C Span

POOR JOE BIDEN. Tuesday night he made the speech of a lifetime, in behalf of the crime bill, and nobody paid any attention.He didn't get a mention in the next day's coverage of the crime bill story in The Sun, the Washington Post, the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. The Wilmington News Journal, his hometown newspaper, quoted from Biden's speech in its crime bill reporting, but featured not the speech but the refusal of his Delaware colleague, Sen. William Roth, to join 41 other Republicans in opposing the bill.

Freeport, Ill. -- A rental car pulls up to the large boulder sitting in a park off Douglas Street. A young, blond girl bounds out and does to the boulder what, undoubtedly, most of her peers would do.She climbs on it, little caring that it marks the site of one of the most talked-about debates in American history.In 1858, Freeport and six other Illinois cities were visited by Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, two men locked in a senatorial contest that, for much of the nation, was crystallizing the two issues then dominating the American consciousness: slavery and states' rights.

It was a race for Illinois' seat in the U.S. Senate. And as with most elections, the debates that took place on the campaign trail were political theater at its finest.The contenders were Abraham Lincoln and Sen. Stephen A. Douglas. And for three months in 1858, Lincoln, a lawyer and ex-congressman, faced off in a series of seven debates with Douglas, the incumbent Democrat.Lincoln had hoped to unseat Douglas, and thousands of people showed up for the U.S. Senate debates. And though Lincoln lost that election, the debates, which focused on state's rights and slavery, earned him national renown.

For more than an hour, Travis and Jordan Swonger played with about $250,000 worth of camera, computer and audio equipment in the 45-foot bright yellow bus, parked in the grass next to the Jones Intercable Studios in Gambrills Friday."

You don't get the calls on C-SPAN that you get on other call-in shows.The calls are much more likely to be about employer mandates for health care than whether O.J. Simpson should give up hair samples.C-SPAN is about as serious and informative as television gets. And the most frightening thing about appearing on it (at least for me) is that the questioners often know more than the people they are questioning.Though I may be changing my mind about that last point.I was on C-SPAN last week and, as always, I kept track of the calls.

C-Span, the television channel lawmakers love the most, has become an unintended victim of the cable law passed by Congress two years ago to increase competition and lower rates.In the nine months since key provisions of the law took effect, C-Span and its sister channel, C-Span 2, have been cut back on cable systems serving more than 4 million households, and in some cases dropped altogether. In some instances, the cuts have prompted protests from viewers accustomed to watching the antics of the federal government live and unedited.

THE CURRENT, superheated debate on TV violence that now has networks agreeing to add parental advisories at the beginning of potentially offensive programming may be a mere tempest in a teapot.For instance, what about cartoons? Why won't violent cartoons also require a warning to parents? What about jeans commercials? And so on.Well, the short answer to these problems is that children, if "trained" early, won't be drawn to violent TV programs of any sort. And when this early training "takes," they'll be among the best informed and most civicly active folks in the republic.

I was very surprised when C-Span called and asked me to go on the air again.The last time I was on I had humiliated myself and I figured I would never be invited back.If you think I am another one of Bill Clinton's half-brothers, I'm not, I told the producer.She said she knew that, but it was summer and summer means picnics and picnics mean potato salad and the guy they had scheduled had food poisoning and could I come on?So I started studying.The problem with appearing on C-Span is that the people who watch it expect you to know what you are talking about.

President Clinton's electronic "town meeting" from Detroit will be broadcast live at 8 p.m. today by C-SPAN and Maryland Public Television (Channels 22/67), and on WBAL-AM (1090) nTC radio. ABC's "Nightline" will review the meeting at 11:30 p.m.

No sense fighting it. As The Boss would say: 57 channels and the election's on. There's nothing else to do, so let's rock around the clock with the election on television:8:18 a.m. I certainly hope NBC pays overtime. There's Bryant Gumbel on "The Today Show," and he's going to have to work tonight, too. No wonder Jane Pauley left "Today." There she was, putting in those long hours, while her husband was home all day, drawing cartoons. I bet he never even emptied the dishwasher.8:19 a.m. On "Good Morning America," Joan Lunden is talking to a veterinarian who's patting a horse on the neck.