August 15, 1993

From the beginning, television -- the image mill for the mainstream -- has not known quite what to do with black characters. It has struggled, as has the country, to find a place for them that white Americans could find comforting and digestible from the safe distance of their living rooms. Reality had nothing to do with it. Were real blacks ever the docile buffoons depicted on "Amos 'n' Andy," or jolly sycophants like Beulah? Could blacks on television be palatable if they were anything less than Rhodes scholars who speak seven languages, like Bill Cosby on "I Spy," or the properly powdered nurse Julia? Most seasons, old stereotypes pass for shorthand sociology, broken only by contrarian moments like "Roots" or "The Cosby Show." Now, after the success of street movies like "Boyz N the Hood," television, particularly in a few bold steps by HBO, is making black dramas with the highest production values and an edgy pseudorealism, in which violence and pathology are inherent in being black and crack is a required character.

After a whirlwind first stretch that has lasted seven long months, President Clinton has finally gone on vacation today. He has left Washington weary; even worse, much of his support is exhausted. Not for two generations has a new President sought to do so much, so fast and so directly. And not since modern polling began has popular approval of a new occupant of the White House declined so precipitously and failed to rebound.

Arriving for their annual summer meeting, the nation's governors seized on the issue of health care today, putting President Clinton on notice that his proposal for a uniform system of health insurance should not interfere with state programs already under way. Several governors attending the meeting of the National Governors' Association made it clear that despite calls for a bipartisan effort to revamp the nation's health care system, there are serious differences dividing the parties, the states, and the Federal and state governments on how to overhaul the system.

WHEN schools reopen around the state next month, most children will be returning to familiar buildings with their neighborhood friends. But hundreds of children of migrant farm workers, many of whom have attended several different schools in other states, will find themselves wandering into yet another unfamiliar district. The school could be in Buena, near here, if their parents decide to stay in Atlantic County to pick blueberries. It could be somewhere in upstate New York, for the apple-picking season. It could even be back in Florida, where many workers have relatives and which they consider home.

In the most explicit and emotional language he has used in his current visit to the United States, Pope John Paul II today lamented "the false morality" of modern society, labeling abortion and euthanasia "the slaughter of the innocents." He urged young people, in particular, to practice "natural" birth control rather than using artificial methods, including condoms. In remarks at a prayer service with bishops and young Catholics this afternoon, the Pope also touched for the first time since his arrival here on Thursday on the highly controversial issue of the sexual molestation of young people by Catholic priests.