A prep course for the month-long World Cup soccer tournament, a worldwide pheno

 offended by a magazine that celebrated white culture and heritage with the ferv

or that Ebony celebrates African American culture . A Congressional White Caucus

 in Washington ? No way ! Are blacks guilty of a double standard with regard to 

racism ? `` First of all , the Congressional Black Caucus has never disallowed w

hite members we have approximately 26 associate members who are white , '' said 

Rep. Kweisi Mfume , the caucus chairman , when I put my question to him . `` Sec

ond , the caucus exists to leverage opportunity and enforce change for black peo

ple . In the absence of a civil rights movement , the caucus is one of the most 

important vehicles for change that blacks have . '' Mfume said that most whites 

either are unaware of the continued disparities between blacks and whites in thi

s society or they don't care . `` There is a feeling in the larger community tha

t ` We 've done enough for blacks . We don't want to do any more , '' said Mfume

 . `` But , in fact , every major indicator suggests that the disparities are ev

en more stark than they were 30 years ago . I hope and pray for a time when we w

illn't need a black caucus , '' he said . `` But realistically , I don't expect 

that time to occur in my lifetime . '' John H. Johnson , the publisher and chief

 executive officer of Ebony Magazine , makes a similar point : `` Until the two 

races are meshed or merged or integrated , you will need both ` white ' and ` bl

ack ' media , '' Johnson said in a 1984 interview , provided by his office . `` 

If we somehow reach a point in this country when race will no longer be a factor

 , then Ebony will simply serve all the people . In fact , Ebony would be a grea

ter success than its white competitors , simply because black people have more e

xperience studying and meeting the needs of whites than white people have had st

udying and meeting the needs of blacks . '' Seymour conceded he was unaware of m

any of the continued problems that make blacks feel they have to organize for ch

ange . And , I conceded something too : Maybe blacks are too quick to cry `` rac

ism '' whenever whites question our goals . Maybe both sides must learn to liste

n .

 WASHINGTON Journalists and the corporations that employ them are worriers . We 

worry about the economic survival of the news business , about the `` meaning ''

 and social utility of what we do , about our ethics and status and about our ``

 relevance '' to a public that seems increasingly bored and turned off by the ``

 news '' as we have traditionally defined it . Howard Kurtz , the media critic o

f The Washington Post , published a book last year in which he said , `` The sme

ll of death permeates the newspaper business . '' A headline in the trade magazi

ne Editor & Publisher last week notes the trend line on our health chart : `` Ne

wspaper Circulations Plummet . '' The journalistic outlook at the television net

works is not sunny , either . As audiences for news programming decline , some T

V executives wonder aloud whether it makes sense to keep the network news divisi

ons alive . Advertisers are deserting us for `` new media '' serving the special

 interests of a fragmented , narcissistic society `` the culture of contentment 

'' in which consumption is the dominant theme . Our young people , Jay Rosen wri

tes , `` have available to them not only a substitute source of news , but a kin

d of substitute universe , an alternative culture that is centered around televi

sion but is , in fact , more pervasive . This `` everywhere culture ' the cultur

e of popular music , Hollywood , MTV , `` Entertainment Tonight ' , People magaz

ine generates its own notion of currency .. . ( and ) is loosening the very grou

nd on which the newspaper stands . '' Half of these people 18 to 24 never read a

 newspaper , and great numbers never watch or hear the evening news . If `` citi

zenship '' is defined as active and informed participation in public affairs and

 the political process , they the young in particular have become noncitizens al

ong with millions of their elders . While our politicians and editorial writers 

preach to the world about the joys and successes of democracy , half the America

n electorate ignores our presidential elections . Turnouts in off-year congressi

onal elections and in local elections of all kinds are an international joke . T

here are close relationships among the decline of citizenship in this country , 

the decline of interest in traditional definitions of `` news '' and the decline

 of journalism 's large role in the life of the society . Rosen notes correctly 

that , `` To pick up a newspaper and scan the front page is to feel yourself a m

ember of a world in which politics and public affairs matter . '' That has been 

true since the late 18th century , and journalists have assumed ever since that 

our intense interest-some might say obsession-in these affairs is shared by the 

general population . However valid that assumption may have been in some golden 

era past , it obviously has little validity today . Vast numbers of Americans ar

e not only turned off by politics and public affairs , as their lack of particip

ation and their lack of interest in political journals demonstrates ; they have 

become actively hostile . E. J. Dionne , an editorial writer at The Post , wrote

 a book on the subject a couple of years ago : `` Why Americans Hate Politics . 

'' The corruption of government at all levels by lobbyists and special interests

 of every description is a factor . The frequent incompetence and lavish waste o

f government bureaucracies and officials is another . The character flaws of pol

itical leaders and candidates , the cliches and psychobabble that pass for polit

ical discourse , the malign influence of political consultants who brainwash and

 mislead us with deceptive and irrelevant political advertising contribute signi

ficantly to the public 's alienation . So does the incompetence and superficiali

ty of the press . Post political columnist David Broder has identified a central

 problem . `` Citizens , '' he has said , `` now perceive the press as part of t

he insider 's world. .. . We have , through the elevation of salaries , prestige

 , education and so on among reporters distanced ourselves to a remarkable degre

e from the people we are writing for and have become much , much closer to the p

eople ( experts and politicians ) we are writing about . '' Our professional liv

es are tied up with ( and greatly dependent on ) the political elite government 

officials , lobbyists , bureaucrats , consultants , experts and academicians . W

e socialize with them , talk the same language , have the same interests , live 

in the same neighborhoods , share lifestyles , schools for our children , clubs 

and poker games . It is no wonder that the pictures of the world we present to t

he newspaper audience and the spin we put on them are , in the strict meaning of

 the word , the `` propaganda '' of the ruling class . Tom Koch , a journalist a

nd author of books on journalism , makes the same point : `` For twenty years co

ntent analysis studies have shown that between 70 and 90 percent of our content 

is at heart the voice of officials and their experts , translated by reporters i

nto supposedly `` objective ' news . People don't trust us anymore .. . because 

the way we quote and attribute and build factoids as if they were truth is a lie

 . And folks are catching on . '' They not only do not freely give us their trus

t , they often do not understand us at all . We write in the argots of politics 

and the bureaucracy and the academic world , which is as comprehensible and usef

ul to the masses as the journals of quasars , black holes and quantum physics . 

Because of uncertain prospects in the 21st century , there is a lot of talk in t

he press these days about reinventing ourselves through the marvels of technolog

y electronics and the `` information highway , '' for example . Others see a sol

ution in design and artistic innovation . But until we re-examine and change the

 way we conceive of `` news , '' until we redefine the `` reliable source '' and

 until we learn to use a language that is accessible and meaningful to the apath

etic public out there , neither the press nor our political system will be cured

 of its problems .

 D-day 's success on June 6 , 1944 , together with a Russian victory at Stalingr

ad 15 months earlier , assured that Nazi ambitions for European and world domina

tion would not be realized . But when the common enemy collapsed in 1945 , what 

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the Grand Alliance swiftly broke

 apart , giving way to Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States .

 Many Americans were distressed when their hope for a peaceful postwar world fai

led to materialize , but hard-nosed observers recognized the new international a

lignment that emerged between 1946 and 1950 as a classic example of balance-of-p

ower politics . This was exactly what wartime presidents Woodrow Wilson and Fran

klin D. Roosevelt had hoped to banish from the Earth by making international law

 enforceable . How ironic , then , that the United States found itself unexpecte

dly engaged in a ruthless game of power politics instead of relying on internati

onal law . Does half a century 's experience since the shocking international re

alignments of the 1940s make us any wiser ? It is hard to tell . Hopes and fears

 about international affairs are less intense than they were 50 years ago . But 

the decay of Cold War alignments and motivations , like the decay of the wartime

 alliance , puts the future up for grabs in an unusually drastic way . Perhaps t

he peace-keepers of the United Nations can really keep the lid on international 

conflicts if the great powers cooperate . Perhaps a new balance of power among r

ival states will emerge to replace the Cold War antagonism . Or perhaps changes 

within the leading states of the Earth have altered public life so much that old

-fashioned balance-of-power politics has begun to decay not because peace has br

oken out , but because other kinds of conflict have begun to limit and distract 

attention from intergovernmental rivalries . As far as I can tell , all three of

 these alternatives which find their origin at least in part in the victory of D

-day are live options . U.N. peacekeeping has not been uniformly successful , bu

t as long as the great powers refrain from taking sides , local wars remain loca

l and sending in outsiders to keep combatants apart might become habitual . On t

he other hand , if the great powers quarrel , they can easily form rival blocs a

nd alliances as aforetime . Radically different lineups seem possible . The clas

sic balance-of-power response to the eclipse of the Soviet Union would require t

he American Cold War alliance to split up . Fortress America would then confront

 Festung Europa under German leadership once again , with a new Japanese Co-pros

perity Sphere in Asia to challenge both . Alternatively , the United States and 

Japan might ally against China ; Russia might join or oppose western Europe ; In

dia might join or oppose China in Asia , and so on . Permutations are innumerabl

e , but according to this view , the balance of power is immortal , even if unst

able , and compels statesmen to form and break alliances willy-nilly . The third

 alternative is more interesting to think about . Balance of power is only as pe

rmanent as the states and governments that play the game . But states exist only

 in the minds of the people they govern , and if enough people feel themselves a

lienated , governmental power can dissolve with quite surprising rapidity . This

 was what happened to the USSR . Other states may face similar difficulties in t

he future . Subnational identities on the one hand and transnational connections

 on the other have modified national politics already . A tangle of overlapping 

rights , duties , obligations and beliefs , if they increase in the future as th

ey have been gaining power of late , might weaken national identities and restri

ct the sovereign power of existing governments far more than they are restricted

 today . None of these scenarios is likely to bring peace to the world . But the

 way people organize themselves into groups and distribute loyalty among differe

nt and often overlapping groups makes all the difference . Divided loyalties and

 plural identities are incompatible with total war and marginalize balance-of-po

wer politics . Perhaps divided loyalties have already multiplied to such a point

 that international behavior is changing in ways no one imagined in 1944 and no 

one yet fully understands 50 years after the D-day victory that prepared the gro

und to make it possible .

 It 's become something of a commonplace to say that foreign policy should not b

e governed by television coverage . The most prominent example of the alleged ab

use , probably , is the American intervention in Somalia . In late 1992 , the pu

blic witnessed almost daily television coverage of hundreds of thousands of Soma

lis starving to death , and in January President Bush launched Operation Restore

 Hope , whose purpose was to deliver food and other supplies to the afflicted . 

No doubt the Bush administration 's reasons for intervening were complex . It is

 clear , however , that it never would have taken place without public acceptanc

e , and that public acceptance was primed by the television coverage . Naturally

 , the action was attended by debate regarding the purposes and justifications f

or intervention generally in the post-Cold War period . Some argued that any hum

an catastrophe on the scale of the Somali famine was justification enough for in

ternational intervention . Others feared that intervention for humanitarian reas

ons would quickly lead to political and military involvement , which would prove

 both interminable and self-defeating . This warning seemed especially pertinent

 inasmuch as the famine , initially caused by drought , was greatly extended and

 protracted by a civil war in which control of food had become a weapon among th

e contending sides . By the time of the American intervention , food sent by the

 outside world was piling up in warehouses in Somali ports . Later developments 

seemed to confirm the fear of involvement . In October of 1993 , 18 American sol

diers were killed in a battle with the forces of the Somali warlord Mohammed Far

ah Aidid , and the corpse of one was dragged through the streets . The televisio

n images of this event proved as powerful in pulling U.S. troops out of Somalia 

as the earlier pictures of starving Somalis had been in pushing the troops in . 

Within days , President Clinton vowed to withdraw U.S. soldiers in six months . 

They are now gone . This sequence of events left in its wake a widespread belief

 that international intervention inspired by horror at faraway events cannot lea

d to anything good : A frivolous public , it seemed , had first lightly demanded

 intervention and then abruptly abandoned support for it at the first sign of ad

versity . The Somalia intervention became a byword for futility . That character

ization is especially potent in the current debate over intervention in the geno

cidal proceedings in Rwanda , where government forces have massacred some hundre

ds of thousands of members of the Tutsi tribe , and Tutsis have retaliated , tho

ugh on a smaller scale . A recent editorial in The New York Times , for example 

, warned that intervention in Rwanda might turn out to be a repeat of the `` deb

acle '' in Somalia . This characterization , however , overlooks certain facts o

f epic proportion . The most important is that hundreds of thousands of lives we

re saved . The U.S. . Agency for International Development estimates the number 

at 500,000 , and Oxfam America , the independent relief organization , confirms 

the figure . Peggy Connolly , who traveled widely in Somalia for Oxfam America i

n the spring , recently told me she found nearly universal gratitude among Somal

is for the international intervention , and for the crucial American role in par

ticular . Farming has resumed , she found , and communities are rebuilding . `` 

And the civil war is over , '' she added though she agrees with other observers 

that the long-term political future of the country is worrisome . There may be s

ound reasons for the international community 's reluctance to intervene in Rwand

a , but an alleged `` debacle '' in Somalia should not be among them . Nor , in 

this case , did television coverage inspire bad policy . The public saw starving

 people , and wanted something done . Something was done , and hundreds of thous

ands lived who otherwise would have died .

 Let 's say you 're an anti-abortion protester . You think abortion is murder . 

And so , you believe you must do whatever you can to stop it . As a pro-life adv

ocate , however , you don't believe in violence . In fact , you completely disav

ow the hard-core radical fringe of the movement , the kind of people who killed 

Dr. David Gunn and firebomb abortion clinics . You don't believe you can be pro-

life and pro-violence at the same time . But you 'll do anything short of violen

ce . Because your conscience willn't allow you to do anything less . So , as you

 try to stop people from going inside abortion clinics , you hold true to your b

eliefs in nonviolence . You practice civil disobedience , in the tradition of Ga

ndhi and Martin Luther King Jr. . You sit in front of a doorway , and you shall 

not be moved . It 's against the law , of course , just like the civil rights si

t-ins were . But you 're prepared to be dragged away by police . You 're willing

 to spend a few days in jail and pay a fine , if you must . But now the cost has

 gone up . Now , the president has signed into law a bill that makes it a federa

l crime to blockade an abortion clinic or related medical facilities . Violent o

ffenders can face up to $ 100,000 in fines and a year in prison for a first conv

iction . You wonder why they single out violent pro-life advocates . Aren't viol

ent acts already illegal ? You hear the oft-quoted numbers that since 1977 , the

re have been 36 bombings of clinics , 81 cases of arson , 131 death threats , 84

 assaults , two kidnappings but you don't understand what they have to do with y

ou . The person accused of killing Gunn is in jail . Firebombers are in jail . Y

ou never firebombed or threatened anyone . What you do is plead with women who a

re going inside for an abortion to reconsider . Some call that intimidation . Yo

u say it 's an attempt to persuade a woman to do the right thing . Some people c

all you a zealot . Maybe you are . Surely , it 's not against the law to be a ze

alot in America . But now nonviolent offenders , the people who participate in s

it-ins blocking the entrance to a clinic and maybe even those who simply kneel a

nd pray in front of the entrance , face a prison term of up to six months and a 

fine as high as $ 10,000 for a first conviction . An additional conviction can b

ring 18 months and $ 25,000 in fines . What do you do now ? The people who write

 the law say they 're not after lawful protesters . The people who write the law

 say you can still picket and speak out . You wonder , though , about the risks 

. Who knows how the law will be enforced ? Who can say exactly where picketing e

nds and blockading begins ? Isn't this what they call a `` chilling effect '' on

 protest ? These days , you feel like you have little recourse other than protes

t . The courts continue to rule against your cause . Most of the state legislatu

res have gone over to the pro-choice side . Bill Clinton has brought RU-486 , th

e abortion pill , to this country . You understand you hold a minority position 

. But you figure one of the great things about America is that the Constitution 

protects the right to hold unpopular positions . Now you don't know . You wonder

 how Clinton , a former professor of constitutional law , doesn't see this law a

s a First-Amendment problem . You wonder how the ACLU , the dogged defenders of 

the First Amendment , the same guys who defend the rights of Nazis to march , ca

n support this law . You wonder what would have happened if , 30 or 40 years ago

 , Congress had passed a law aimed specifically at civil rights protesters who s

at-in at lunch counters . How many sit-ins would there have been with a six-mont

h jail term as a result ? You wonder what would have happened if they 'd passed 

such a law during the Vietnam era , singling out protesters who sat down in fron

t of draft boards . Actually , you don't wonder . You know exactly what 's going

 on . They say they want to stop the violence at abortion clinics . You know tha

t 's a phony issue . Existing laws handle that problem . What the people who bac

k the law want is to stop you . What they want is for you and the entire anti-ab

ortion protest movement to just go away . And if , in the process , the liberal 

establishment chooses to disregard and even endanger principles it once fought s

o hard to win , that 's just the price we 'll all have to pay .

 About the time a home furnishings trend shows up on a bathmat , it 's washed up

 . So it is with heavenly objects . Not that you 'd know it by scanning the stor

es and catalogs : Suns , moons and stars still fill the shelves and cover multip

le pages . But such is the nature of these trends just when they 're everywhere 

, they 're goners . `` It is post-peak , '' pronounces Raymond Berger , vice pre

sident of Plummer-McCutcheon , which gave two entire pages to the celestial them

e in its most recent catalog . During the decorating-down years ( on average , p

eople replace furniture only 1 times during their lifetimes , designer Vladimir 

Kagan says ) , we freshen our nests with small decorative items . They are to fu