Ambivalence

THE SUPREME COURT'S decision 30 years ago today to decriminalize abortion will be an anniversary noisily marked. Outraged opponents will rally in protest as they have almost annually. Ardent advocates will issue statements of support, and summon their own troops in defense of the policy. Much of the rest of the country will groan, feel vaguely uncomfortable and try to tune it out. Polls suggest that most Americans don't consider abortion an issue that lends itself to absolutes. They may support a woman's right to make the choice, or at least respect her privacy.

Sen. Robert A. Zirkin called on a Senate committee Tuesday to approve legislation expanding the state Public Service Commission's role in overseeing the state's interstate natural gas pipelines -- including one running alongside his Owing Mills home. The PSC, however, expressed ambivalence about taking on the broad new role Zirkin envisions -- saying some of his proposals would run afoul of federal law. Zirkin received a hearing on a package of seven bills he has introduced to increase state regulation of the natural gas pipeline industry.

NEW YORK -- Democrats greeted the latest poll results yesterday with the kind of ambivalence that seems characteristic of this convention. On one hand, they were pleased with news that a New York Times-CBS News survey found Bill Clinton running essentially even with President Bush and independent Ross Perot clearly slipping.But some older and wiser heads were shaking at the fact that Mr. Clinton still has negative ratings higher than positive ratings even after the favorable attention to his vice presidential choice.

A confession: I've been less than excited about Joe Flacco since he became the Baltimore Ravens quarterback. He's like that guy your daughter brings home: She thinks he's grand and maybe even The One, and you're completely underwhelmed, even a little disturbed, and you hope she trades up before it's too late and he's calling you "Dad. " So, there … I've confessed. I've shed my Flacco guilt by sharing it with you. (Don't worry, you can keep reading 'cuz this column has a happy ending.)

Los Angeles, the city of perpetual ambivalence, is questioning itself again. The home of Spanglish rap and Italian-Thai restaurants and more than 100 languages and dialects is wondering whether its "multicultural" self is still viable.The alternative is, of course, nationalism, and there are plenty of examples of that, too, from black vs. Latino race riots on inner-city high school campuses to increasing numbers of suburban hate crimes. There's also talk of dividing the Los Angeles School District -- this move being led by residents in the mostly white San Fernando Valley who wish to distance themselves from a black and Latino inner-city.

TOKYO -- How widespread in Japan is the disdain for American workers so often expressed by Japanese politicians?In the latest rebuke of Japan's major economic rival, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa told a parliamentary committee yesterday that he believed U.S. workers were losing the work ethic and drive "to live by the sweat of their brow." And a former Cabinet minister, now a conservative lawmaker, said Americans workwell only three days a week.The remarks followed by two weeks statements by Parliament's lower house speaker, who said Americans were lazy, and come against the backdrop of comments over the years by prime ministers and Cabinet members blaming America's problems on low-education level, racial integration or a carefree attitude toward debt.

In his second and final debate with Republican challenger Bob Dole, President Clinton resembled the mature Muhammad Ali, almost effortlessly escaping his opponent's desperate lunges and prevailing more with ring savvy than brute strength ++ or blinding speed.Dole was unable to maintain a compelling or even comprehensible attack against Clinton on the vaunted "character issue," leaving the president to pile up points on bread-and-butter issues such as the recovering economy, the dwindling deficit, defending Medicare and Medicaid, and improving education and job training.

A silvery confection of turrets and domes, the Ansonia Hotel reigned like a dowager empress over Manhattan's Upper West Side. The basement of the Ansonia, however, more closely resembled a steamy cross between Hades and an Esther Williams movie.These were the famous Continental Baths, the subterranean gay mecca where Bette Midler, Barry Manilow, Melissa Manchester and other performers got their start playing to howlingly appreciative homosexual audiences.The principal activity at "the Baths" had nothing to do with music -- or baths, for that matter.

SUDDENLY SUSAN: Columnist Ellen Goodman writes, "To make over or not to make over? This was the question that followed [Susan Boyle's] flat heels off stage and into the limelight. She became a template for our ambivalence. And hers." For the full commentary, go to baltimoresun.com/opinion

ELECTION of Sen. Pablo Salazar as governor of Chiapas ends the Institutional Revolutionary Party's (PRI) 71-year stranglehold on Mexico's poor, backward, southern state. That's an aftershock to the earthquake July 2, when the conservative Vicente Fox won Mexico's presidency. Senator Salazar is a left-winger who enjoyed the backing of eight political parties demanding change. This should lead to a speedy accommodation with the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which launched a showy rebellion in Chiapas six years ago that festers still.

At nine months of age, they hadn't yet left the hospital, the babies standing at the crib rail. And yet the Henn quadruplets, photographed weeks before they left St. Agnes in October 1947, were already veterans of the international media spotlight - the subject of dozens of news reports, beginning with their discovery in utero through their birth to their parents' efforts to care and provide for them. As they stood ready to leave the hospital at last for the world beyond, the breathless coverage of their weights and diet, feeding times and diapers soiled was only the beginning.

Mitt Romney's rigid position on illegal immigration and embrace of Kris Kobach, former law professor and architect of a law to rid Arizona of illegal aliens, may well cost him the fall election, even if helps him win the Republican nomination. The United States has an unwritten but plain immigration policy. The U.S. Border Patrol imposes significant risks on people trying to enter the country illegally, but once inside, illegal immigrants usually can find work and remain here. They obtain false documents or work off the books, and they make up significant shares of the workforce in agriculture, construction and many service activities.

SUDDENLY SUSAN: Columnist Ellen Goodman writes, "To make over or not to make over? This was the question that followed [Susan Boyle's] flat heels off stage and into the limelight. She became a template for our ambivalence. And hers." For the full commentary, go to baltimoresun.com/opinion

Celluloid dreams. They infect the best of us, even those who seem immune. Take Ira Glass, host of This American Life. Early last year, Glass uprooted his innovative, popular public radio show and moved the whole shebang -- staff members, their families and pets -- from Chicago to New York to film a television series. Glass is proud of the result, but there were costs associated with the transition from an aural to a visual method of storytelling, from lives that were changed, to a lessened involvement -- temporarily, he says -- with the radio show.

THE OLD, CURVY, AT LEAST TWICE- reupholstered couch at the center of the Hamilton home where Danny Mydlack, his wife and two young children live has come a long way. Or, as Mydlack whimsically puts it, the couch is "kind of a big elephant we ride along on." "This big beast," he says, "we schlepped from Los Angeles to Baltimore. It's been this big creature who has sort of lumbered us through the years." Whatever significance a couch holds for a man, it changes radically with fatherhood, Mydlack says.

PHILADELPHIA -- For those who oppose any more U.S. adventures in regime change, last month presented a big challenge: What do you do when Mideast leaders behave in ways that put them beyond the international pale? Last week, Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." He was speaking to 4,000 students attending a conference called "The World Without Zionism." Virulent anti-Israel sentiments are nothing new to Iran. Mr. Ahmadinejad was quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

NEW YORK -- CBS Broadcast Group President Howard Stringer may leave the network to head a new interactive-entertainment venture being formed by three regional telephone companies, according to sources.Mr. Stringer, 52, is the leading contender to head the new company.Sources said Friday that once details of the offer are hammered out, he may go to CBS Inc. Chairman Laurence Tisch to ask to be let out of his contract, which has two more years to run.The trade paper Variety reported Friday that Mr. Tisch already has agreed to let Mr. Stringer go. But sources said the two executives have not yet held such a discussion, because the offer to Mr. Stringer from the Baby Bells has not been firmly negotiated.

LINCOLN, Neb. -- While in Nebraska last week, I asked a Republican official there about the mood in his state on going to war with Iraq. He had a quick answer: "Ambivalence." People know that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy with bad weapons, he said, but they feel no threat from him. The lingering threats from 9/11 and the weakening economy and stock market are what have Nebraskans on edge. They will, he added, follow the president's lead -- if he makes the case -- but they are ambivalent, and they really don't want to fight this war alone.

WASHINGTON -- In the breathless minutes before the royal motorcade rolled up to the SEED School yesterday, a small army of khaki- and polo-clad kids unfurled a brown paper sign, with this spray-painted message: "Welcome to SEED Prince Charles and Duchess of Wales." A sweet gesture. Only, the well-coiffed visitor in the black limo wasn't the Duchess of Wales. Wales belongs to Diana, the beloved princess, dead eight years now. This woman grinning at the prince's side was the newly minted Duchess of Cornwall - formerly Camilla Parker Bowles, Princess Diana's longtime rival, Prince Charles' former mistress and, now, wife.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Though the promise remains largely unfulfilled, Charles Chinedu regards his stretch of sidewalk downtown on Jeppe Street as a small part of the Promised Land. Unemployment in South Africa hovers at 40 percent, crime remains rampant, but street hawkers keep arriving. Chinedu, a Nigerian who runs an unlicensed phone booth selling phone time for 30 cents a minute, is part of that growth industry. "I thought I would meet my dreams," he says, gesturing at the two touch-tone phones set up on a table in front of his dilapidated apartment building.