NEWTON'S LAW: GENUINE MENACE PROMPTS US TO HOLD DEAR A FANTASY WORLD

Seven time zones away from Geneva, as James Baker was seeing the flame flicker on Persian Gulf peace, I was standing in what I mistakenly took to be the complaint department of a local establishment. The complaints were what fooled me; I was being served and the employees were complaining.

It was that time of day, a staggered lunch shift, when some workers were heading to their meals as others were returning and there was a tale of woe to tell. Talk was about the Middle East.

It's not what you think.

Dan Rather, bouncing latest developments off a satellite and into American televisions, was breaking up midday viewing habits. Apparently, the intrusion was unwelcome.

"They'd say something and then Dan Rather would come back on and tell you what they said," one griped.

"Great, I can't wait to see that," another sneered.

Someone suggested the television station be called and a piece of mind be given.

It went on like this for a few moments and I was surprised by the depth of these feelings. I looked around and saw that other customers had noticed; I wondered if some of them had sons or daughters in Saudi Arabia and were resentful of the conversation. No one said anything.

I thought about this strange, brief scene later and wondered about how isolated these sentiments might be. I didn't detect the venom had much to do with Dan Rather specifically, but with the fact he had strayed from his domain.

He was on strange turf and catching hell because of it.

It is indeed strange turf, daytime television. As the anchorman was reviewing the possibilities for preemptive assaults, he was preempting a soap opera, "daytime drama" if you're seeking a more highfalutin term.

I don't spend a lot of time with soap operas but over the holidays I saw this scene on one: a man is asleep (unconscious, drugged, I later learned) in a bed, apparently nude with a sheet covering him below the waist. One bare leg sticks out from the sheet. Standing near the bed is a tall, blonde woman in a negligee. After spending several dramatic moments justifying her tuition to acting school, she begins to remove what little material is covering her.

I'm told this isn't an unusual scenario on these programs, that sinking daytime ratings have warmed things up to an extent that fewer clothes are required for soap opera stars. It's been years since I've blushed at decadence, but MTV might even claim moral superiority in this instance.

Don't miss the point and view this only as a rap on soap operas. Interrupt a Sunday football game with reports from the Middle East and you'd probably get the same reaction from a different contingent.

What seems misplaced is the willingness of some people to give themselves over so completely to these fantasies while real drama is taking place right before them.

Wednesday was a day like few others we will see, when the lives of thousands of people were held in the balance at one crucial moment in history. The stakes could not be higher or more real.

Discounting such an ordeal is understandable in some ways: the popular entertainment to which we are conditioned provides so much fiction that genuine menace, as seen on television, has a bogus air to it.

As biting irony, television, having trained us in these instincts (the program ends and the dangers cease), gets the blame for doing a responsible thing, cutting into its regular programs for a slice of real life.

Were it only that we could make Saddam Hussein go away by switching channels.