Young Americans

NEW YORK -- "What do you think of the idea of our Peace Corps?" President Kennedy once asked Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India. A good plan, Nehru answered; young Americans can learn a lot from Indian villagers.The American was not amused; he thought the Indian arrogant. But Nehru was right, and the arrogance was ours. The major impact of sending tens of thousands of Americans abroad over the past 35 years has been to create alumni who actually have a feel for the world and America's role in far off places.

Baltimore resident Kenneth Merchant, soon to be an engineering student at Morgan State University, doesn't smoke American cigarettes at all. He prefers bidis, a flavored cigarette imported from India, for the extra kick they give. "It's just like cigarettes," he says, "except it's a little stronger."Bidis, Americanized as "beedies," are 2 inches long, hand-wrapped in a brown leaf called tendu and tied at one end with string.Although this description may suggest marijuana, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has found that beedies contain no controlled substances.

YOU PARENTS out there should be aware that the young people have invented yet another alarming trend. I frankly wonder why we, as a society, even allow young people, inasmuch as all they ever seem to do is think up trends that we do not approve of, such as sarcasm, tattoos, and referring to pioneering rock- music geniuses of the '60s as "old" just because they are dead or in comas.I found out about the latest alarming youth trend thanks to several alert readers who sent me an article from the Straits Times of Singapore.

LOS ANGELES -- Why are we in Kosovo? Because we have no draft. This war, in the air or on the ground, means nothing to most Americans. The military, all volunteers, go about their business and the rest of us go about ours.On the campus of the University of Southern California, where I lecture on the relationship between presidents and the press, there are more than 20,000 young Americans. You can walk from one end of the campus to the other on a fine, sunny day in the spring and never hear the word "Kosovo."

WIMBLEDON, England -- There was a time when Americans came to Wimbledon to win championships.Now, they're having a tough time just winning matches.Yesterday, it was No. 5-seeded Lindsay Davenport's turn to suffer a Wimbledon embarrassment, losing in the second round to Denisa Chladkova, 7-5, 6-2.The outcome left two American women in the draw, Monica Seles, a 5-7, 6-3, 6-3 winner over Kristina Brandi, and Mary Joe Fernandez, a 6-4, 6-0 winner over Aleksandra...

IT ARRIVED in the mail impressively stamped in raised blue ink: business cards etched with the seal of National Republican Senatorial Committee, my name, and the words "National Campaign Adviser" underneath.The accompanying letter, from NRSC chairman Sen. Al D'Amato, R-N.Y., explained: "When discussing the 1996 campaign with voters in your community, please don't hesitate to use your cards to identify your status as a national campaign adviser to the NRSC."What did I do to deserve this?Well, last year, my best friend's brother ran for Congress and, in a fit of improvidential generosity, I did something I had never done before and plan never to do again: I gave money to a political campaign.

THREE U.S. SERVICEMEN are in Japanese custody, charged with the rape of a 12-year-old girl on Okinawa. It is not the first such atrocity; it will not be the last, given the tensions bound to arise when 27,000 young Americans are concentrated on an overseas island. U.S. bases sprawl over 20 percent of Okinawa's land area and are home to 60 percent of the U.S. forces stationed in Japan.These figures should be kept in mind in assessing the outrage that erupted after U.S. authorities waited 25 days before handing over the accused servicemen once they had been indicted.

Hampstead third-grader's poem to be publishedLaura Cristofaro, a student at Hampstead Elementary School, is being published.The third-grader submitted a poem to the American Academy of Poetry that was accepted for publication in the 1993 edition of the "Anthology of Poetry by Young Americans."FIRE* Hampstead: Hampstead and Manchester responded to a house fire on Tracey's Store Road in Baltimore County at 7:36 a.m. Monday. Units were out for 26 minutes.

PRAGUE -- Forget California. Forget Broadway. You can even forget Seattle. Thousands of young Americans have found a new promised land, and it's an unlikely spot -- the Czech capital.A year and a half ago, John-Bruce Shoemaker arrived in Prague with $600 in his pocket and time on his hands. Today he works 16 hours a day at the three restaurants he runs in a historic building in the city's Old Town."Prague's beautiful, it's cheap, and there are lots of opportunities," said Mr. Shoemaker, 30. "There's a lot of cool stuff that can be done here."

YES, Aug. 28, 1963, was a long time ago. I live in Washington now, more or less, and this is a very different country from what it was when, as a young reporter, I covered the great March on Washington for the Chicago Daily News.So, as we celebrate this 30th anniversary, perhaps we should ask: Where are we now?Well, the common "wisdom" has it that America has made no or at least very little progress on race. You can pick up almost any newspaper or magazine and hear about how young Americans think there is more racism and hatred than ever: that we have really gone backward.

I think it's fair to say that every white American knows another white American who is a bigot. The bigotry comes out in different ways - in conversation about politics, sports, crime, music, life in general. The bigot you know probably enjoys sharing a crude joke now and then, and these days you might receive an offensive e-mail from him, as I did last week. If you've been around this person enough over the years, you pretty much know what to expect. You don't expect this person to change.

NEW YORK - Who hasn't snickered at "Jaywalking," a "Tonight Show" segment in which host Jay Leno flummoxes unsuspecting young people on the street with such tricky questions as: In what country is Paris located? Or cringed to see Miss America 2007 humiliated by a brainy bunch of 10-year-olds - who just happened to know the sun is the heavenly body with the greatest mass in our solar system - on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? Or witnessed the consternation of a cashier presented with a $20 bill and two quarters for a $12.50 tab?

WASHINGTON -- Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates told lawmakers yesterday that the United States should welcome an "infinite" number of high-skilled foreign workers to fill engineering, computer programming and other jobs that otherwise would go vacant. Employers face a "critical shortage" of high-tech workers, Gates said. "There is only one way to solve that crisis today: Open our doors to highly talented scientists and engineers who want to live, work and pay taxes here." Gates told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that Congress should fix the "terrible shortfall" in H-1B visas, which allow well-educated foreigners to work in the United States for several years.

It's not health insurance the American people want. What they truly want is for someone else to step forward to foot the bill. Their goal is to pay about $500 out of their own pockets every year, and then have someone else, either their employer or the taxpayers, be responsible for everything else. ... [A] recent survey revealed that young Americans would rather pay their cell phone bill than use that money to buy insurance. These young workers said that they will just wait to get health insurance until they get a job where it is included in a benefits package.

VATICAN CITY - Before news of the end came, St. Peter's Square was not somber. Cheers sporadically broke out among the young in one corner of the vast plaza. High-pitched melodies rose up nearby. Across the cobblestones, just beneath the apartment where the 84-year-old Pope John Paul II labored to breathe, there were near-constant chants, almost joyous. "Giovanni Paulo," the voices called. These were the children who grew up with Pope John Paul, the only pope many of them have known. Their presence spoke to a central contradiction in the pope's long tenure: He drew the young to him with warmth and charisma and humanity - even as he urged them to hold to the strict, traditional teachings of the church.

WASHINGTON - My wife constantly regales me about her favorite National Public Radio show, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me. The show features three journalists who have to answer questions about the week's news. Some of the news stories they are quizzed about seem totally unbelievable, while others are straightforward. Well, this is my last column for 2004, so let's play a little Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me. I'll give you 10 news stories from the past few weeks and you tell me what they all have in common.

AMERICA'S LEADERS hold a dangerous, false and widely held assumption that young people's issues are vastly different from those of older adults. On the contrary, polls show that the top issues among all voters are the top issues among young adults. With that in mind, if Sen. John Kerry and President Bush are interested in mobilizing a few million extra young voters, the message isn't very complicated: It's the economy for us, too, stupid. The key factor in appealing to young Americans, however, is recognizing the need for new approaches to old economic debates.

ATHENS - After the flag-waving stopped and the eardrum-piercing cheers faded, the team that was supposed to be sad was happy and the coach of the team that won was sad. Larry Brown knows. The Greeks can bring it. So did the majority of the 12,000 inside the Helliniko Indoor Arena who had come to see their sporting prowess continue. Making matters worse, everyone's feeling it, which is why the Greek fans were yelling, "Puerto Rico." If it can dump the Americans, so could Greece. Fresh off cheering for its national soccer team, which just won the European Cup, the Greeks were eager to sustain their fevered rooting pitch, and what a wonderful bonus: The American NBA stars were in the house.

Thousands of young Americans were on the move in summer and fall 1967, on journeys that helped alter the path of the United States. In San Diego that summer, several thousand young soldiers boarded the USNS General John Pope and sailed to Vung Tau, South Vietnam. The enlisted men among them slept in bunks stacked seven-high. Walking ashore after a 6,000-mile journey, the men joined 500,000 other Americans fighting a war against an enemy the Pentagon was coming to regard as both ever-present and frustratingly elusive.

HOLLYWOOD - Jake Foley is about to learn a lesson the hard way, the one about being careful of what you wish for. A computer technician at the National Security Agency, Jake would love to become a secret agent, swapping his geeky little job for a life of glamour and intrigue. When a shootout erupts at a classified government lab, he gets caught in the crossfire and is accidentally injected with nanites - microscopic machines that can do amazing things, at least in science fiction. Such is the premise for UPN's Jake 2.0, which premieres tonight at 9 Eastern.