dangerous as being an American. In the space of two days at least 100 Iraqis have lost their lives in a pair of suicide bombings.

The latest came outside an army recruiting center in Baghdad today. Forty-seven people died. An American commander called it part of a pattern that is expected to worsen as the date approaches to hand over sovereignty to an Iraqi government.

Hamas is calling for more suicide bombings in Israel, retaliation a spokesman says for a pair of Israeli raids today in Gaza. At least 15 Palestinians died in the operations, including a senior member of the military wing of Hamas. Eight of the 12 people killed in one of the raids were civilians, according to Palestinian sources. An Israeli commander says all of them were armed.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, Massachusetts takes up the issue of gay marriage. Can the legislature fashion a compromise that satisfies both sides? We'll talk about that with Andrew Sullivan in a minute.

And later, a magical mystery tour with the Beatles through the eyes of the photographers who were with them as they came to America 40 years ago, we take a break first.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In the Massachusetts State House today, an amendment restricting marriage to straight couples vaulted to the top of an agenda planned months ago. It was originally eighth on the list of issues for consideration at the session but that was before the State Supreme Court ruled last week that Massachusetts must allow gay marriages by this coming May.

Another measure of the intensity of the debate the crowds. Outside and inside the State House, thousands of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder in many cases right next to their ideological enemies. Reporting for us tonight, CNN's David Mattingly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY (voice-over): Shouting in the streets, shouting in the hallways, it all adds up to one pressure-filled day for Massachusetts legislators as they try to craft a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

DAVID FLYNN (D), MASSACHUSETTS STATE REPRESENTATIVE: It's a gut wrench. It's a gut test. I've had over 4,000 e-mails on this subject matter.

MATTINGLY: After Senators followed an escort in ceremonial top hat into the House chamber, lawmakers immediately launched into a variety of amendments providing civil union protection for same-sex couples but prohibiting marriage, defining it between one man and one woman.

HARRIETTE CHANDLER (D), MASSACHUSETTS STATE SENATOR: I urge my colleagues to stand with me against discrimination today and to oppose this effort to amend our constitution.

MATTINGLY: Supporters, however, seem to be listening closely to the chant of people demanding a public vote, people angry over last week's ruling of the State Supreme Court making gay marriage legal in Massachusetts beginning in May.

BRIAN LEES (R), MASSACHUSETTS SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: All we are asking, I believe the people in the hall, the people that have written letters and others that have written say they would like to give the people a chance to vote. We are doing that.

MATTINGLY: But any proposed amendment to the State Constitution approved here would not appear on the ballot until late 2006 giving gay couples two years to marry legally and to continue to plead their case to voters.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a basic human right to marry. It's about love. We're all living in the same state and the same country. We should have the absolute equal rights.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: If the amendment eventually passes, all those marriages it's feared could be in jeopardy. There is one proposal before the legislature, however, that would simply reclassify those marriages later as civil unions -- Aaron.

BROWN: The amendment as it is being talked about, I just want to be clear here, allows for civil unions in the way that Vermont does but not marriage, that word.

MATTINGLY: That's correct. They are staying away from the marriage word. They are offering equal protection under the law as a civil union. But critics of that say that a civil union is a separate system from a marriage and therefore is not equal the same thing that the court said when it allowed for gay marriages.

BROWN: David, thank you very much, David Mattingly in Boston tonight.

Faith, politics, sexuality all converging into the culture war. Andrew Sullivan is the senior editor of "The New Republic," a "Time" magazine columnist as well, who also edited the book "Same Sex Marriage pro and con, a Reader." He has thought and written a lot about all of this. We are pleased to see him with us tonight, good to have you.

I guess I'm a practical person in a moment that isn't suited for a practical person. Why not accept the idea of a civil union as a step forward, as the best you can get in the political climate that exists now and not move on but just fight on another day?

ANDREW SULLIVAN, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE NEW REPUBLIC": Well, because the suits have been filed and the courts have already ruled. You can't stop couples who want to have equal rights from going to courts to seek redress. No one put them up to it. They did so.

The gay rights movement like 15 years ago told them not to but people do. They belong to families. They have loved ones. They've lived together their entire lives. They ask themselves a simple question. Why are we not equal? Why do we have to be put into this separate category and called civil union? Why can't we just have what our brothers and sisters have and our mothers and fathers have?

I mean people think that gay people belong in this other category outside of families but we were all born into families and we just want to have the same rights as our brothers and sisters.

BROWN: You make an argument that marriage, the word, not some other word, not civil union, not anything else but marriage is essential to the gay community I guess coming home, as you wrote about it, but also to the straight community understanding the issue.

SULLIVAN: Yes it is about the same thing, you know. I don't like this term gay marriage. It's marriage, marriage for all of us, two people. And right now, gay people have no options. Conservatives criticize gay people for being promiscuous and then they criticize gay people for having marriages and couples. What are we supposed to do? Where do we belong in the society?

I would say look ask yourself if you are heterosexual what if someone said your marriage is up for grabs. We're not going to call you married anymore. You're not going to have the right to have your own children. You're not going to have the right to share a home and income and be treated by the government like any body else.

I think most heterosexuals have never even thought for a second they didn't have that right. I also think that for gay people to be really fully part of this society, to be treated fully and equally to take on the same responsibilities you need that word.

It's a very conservative thing, Aaron, that's the great paradox here. We're arguing for the same conservative values of family and responsibility and monogamy that everybody else is. Somehow now we're not supposed to have that.

BROWN: It's seen as beyond liberal even and it's clearly being set up, I don't mean this in the pejorative, I'm just trying to report it, it seems like it's being set up to be a, fair or not, an important political issue for the next nine months.

SULLIVAN: Yes.

BROWN: The president seems ready to sign onto a Constitutional amendment.

SULLIVAN: Yes. He wants to go to the extreme measure of actually not even allowing Massachusetts to make up its own mind or the states to decide but actually pass a federal amendment that would ban not just gay marriage but also civil unions and domestic partnerships. That's what's now on the table.

But look you can't wait for civil rights. You know there was a great book written by Martin Luther King, Jr. "Why we Can't Wait" and I think the notion of equality, once you felt it inside, once you believed it for yourself, cannot be denied and we cannot wait because we are equal human beings and equal citizens and that's the bottom line.

I think that -- I think that this conflict is an awful wrenching conflict for everybody and I feel terrible that we have so much raw emotion on both sides when it's really about welcoming people into the same family and into the same society.

And, I can't apologize for standing up for equality. What else can I do? I can't -- I can't say we all want to be second class citizens. If you like that, that will be fine.

BROWN: Yes.

SULLIVAN: Of course you can't. So we have this conflict and I think it was going to happen. It is happening and we just have to make our case as clearly and as fairly and as compassionately as we can.

BROWN: Just as quickly as you can do you think that the country is listening to this?

SULLIVAN: Oh, yes.

BROWN: OK.

SULLIVAN: I'm amazed by how really positive and constructive people are. They want to hear the arguments. They want to make up their minds. They don't want to be reduced to pure emotion.

You know when they ruled interracial marriage a constitutional right the polls against it were far higher then than they are now about same-sex marriage, so I believe in this country and I believe in debate and I think we will move forward constructively without too much ranker.

BROWN: It is, as always, good to see you. I hope you'll come back to talk about this and a whole host of other things that you think about and write about very well.

SULLIVAN: Thank you so much, Aaron. I'm grateful to be here.

BROWN: Thank you, Andrew Sullivan with us tonight.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, one less candidate in the field. We'll talk with the man who called it quits today, Wesley Clark, who was with us the day he announced, will be with us tonight as well.

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Right near the top of the program last night we watched as retired General Wesley Clark made what for all the world sounded like a farewell address ending his presidential campaign. It was in everything but the actual farewell, which came today. We're shaping yet again the Democratic primary race.

Here's CNN's Kelly Wallace.

(BEGIN VIDETAPE)

WALLACE (voice-over): And now there are five. The retired general brings his first political race to a close.

WESLEY CLARK (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So, this is the end of the campaign for the presidency and it's not the end of the cause.

WALLACE: And it's not the end of the race. That's the message from John Kerry's remaining opponents, including Howard Dean. Now, 0- 14, Dean goes on the attack in Milwaukee after reports that a Kerry supporter, former Senator Robert Torricelli, contributed $50,000 to a secret group that ran these controversial anti-Dean ads last year.

ANNOUNCER: And Howard Dean just cannot compete.

HOWARD DEAN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is the kind of thing that's gone on in the Republican Party before. I'm sorry to see Senator Kerry introduce those techniques to the Democratic Party.

WALLACE: A Kerry spokesman said the Senator was not aware of Torricelli's involvement with the group and called Dean's attack "another day, another Dean act of divisive desperation."

John Edwards, also in Wisconsin, says there has been no pressure from Democrats for him to get out of the race. He sticks with his positive, playing up his southern roots message, even though Kerry beat him handily in his own backyard.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is a guy that can beat George Bush every place in America, in the north, in the west, in the Midwest and talking like this in the south.

WALLACE: A sign of the front-runner's confidence, after Tuesday's big wins, he took the day off to work the phones and get rid of a cold.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE: And John Kerry will be here in Wisconsin on Friday. The last time, though, he campaigned here was June of last year. That does not appear to be affecting his standing, though, because, according to one of the most recent polls, John Kerry is leading by more than 30 points -- Aaron.

BROWN: Is he running ads there, just not showing up? Is he running ads, though?

WALLACE: You know, that's a very good question. I believe he is, although I'm not 100 percent sure. I believe he is. John Edwards, though, we do see him running ads, contrasting his position on North American Free Trade Agreement with John Kerry's.

BROWN: Kelly, with the amount of traveling you've been doing lately, we're just pleased you know which state and what city you are in. Thank you.

WALLACE: I barely know which state we are in, that's right.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: Bring me home a bratwurst from Milwaukee. Thank you very much.

WALLACE: OK.

BROWN: It's tough business, politics is. At the end of a long and difficult day, there are people like me waiting to ask questions you would rather not respond to.

Mindful of that, we're especially pleased that General Wes Clark could join us tonight.

General, good to see you.

Not an easy day, I assume. But I said to you just off the air, this is not the kind of interview I like to do. And you said what?

WESLEY CLARK (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I said, why not?

I mean, listen, I've been thrilled to be in this race. I'm not a politician. I never planned to do this. A lot of people came to me and said, you've got to do this for the good of the country. And we put together, I think, a really great campaign. And it was up to the voters. I raised my hand. You know, I volunteered to serve.

They looked at me and they said, you know, we want somebody who was in Iowa and somebody who has done something else. That's fine. But we think we made a real impact on the race.

BROWN: Are you done with politics?

CLARK: I have no idea.

But I'll tell you what, I'm not done with the idea of changing the way the country is headed. We've been going the wrong direction, Aaron, abroad and at home. This is the end of an era. It is the end of the era when patriotic Americans could say, why, if it weren't for those lawyers and all those striped-pants diplomats, we'd let our boys loose on them. We'd teach...

BROWN: Yes.

CLARK: That's over. You can see what's happening in Iraq.

It's also the end of the era when people could say, well, just give those wealthy people tax cuts and they will make jobs for the rest of us. It's not happening. And I know Alan Greenspan's comments today are optimistic. But, listen, Alan Greenspan's comments were optimistic last year and the year before. Every year, they promise us two million more jobs.

Last year, we had a net negative minus-53,000 jobs last year. People are hurting in America. And tax cuts for the wealthy wasn't the solution.

BROWN: Would you be interested in being a vice president?

CLARK: Oh, I don't know. That's a long way ahead. Right now

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: It's not that long ahead, General.

(CROSSTALK)

CLARK: Well, right now, what I'm doing is, I'm thinking about all the issues and I'm just, you know, trying to get everything set here. I've got to get back into business.

I don't have an office. I gave up all my business to go into this race. And so we're going to do that and look at what the future holds. I'm really excited about it. I'm really proud of all the people that supported me. And we're still going to talk about the issues as much as I can.

BROWN: Are you going to endorse somebody?

CLARK: I'm certainly considering it.

BROWN: Do you have a timetable?

CLARK: Not really, no.

BROWN: Let's talk about -- I want to step back from all this, because, I think as regular viewers of the program know, we spent a lot of time together and we talked about this, whether you should run and how it would go, a lot before you got in. Did it surprise you how tough a business it is?

CLARK: No, not really. I mean, it's about what I expected.

BROWN: Anything about it surprise you?

CLARK: Lost my voice physically. I never had talked that much. And it was difficult. And I got sick because of losing the voice and shaking hands with a lot of people and talking real close to people. I got sick about a month into the race and I was down for five days.

BROWN: Yes. What did you learn about yourself?

CLARK: Well, it was about what I knew.

You have got to take a big-picture view of these things. You have got to have your ideas. You have got to have the courage to speak out. You've got to listen to the person who's asking the question. You've got to give them an answer they can understand. And you've got to harmonize disharmonious voices from all around. And that's what we did in the campaign. We put together a draft movement, a bunch of professional political activists and campaign workers and a bunch of my family friends that came down.

And, you know, we did something that had never been done before. We started with no money, no staff, no political experience, no position papers. And we were up and running in two days. And people said it couldn't be done. Well, we won a state. We got third -- or second in three other states. I think we did really, really well. And there was nothing whatsoever wrong with the campaign.

BROWN: When you -- well, let me work on that for a second.

I think there are people who are in my business who would say, early on, that it took you a while -- forget the campaign -- took the candidate a while to find his voice, to find his rhythm, to find that connection between voters, and that those weeks in New Hampshire, while, in their view, you were struggling to find your voice, proved to be very costly. Do you agree with that at all?

CLARK: Not really.

BROWN: OK.

CLARK: First of all, from the very first time I went to New Hampshire, I was at New England College in Henniker. And I did a town hall meeting there. I think it was a week after I had announced.

And people called in from all over the country, said it's the most fabulous town hall meeting we've seen since Bill Clinton's done one. A lot of the professional media people decided that they could look elsewhere. And we knew, after I got sick and we didn't do Iowa, and then McEntee, Gerry McEntee from AFSCME, endorsed Howard Dean, a lot of the focus went elsewhere. But it didn't matter. We just put together our campaign. I did a great series of interviews on Tim Russert in November and a bunch of other places. And the momentum began to come back into the campaign. We raised, oh, I think $10.5 million in the last quarter of 2003. We raised a total of $20 million-plus for the campaign. It's been an effort that's been, you know, very, very successful.

You do have to win the media war. There's a lot of really great reporters out there. They're very expert at judging politicians and political candidates. I'm not one of them.

BROWN: Yes.

CLARK: And, you know, I wasn't a political candidate. I had never run in a race before. But I think I had a real identification with the voters. I felt really good about it.

BROWN: Just, finally, a week ago, a week and a day ago, you stood up there a winner in Oklahoma. Did you allow yourself -- you're a very disciplined man, as I know -- did you allow yourself that night to think, maybe we're going to win this whole thing?

CLARK: No, I never thought that.

BROWN: OK.

CLARK: Because I knew exactly what was happening after Iowa.

What was happening after Iowa was a huge tidal wave of determination in the Democratic Party to just vote for the front- runners and get Bush out of there.

BROWN: Yes.

CLARK: And it grew and grew and grew.

And, you know, you were asking Kelly whether -- who is doing paid media. Listen, no matter how much paid media you do, nothing accounts, nothing overcompensates for what is the unpaid, the free media from just the winning and the front page in the newspapers.

BROWN: Yes.

CLARK: And that's the way this race has been.

I think every race is different. I don't draw any generalizations. And I'm not being critical. It's the way electorate is. The same anger at President Bush which really drew me into this race is what so many Americans feel. And they want this primary -- I think they want it over.

BROWN: Yes.

CLARK: I think they want to pick a candidate. I think they want to get on with the election and change this government.

BROWN: General, if you just want to come out and hang out with us, you're always welcome, always.

CLARK: Well, it's been a lot of fun, Aaron. And I've enjoyed it. And I don't intend to be quiet. I intend to continue to add my voice wherever it is possible to do so.

BROWN: I expect you will. It's good to see you, sir.

CLARK: Thank you. Thank you very much.

BROWN: Best of luck. Thank you very much.

Still to come on the program, the Disney piece of business, big offer on the table, a company boardroom in an uproar, and, later, a wonderfully fascinating look at the Beatles storming America 40 years ago in still life.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A funny thing happened on the way to Disney board of directors meeting. Someone tried to hijack the company. Actually, Comcast, the cable giant, tried to buy the company, $50-plus-billion for Disney.

Here's CNN's Jen Rogers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEN ROGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The keys to the Magic Kingdom could be changing hands. In a bold move, cable giant Comcast made an unsolicited $66 billion bid for the Walt Disney company, a merger that would create the world's largest media company.

BRIAN ROBERTS, CEO, COMCAST: We do believe that this is a very compelling offer to the shareholders of Disney. This is a fair offer for both sides.

ROGERS: The Disney board says it will carefully evaluate the proposal, but it's unlikely it would stand as is.

The bigger question is what this means for Michael Eisner. He's fended off critics and corporate raiders before, but today, his rank in Hollywood's hierarchy took its biggest hit yet with the surprise move by Comcast. Under pressure from a Disney heir and another former board member who resigned last year, Eisner also is doing damage control over last month's failed attempt to extend a highly profitable partnership with Pixar.

JACK MYERS, MEDIA ANALYST: Michael Eisner, of course, has weathered a lot of storms and has been a battler his whole life, but this is going to be a tough fight.

ROGERS (on camera): Hollywood is a town built on happy endings. Whether Michael Eisner will be able to orchestrate one for himself is still an open question. Jen Rodgers, CNN Financial News, Burbank, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A few more business items before we go to break, starting once again with Martha Stewart.

Her lawyers today asked for a mistrial. They argued, without a chance to call witnesses to shoot down allegations of insider trading, they can't defend against charges Ms. Stewart lied about it to investigators. Since Ms. Stewart isn't in fact charged with insider trading, the judge said no to the witness and no to the mistrial.

The drug at the center of the Martha Stewart scandal may, in the end, be the only winner at the end of the day. Having shown promise against certain forms of cancer, the drug is expected to gain FDA approval as early as tomorrow.

KLM and Air France have gotten European approval for their plans to merge. The combination will result in one of the world's largest airlines. But it needs an OK from American regulators to move on.

And on Wall Street today, a slam dunk across the board, the Dow particularly looking strong. Just got to get back in those Internet stocks, you know?

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, back to the '60s. Now, that I do understand, the Fab Four invasion in still life.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: OK, this is one of those moments that will either make you feel like an old geezer, a high school sophomore, or maybe both; 40 years ago tonight -- 40 years -- the Beatles played their first American concert in Washington, D.C.

"LIFE" magazine photographer Bill Eppridge covered the lads backstage, as well as their arrival in New York City and their performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." The pictures are intimate, funny, telling, and, until now, largely unseen. They went on display recently, along with the work of CBS network photographers in the Smithsonian in Washington and the Museum of Television and Radio here in New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL EPPRIDGE, PHOTOGRAPHER: They stepped off the plane and walked down the steps. There were people on every level yelling and screaming and hollering. And I didn't know what to think. I hadn't expected that much.

And then the press, members of the press came down and photographed them there on the ground. And they seemed like very respectable gentlemen. QUESTION: Will you please sing something?

BEATLES: No!

VICKIE REHBERG, EXHIBIT CURATOR: There were a select group of reporters that were privileged to have really very close ties to all the events. Bill was one of those that was right in their hotel rooms in the Plaza Hotel.

EPPRIDGE: They didn't pay us any attention. They had their own things to do. They were calling home. They were calling friends, telling them about the plane ride and telling them about their first view of the United States.

And they're sitting, watching themselves arrive at the airport. I would consider it quite amazing, but these guys were just going, it's all right, just like that, very quiet.

Outside the Plaza, the hotel was ringed with police. There were crowds of people, mostly young girls, just wanting to see them. Well, the chauffeur of the limo who had brought them from the airport opened the trunk of the car. And there were a couple of guitar cases in there. And kids came up. This little girl, all she wanted to do was touch the guitar case.

REHBERG: Studio 50 was the first live "Ed Sullivan Show."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW")

ED SULLIVAN, HOST: Now the Beatles, here they are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EPPRIDGE: Ed Sullivan seemed to just amazed as we were at them. Actually, by the end of that show, he started looking a few years younger. I think they had that effect on everybody. They brought you back a little bit.

REHBERG: Washington was their very first concert in America. There were big snowstorms. They took a train instead of a plane, so we got some great candid shots of them.

This photo is a closeup of predominantly women fans rushing the stage. The Beatles had thrown jellybeans on the stage, so they were all fighting to grab on to those jellybeans. Two staff photographers from CBS were assigned to cover the Miami Beach appearances.

This photograph is part of the second live "Ed Sullivan Show." And this is the stage that was in the Napoleon Ballroom, where "The Ed Sullivan Show" was produced live.

EPPRIDGE: I didn't think that their power would hold for so long, and it has. That's what's made it very, very special. There's classical music that happens in every era. And their music just sort of drew so many people together. It's become classical.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Lovely innocence in it all, compared to where we started the program tonight, halftime show.

Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydokey, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world, beginning, as we do, with "The International Herald Tribune." We would actually begin with "The New York Times," but they don't send it to us anymore. I don't know why they're angry, but they are.

Here's "The International Herald Tribune," knowing it's basically the same thing. "Cable TV Operator in Bid for Disney, Comcast Unsolicited, $51.4 Billion Offer, If Successful, Would Reshape Industry." Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote the story. We hear a lot of different numbers about what Comcast is willing to pay. I guess it depends on the share price of the stock.

It was also front-page news in "The Guardian," though it's hardly a bold headline, though what more do you need to say than just show Mickey, right? "Disney in Peril." That's, I guess, $54.1 billion in English for troubled empire. That's how they have headline it in "The Guardian."

"The Boston Herald." "Civil War," civil as in civil unions. and the debate has been civil. "Divided Pols, Mixed Compromises on Gay Marriage." Well, it depends how you look at that, I guess.

"The Philadelphia Inquirer" leads with "Comcast Bids For Disney." I believe they're a Philadelphia company. I may be wrong about that. I wish I hadn't said it now. Anyway, that's their lead. It's not the first time I wish I hadn't said something.

Another merger story, if you will. "The Chattanooga Times Free Press." "Local Grocery Chain For Sale. Parents Company Seeks Buyer This Year for Chattanooga's Biggest Supermarket," the Bi-Lo chain. OK?

How we doing on time there? Thirty? That's all? I was just getting into this.

"The Richmond Times-Dispatch" down at the corner here, if you can get it. "Clash of the Virginia Titans." John Warner -- the two senators, Warner and Senator Allen -- "Split Over an Effort to Tighten Federal Seat Belt Laws."

The weather in Chicago tomorrow, by the way, is "hogwash." I don't think that's good.

We'll wrap up the day in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Recapping our top story before we leave you for the night.

Lawmakers slam the man in charge of CBS and MTV for Janet Jackson's display during the Super Bowl halftime show. The NFL commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, also came in for a grilling, as did the FCC commissioner, Michael Powell, nobody very happy there.

Tomorrow night on this program, even after his death, diet guru Robert Atkins continue to stir up controversy. There's no doubt he has changed America's food landscape -- the Atkins effect tomorrow on NEWSNIGHT.

We'll be in Atlanta tomorrow, but you can watch from the comfort of your home. And I assume you will. We'll see you then.

Good night for all of us.

END

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