March 28, 1993

Frank Capra, whose "It Happened One Night" swept the major Academy Awards for 1934, thought the Oscars were a great public relations gimmick, "the most wonderful thing that has ever been thought of for advertising." Marlene Dietrich, who was never nominated, scoffed that "the awarding of Oscars is one of the greatest frauds of the century." She held a special contempt for what she called "the Deathbed Award," in which the academy makes up for decades of neglect by giving an honorary Oscar at the last possible minute. When you get one of those, she said, "that's how you know you're dying." (Tasteless, but true. Last year's honorary lifetime award winner, Satyajit Ray, actually accepted from the hospital bed where he died just three weeks later.)

MEMBERS of the Mohegan Indian tribe have rummaged through attics, basements and dusty family archives to wage a battle that may determine the tribe's future, the future of Connecticut's other Indian tribes -- and possibly the scope of gambling in Connecticut. A decision on whether to recognize the Mohegans as an official tribe, expected this year from the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, could enable the Mohegans to become the second tribe to open acasino in the state. It could also establish a precedent for other tribes to press their claims for recognition, thus opening the gates for even more Indian casinos in Connecticut. If the 900-member tribe can prove to Government historians and anthropologists that there were no interruptions in its tribal existence from the time of first contact with Europeans, the Mohegans will receive the status that will give them wider economic, social and political powers over tribal land, including the power to establish gaming operations on their land in Montville.

As part of a blueprint for major change in New York's health care system, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo proposed today that the state be given authority to set payment rates for all physicians, just as it now does for hospitals. That was one of several proposals made today that Mr. Cuomo said were necessary to control soaring health care costs and to improve access to primary care -- preventive and basic family medicine.

Had he been anyplace but in a dugout that night, Barry Foote might have been ordered to seek counseling of some sort. Job stress had clearly claimed another victim. There were odd whistles, inexplicable hand claps, words without apparent coherence. His title was manager. Foote's behavior was weird, to say the least. Forget counseling. Foote's behavior could have got him arrested. The whistles, the claps, the monosyllables, were codes. The information being transmitted from the dugout to the plate was the identity of the next pitch. The night's theft was the 1984 Florida State League championship.

BEHIND the bluster and brinkmanship of the Russian political struggle that burned hot but inconclusively last week, behind its fundamental vulgarity and lack of propriety, is a brutal understanding of power bred through centuries of despotism and servility to both czar and commissar. Power is not something to be shared; a white flag is a sign to attack; compromise is only a lull in the fight.