Oliver Stone

Howard Stern and Kathie Lee Gifford, on the same network, within hours of each other! Will civilization survive? And don't you think it would be more fun if they were actually in the same room?* "Kathie Lee: Home for Christmas" (9 p.m.-10 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- Well, better her home than mine. If you like Kathie Lee, then you'll watch this no matter what anyone says. So enjoy.* "Dateline NBC" (9 p.m.-10 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) -- Say what you will about Oliver Stone -- and there's plenty to say -- the man knows how to make movies.

"Nixon's" not the one.Rumors of its greatness have been exaggerated by a suspiciously pliant national press. In fact, the new Oliver Stone psycho-bio, which attempts to re-imagine the late president as a Mad King, a Republican Lear bleeding passion, greatness and hubris at once, turns all too swiftly into just another Watergate Wallow, lost in the arcana of obscure, undramatized detail, crackpot theorizing and White House soap opera.Stone's worst problem is his own titanic ego, which compels him not to begin afresh but to see this film as a continuation from and a validation of "JFK."

The T-shirt arrives in the mail, and what makes it so weird -- so, as we used to say, far out -- is that it comes via the sales division of the Nixon library, which nobody wanted to build in the first place because, well, it was the Nixon library. Anyway, the shirt has this picture of Tricky Dick himself, posing with his thumb up, and says, "Nixon in '96. Tan, Rested & Ready!"Swear to God.Yes, barely dead, Nixon's already back. There's a hit off-Broadway Nixon play. There was the made-for-TV Nixon-Kissinger feature.

"Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes: Robert Kennedy's War Against Organized Crime," by Ronald Goldfarb. Random House. 357 pages. $26 When Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. finished distilling the Secret of Life, he concluded, "It's not what you are, but what people think you are, that counts." By backing this grubby philosophy with his considerable fortune, the senior Kennedy created one of the most persistent enigmas of modern times: Who were these guys?Were JFK and RFK noble leaders or were they merely gaseous products of a public relations ram jet that gulped Kennedy dollars and belched out heroes?

Washington -- WHERE IS Oliver Stone now that the Senate's conspiracy buffs need him?Remember Mr. Stone's hokey, pseudo-historic movie "JFK" that fantasized John F. Kennedy was bumped off by shadowy agents of the military-industrial complex?Welcome to the Senate's summer re-run, titled "Vince: The Mystery That Will Not Die (If We Have Anything To Say About It.)."Sure, Oliver Stone would have gone bonkers with this plot: Vince Foster, White House lawyer and Bill Clinton's lifelong pal, found dead on a Potomac hillside with a .38 in his hand.

There you go again.The "you" happens to be Bob Dole, the Republican senator from Kansas who is running for president. But it could have been President Clinton, who's sounded similar notes in times past. Or Tipper Gore. Or anyone and everyone on back to the Catholic Legion of Decency in the '50s to the Hays Office in the '20s and '30s to the original blue-nose Anthony Comstock and his war on "September Morn," which he managed to turn into the most famous painting of the early 20th century.

Mick Jagger could get no satisfaction from press conferences with media hacks, so the rocker became a hacker.Mr. Jagger is just one of many celebrities now churning onto the information superhighway. Computer networks are offering on-line "talk shows" and other services that put stars, in a sense, face-to-face with their fans.Subscribing PC users can key in questions that the celebrities answer, either by typing in replies or dictating to someone else.These Q-and-A sessions can be done in "real time" or in a delayed way, with questions accumulating over several weeks and the answers given and accessed after a set time.

"Natural Born Killers" is about as "natural" as Natural Lite Beer or naturally mentholated cigarettes.In your face like a drunk with a bad attitude problem, the movie hammers, yammers, blurts and blasts. There's not a single moment of repose or reflection; it grabs you by the lapels and sprays saliva in your face for two and a half hours.Oliver Stone thinks he's making a satire, but he has no idea what a satire actually is. The point being made, under the coarse bombast, would seem to have something to do with that modern bugbear that has replaced "the system" as the generic target of opportunity for blowhards, "the media."

New York -- He still looks like Peck's bad boy up on charges before Mrs. Jones, the schoolmarm. "Did you put bubble gum in Ruby Sue's hair? Did you dip Polly's pigtails in the inkwell? Did you break that window with your slingshot? Oliver -- what are we going to do with you?"Except that the charges on which the ever-mischievous Oliver Stone has been brought up reflect not yesterday's bucolic but today's brutal America:"Did you accuse your leaders of lying to your generation and wasting them in an unwinnable war?

I have kept silent for as long as I can, but now I must speak out no matter what the consequences.Whatever happens to me, I want the truth to survive.The "facts" are well known to all:On Nov. 12, Mayor Kurt Schmoke revealed that he had been shoved in the chest by a 13-year-old while trying to break up a brawl between two students at the Roland Park Elementary/Middle School.Both students were suspended from school for two days."If I ever went home and said I shoved the mayor in the chest, I wouldn't be able to sit for a couple of weeks," Schmoke said.