Apathy

With 135 people clamoring to replace Gov. Gray Davis, it may appear as if running for office is suddenly in vogue. But this waterfront suburb, where 30,000 people live on fingers of landfill that jut into San Francisco Bay, seems to care so little for politics that the city's November election has been canceled for lack of interest.

Responding to the murder of a 7-year-old girl in a Nevada casino bathroom, legislators in California and Nevada said Friday that they are considering legislation to make it a crime to keep quiet after witnessing an assault on a child. State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) and Nevada Assembly Majority Leader Richard Perkins (D-Henderson) said they hope to introduce legislation soon in response to the 1997 slaying of Sherrice Iverson of South Los Angeles.

After one of Congress' most curious debates on a major international issue, President Clinton's signature foreign policy initiative--enlarging NATO--seems headed for easy Senate ratification later this month. That is, if senators ever get around to voting.

On paper, the pitch looked perfect: Use the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, to raise money to build playgrounds for children in Sarajevo, which had hosted the Games in happier times. The result was a 90-second television spot that wove scenes of the Sarajevo Olympics with gut-wrenching images from the war that came later. Actress Sigourney Weaver donated a plaintive narration. The commercial, which was bankrolled by John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co.

Call them the Disengaged Generation. America's new crops of college students continue to be less interested in politics than their predecessors. It's not because the class of 2001 is absorbed by academics though, according to the latest installment of the nation's largest survey of college freshmen. Fewer college freshmen reported that they spent at least six hours a week hitting the books as high school seniors, and a record 36% said they were frequently bored in class.

Based on experience, not many people listen to NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, but when he delivers his annual pre-Super Bowl address today, he's expected to declare the NFL's return to Los Angeles is now a priority. Now you understand--he hasn't even opened his mouth yet, and you've stopped reading. In this case, it's not Tagliabue's fault.

Iranians voted Friday for the assembly that chooses and supervises the country's supreme leader, but the turnout appeared low in what would be a setback for conservatives who had been urging massive participation as a religious and patriotic duty. Apathy has surrounded the vote for the Assembly of Experts ever since most of the would-be candidates who supported the moderate reforms of President Mohammad Khatami were barred from the ballot.

Wendy Pacheco has the red-white-and-blue flu, and she's got it bad. There's the inability to concentrate as the slick brochures start their steady slide into the mailbox. The feeling that her vote doesn't even count. At least she doesn't have the nausea that grips John Arbogash whenever he thinks about politicians. Or the guilt that racks Al Leach, a guy who has had this peculiarly American ailment for the past 63 years and passed it on to his daughter, Gillian, 25.

From the basement of a Machinists Union lodge just south of downtown, Ray Crider is marshaling his troops for the last battle in campaign '98. With just one week left until election day, candidates around the country increasingly are shifting their attention from courting the broad mass of potential voters to motivating turnout by narrow slivers of committed partisans. That's where Crider, the state director for the AFL-CIO's campaign effort, comes in.

Increasingly, Americans don't vote. We feel guilty about it, we get nagged about it, but more and more, we simply won't--or can't--make time for it. Elections in some parts of urban Los Angeles this year have seen fewer than 1 in 12 potential voters making decisions for everyone. Culturally, our anemic voting is so accepted that it's become a punch line for Hollywood: "No, I don't vote," sniffs a character in the film "Wag the Dog." "I don't like the rooms. Too claustrophobic."