At 10, A Memo to Ted Koppel

1. Start booking as many representatives of the left as of the right. Offering both sides of an issue — not just your usual conservative vs. moderate setup — will lead to more illuminating discussions.

2. Start adding a few non-white, non-male people to the regular pool of foreign/domestic policy "experts."

3. Stop addressing regular-pool-expert Henry Kissinger as "Doctor"; we know you consider him your political mentor, but it's too glaringly obsequious. In fact, stop booking Kissinger — he has been on far too many times.

4. Recognize the arts as a source of news. Your coverage of the Robert Mapplethorpe-Jesse Helms controversy, for example, was tepid and stodgy. You've consigned the arts most often to the Friday-night, soft-news spot; that's downright philistine.

5. Get rid of the tyranny of that one-way camera, Ted; allow your guests to gaze freely at your fierce frown and meat-loaf hair. You'll be a better journalist for it.

NIGHTLINE: 4 CLASSIC MOMENTS

TED KOPPEL: You may consider this a tough question, Mrs. Bakker. Is it going to be possible to get through an interview with both of you without you wrapping yourself in the Bible? I don't mean to demean your faith in the Lord but sometimes one gets the sense, in listening to the two of you, that whenever you get in trouble, you wrap yourselves in that holiness which protects you, because folks don't like to poke through that too much.
TFB: Well, the Bible is a protection. It's a very real protection. It's a comfort. That's the biggest reason we wrap ourselves in the Bible: It's so comforting. Jesus said, ''When I go away, I'll send a comforter to you,'' and he has.
KOPPEL: Yeah, but you know what I'm saying.
TFB: Sure.
KOPPEL: Clearly, I'm not one of your followers, and I suspect that there are —
TFB: That's OK.
KOPPEL: — there are a lot of people out there who have been watching you and have been watching Jerry Falwell, and there is so much talk of love, and so much talk of forgiveness, and while everyone is talking about love and forgiveness, you're sticking knives in one another's ribs. It is, in a sense, a really disgusting display. I mean on both sides.
JB: Yes, I agree and — and I don't want to be a part of that.

Later . . .

KOPPEL: Just a few odds and ends. The doghouse — you've got to tell me about the doghouse.
JB: Oh, my. Our poor dogs don't have a home right now. I found the canceled check for that, by the way. I paid for that and one of the guards had an old air conditioner put in, so it would have heat for the dogs in the wintertime. I think that's probably the most famous doghouse in the world, but poor Max and the rest of them are out without a house.
TFB: We're sorry, Snuggles.
KOPPEL: It's kind of — I mean, it's seen as kind of a symbol, I guess, of wretched excess, right?
JB: Yeah, everybody —
TFB: The doghouse?
BUSH: Yes, things went wrong (in the Iran-contra affair). And I've admitted it. And, Dan, I'll take all the credit, all the blame —
KOPPEL: No, Dan, Dan's the other fellow.