I'm not sure why the Pledge issue gets on my nerves. I know I've expressed disillusion with the Left in these pages, but I haven't lost my allegiance to the civil-liberties cause (which I don't think is a Left issue alone anyway). It's true, there are more urgent civil-liberties questions at issue today. (My old friend Nat Hentoff has just published a fiery book on the subject, The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance .) But there are few civil-liberties questions so politically explosive and divisive as the Pledge. (Remember Michael Dukakis being demagogued by Bush the elder because he vetoed a mandatory Pledge law on civil-liberties grounds?) Many on the liberal side will say it's just not pragmatic to take on such a losing issue. So perhaps getting concerned about it is quixotic.

I don't care: It's not that I lack allegiance to America. But enforcing allegiance to a flag is, to me, something that's profoundly un-American -contrary to the principles on which America was founded. I wish some politician would have the courage to make this case. But I don't have much hope for the brave and bold Democratic Presidential candidates. In fact, it will be fascinating to watch the way they weasel out of the issue. Watch them rush, as Chris Matthews put it, to assure us they're not "anti-God."

Let me remind those who have forgotten: There is a "pro-God," pro-American argument against putting God in the Pledge, against the worship of a graven image (the flag) that the Pledge requires. If I'm going to pledge allegiance to anything-under God or Vishnu or Whomever-it would be to the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is more worthy of true Americans' allegiance than a piece of red, white and blue fabric.

Perhaps it's the sheer historical inattention-if not ignorance-of so many of the supporters of the Pledge, and the all-important "under God" insertion, that gets on my nerves. Could they be unaware of the unsavory history of the "test oath"?

I'm sure I don't need to explain test oaths to Observer readers, but for those who skipped that day in class, test oaths were the essential reason that religious and other dissidents fled England to found America. Test oaths were the means by which the Established Church in England enforced its repressive regime: Those who refused to mouth oaths required by the Established Church were often imprisoned, tortured and executed, leading many religious dissidents to leave for America.

Test oaths were one key reason the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibited the making of laws respecting the establishment of religion. That's what they were talking about. An enforced Pledge of Allegiance-especially the Pledge of Allegiance with the "under God" clause-is nothing but a test oath. It is a violation of everything American democracy is about. If you want to be-was this Mencken's phrase?-a "God botherer," go ahead, wander the halls of the schools, the streets and sidewalks affirming that we are "one nation under God."

Just don't force everyone to take a test oath and worship a graven image made out of cloth. Or you can go reside in a nation founded upon test oaths and the worship of graven images. Look them up under "theocracies." You'll be happier there.

But don't take my word for it. Listen to Mr. Justice Jackson, Robert Jackson, the Supreme Court Justice who wrote the decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette , the 1943 decision in the still-definitive Pledge of Allegiance case.

Believe me, it's worth reading (and easy to find if you have LexisNexis access). I urge everyone to read the decision again. For one thing, it remains the law of the land: The Pledge cannot be forced on the unwilling-although social coercion makes it, for all practical purposes, involuntary for school kids, who are rarely taught their rights. (The citation, for your convenience, is Board of Education v. Barnette , 319 U.S. 624.)

Aside from being a kind of re-founding document in the case for civil liberties, for the First Amendment, even in wartime (1943, remember), Justice Jackson's opinion is one of the best-written works of juridical literature you'll ever come upon.

For those who haven't revisited it recently-I'll admit I hadn't since college-there are many highlights. There is Justice Jackson's laconic reminder that the original "salute to the flag" required by the West Virginia Board of Education raised objections even from the Boy Scouts for "being too much like Hitler's." The original " Sieg heil! " type salute was then modified to the forearm-raised salute still in practice today, but the evocation of the Reich posture was a deep irony, since the Pledge was supposed to unify us against the Nazi enemy rather than make us look (physically) like them. (Justice Jackson was later to become the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials.)

And while the Supreme Court decision is often known as the "Jehovah's Witness Pledge case" because the action was first brought by members of that church, the issue in 1943 wasn't the "under God" phrase, of course (since that was only inserted by Congress in 1954 to further-and spuriously-define "Americanism" against "godless" communism). The Witnesses' objection was based on the Ten Commandments.

Remember them? I wonder if religious partisans who get all upset over the importance of having the Ten Commandments emblazoned on every courtroom wall have read the version in Exodus 20:4-5 (also quoted by Justice Jackson in summarizing the Witnesses' objection to the Pledge)?

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image … thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them."

I'm not going to take a position on the exegesis of Exodus, but it makes a lot of sense to me to think that pledging allegiance to a flag is a form of worshipping a "graven image," an obvious violation of the Commandment. And even if it weren't, what self-respecting religious person thinks that forcing schoolchildren to take an oath is an act of reverence or respect to God? Or that God would necessarily be pleased by this enforced "allegiance"?

If we're talking about patriotism and respect, Justice Jackson suggests, citing another Justice, the study of our "guaranties of civil liberty" are just as important as "a compulsory salute and slogan" in inspiring "patriotism and love of country." In other words, you Pledge-loving partisans, respecting the Bill of Rights is more "American," if that's what you care about, than saluting a flag.

Justice Jackson calls the Pledge basically a test oath, a "short cut" to true patriotism. A substitute for inspiring respect for our democratic system through education in the history and principles of democracy, including the centrality of the Bill of Rights.

He offers a little historical education for the uninitiated. Throughout history, the state has announced "rank, function, and authority through crowns and maces, uniforms and black robes; the church speaks through the Cross, the Crucifix, the altar and shrine, and clerical raiment. Symbols of State often convey political ideas, just as religious symbols come to convey theological ones … a salute, a bowed or bared head, a bended knee. A person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it, and what is one man's comfort and inspiration is another's jest and scorn."

In that last phrase, he's putting his finger on the essence of the issue: a system which requires the equivalent of the bended knee to enforce reverence subjects itself not to reverence but to "jest and scorn"-particularly a system which claims to be founded on the dignity of the individual. The Pledge is a dignity issue! Dignity for Americans, for America itself.

It's a religious issue as well, but not in the way that most religious organizations demanding we bow down to a state-coerced worship of God frame it. As Justice Jackson pointed out in a footnote: "Early Christians were frequently persecuted for their refusal to participate in ceremonies before the statue of the [Roman] emperor …. The Quakers, William Penn included, suffered punishment rather than uncover their heads in deference to any civil authority." Get it? Religious people left theocracies in Europe to found America on principles that prohibited state imposition of state-chosen forms of worship. How hard is that to understand?

At this point, Justice Jackson takes the argument to a deeper level-a level which invokes the very foundation of a democratic polity:

"It is also to be noted that the compulsory flag salute and pledge requires affirmation of a belief and an attitude of mind. It is not clear"-and here you can hear his cleansing sarcasm-"whether the regulation contemplates that pupils forgo any contrary convictions of their own, and become unwilling converts to the prescribed ceremony or whether it will be acceptable if they simulate assent by words without belief and by a gesture barren of meaning " (italics mine).

And then he goes in for the (rhetorical) kill: "To sustain the compulsory flag salute we are required to say that a Bill of Rights which guards the individual's right to speak his own mind, left it open to public authorities to compel him to utter what is not in his mind" (italics mine).

He then takes on the chief argument to the contrary, the one that appeared in a previous court decision, the one Jackson's 1943 decision overturned. In that decision, "It was said that the flag-salute controversy confronted the Court with 'the problem which Lincoln cast in memorable dilemma: "Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?"'"

To which the peerlessly sarcastic Justice Jackson said: "It may be doubted whether Mr. Lincoln would have thought that the strength of government to maintain itself would be impressively vindicated by [the Court] confirming [the] power of the state to expel a handful of children from school."

To do so would be to choose "officially disciplined uniformity for which history indicates a disappointing and disastrous end … to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes."

At this point, Justice Jackson addresses directly the national unity/national security argument in favor of the Pledge-an issue with the most direct relevance to civil-liberties questions today. Recall this was a decision written at the height of World War II.

"The very heart of the opinion" for an enforced Pledge, he says, is "that 'National unity is the basis of national security'" and thus "that the authorities have 'the right to select appropriate means for its attainment.'"

He notes that "Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential … have been waged by many good as well as by evil men …. [The] ultimate futility of such attempts to compel coherence is the lesson of every such effort from the Roman drive to stamp out Christianity as a disturber of its pagan unity, the Inquisition as a means to religious and dynastic unity, the Siberian exiles as a means to Russian unity, down to the fast-failing efforts of our present totalitarian enemies. Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard."

Wow! It's a brilliant and persuasive defense of the Bill of Rights-one I bet you won't hear from any Democratic candidate on the Pledge issue. They're too scared to stand up on an unpopular issue such as this one, scared of being called "anti-God." Justice Jackson puts the final nail in the coffin of the argument for coercion by telling us, "It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends [the unanimity of the graveyard, etc.] by avoiding these beginnings [enforced pledges of subservience]."

And to put to rest the spurious argument about patriotism, he points out: "To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds …. [F]reedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."

Sorry, I just can't stop quoting this guy. I don't think anyone's said these things any better: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." The "under God" case involves the use of a public institution to propagate faith. The petitioner, who is suing on behalf of his daughter, claims that being forced to listen to the rest of the class take the Pledge is a kind of involuntary exposure to State-sponsored religion. (The case could be dismissed on a technicality involving custody of the daughter.) But for me it's not the "under God" issue so much as the continued de facto enforcement of the Pledge itself that rankles. It will be interesting to see if the Court lives up to the spirit of Justice Jackson's principles in its ruling.

And one question of the coming political season for me will be which Democratic candidate will stand up and defend the Bill of Rights on this issue, even at the cost of his or her candidacy. My guess is: none. Still, maybe there's one credible candidate who will attempt to educate people on this issue rather than weasel out of it. State-sponsored religion is, after all, an issue that distinguishes us from the theocracies that support terrorist attackers.

So my plea to Democratic Presidential candidates, when the "firestorm" over the Pledge begins, is this: Instead of distributing your slick, self-serving campaign literature, distribute Justice Jackson's opinion. Surprise me, someone.

One result of this hire is that the paper might move Mitchell Fink, who is paired with Rush & Molloy Monday through Friday, from his Sunday position to Saturdays. Right now, there is no gossip in the Saturday News , and there is a perception that it needs to be gussied up.

"That's been in the air, too," said Mr. Kosner. "But to the extent that it's my decision, my instinct is to add Deborah to the paper and increase the scope of the gossip stuff." Mr. Fink said he didn't know anything about it. Daily News editor Debbie Krenek did not return a call for comment.

Ms. Mitchell has been working with Beth Landman Keil on New York 's Intelligencer column since early 1996. Before that, she worked for Vanity Fair . Ms. Mitchell and Ms. Keil were always an odd, Laurel and Hardyish combination, and New York staff members said they don't get along particularly well.

Her arrival at the Sunday News is part of Mr. Kosner's continuing effort to distinguish the 835,429-circulation (as of March 31, the most recent audit) paper from the daily-a goal that has, according to Daily News reporters, often resulted in rival newsroom camps, with each side jealously guarding its writers and scoops from the other. Daily reporters have complained they no longer have that outlet to produce longer, more thoughtful pieces. When they do produce a piece of significant enterprise-like the News ' in-depth series on a diverse block in Queens, by Patrice O'Shaughnessy-it is held out of the Sunday paper, the pre-schism starting date for most big series. The Real N.Y. Story series, for example, started on Monday, Nov. 22. Conversely, it's the kind of feel-good piece that's clearly missing from the Sunday paper.

As for Ms. Mitchell, on Nov. 23, New York editor Caroline Miller said she wasn't sure who the newspaper was going to replace Ms. Mitchell with. "She just resigned yesterday," she said.

Ms. Mitchell said she's looking forward to her new solo gig. "I think the more gossip columns, the better," she said. Mr. Kosner said she'd start work in the new year.

New York might be losing one of its gossip columnists, but it's retaining its deputy editor, Maer Roshan. After Off the Record disclosed on Nov. 17 that Talk executive editor David Kuhn was set to leave to work for Steve Brill's new e-commerce site, which will probably be called Planet Content, Talk editor Tina Brown contacted Mr. Roshan about filling Mr. Kuhn's position. According to the story circulating at New York , Ms. Brown, armed with Mr. Kuhn's salary, mounted a typically persuasive, name-your-price effort to tempt Mr. Roshan on board. But by Nov. 22, he decided he liked where he was, even if his office doesn't have a door, unlike the offices of the editors above him.

"I'm delighted that Maer's staying," said Ms. Miller, who wouldn't comment on how much they paid him to do so. But does he get a door? "Uh, no. But I think there is an assistant in the bargain."

"As honored as I was with the chance to work with an editor as amazing as Tina Brown, it was hard to leave a job that is still challenging and a staff that I love," said Mr. Roshan.

Via a spokesman, Ms. Brown kept the good feeling going. "We love Maer and explored a number of ideas with him. He always made it clear he was happy where he was."

Said one New York source: "He ended up with a British assistant that looks an awful lot like Tina."

With the departure of its editor in chief and music editor early last month, followed by its deputy editor and articles editor in mid-November, The Source is faced with starting over, again, with few senior staff members on hand and none about to walk in the door.

It's not the first time this has happened. The Source had to start over nearly from scratch in 1994, when its founder and publisher David Mays, without the consent of his staff, inserted into the hip-hop magazine an article he co-wrote about a rap group called the Almighty RSO, his old friends (they're "his peeps or boys," noted one ex- Source editor). That caused his co-editors in chief to call for his resignation and leave the magazine. Other editors followed. But not until they stole the files for the next issue from their computers and took them with them.

That might have killed the magazine. Instead, it presaged an era of tremendous growth. The business staff reportedly pitched in to produce the pilfered December 1994 issue, and new staff was eventually hired. Meanwhile, hip-hop had broken into the mainstream, filling MTV, the radio and minds of American inner city and suburban youth-and probably farm kids, as well. Circulation shot up from 125,000 to 425,000. And the magazine gained clout, with its Source Hip-Hop Awards getting a national television airing and attracting talents of the caliber of Janet Jackson, Will Smith, Lauryn Hill and Mike Tyson.

But all that growth has a downside, too. In the old days, it used to be called joining the establishment. In this case, it's more like becoming the establishment. "It's like a record label," said one Source source. The walls between industry and journalism "don't really exist."

Still, it seems everyone at the magazine that Off the Record spoke with is comfortable with that. And it's not likely to change-not with Mr. Mays at the helm.

Thirty years old and white, he grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended Harvard University. Nowadays, he's the image of the hip-hop impresario: "lots of video game playing; basketball; shopping; jewelry," said one insider. While he's relatively low-key in public, associates said he's aggressive when it comes to business. He sees himself, they said, as a power in the music industry. Word is, he's interested in buying Vibe, although a spokesman for Mr. Mays called that "speculative."

But then Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, the editor in chief, left in October for a job at RSW1.com, a new fashion and rap on-line venture being created by Russell Simmons. Two days before, The Source 's music editor, Smokey Fontaine, had left for Volume, an HBO-funded "urban portal" that's due to launch in 2000. More recently, articles editor kris ex left to freelance and deputy editor Dimitry Léger has taken a job as a staff writer for Fortune magazine.

The new mass exodus might be coincidental. But just before Mr. Hinds and Mr. Fontaine left, there had been another Almighty RSO incident. RSO had been renamed the Made Men and, according to a staff member, there was a six-hour meeting in September between the Made Men and several of the magazine's editors about their perception that the magazine was intentionally avoiding covering them favorably-or, in the case of a recent article, covering them in such a way that didn't seem to take them seriously. "Tempers flared, editors cried," said one insider. It was after that meeting that the number of "mikes," which is the magazine's star-system for rating bands, was increased on the Made Men review from three and a half to four and a half.

Mr. Fontaine told Off the Record that "it was a coincidence" he and Mr. Hinds left at roughly the same time. He said he didn't leave because of the Made Men meeting, though. "We all knew what went down before," he said of the earlier RSO incident. "I wondered, wow, if it could happen again." But while noting, "He owns the book. He can do what he wants," and refusing to comment on the Made Men meeting, he made clear, "I didn't feel like my integrity was compromised."

He said, "Dave has had a relationship with Made Men since he was a deejay in Cambridge. They were rappers in Boston. Ray, the lead singer, helped him then," when The Source was just a photocopied newsletter distributed informally through the emerging hip-hop world.

So, again, Mr. Mays has to put out a magazine with a skeleton crew. How's he handling it? "Fairly aloofly," said one insider, who theorized that Mr. Mays has other things on his mind, like the possible Vibe purchase.

Mr. Mays didn't return calls for comment. His in-house spokesman said, "There were rumors that there was some other story as to why Selwyn left. And that's just not true. And he's not going to address it." His out-of-house spokesman, at Baker Winokur Ryder in Los Angeles, said of Mr. Mays, "He's incredibly involved. And I don't think that's a bad thing." She speculated: "He might edit it for the next year. I don't know."

He may have to: There seems to be a shortage of experienced urban magazine editors.

"It's tough-there are so many opportunities for young urban writers-editors," said Mr. Fontaine, who himself has fled to the Web. In the end, he felt, " The Source is going to be fine. Dave ain't going nowhere."

Anthony Lane is not going to replace Janet Maslin. After a brief flirtation with The New York Times, the critic re-signed to The New Yorker . His New Yorker critic-colleague David Denby is still up for one of the two new film jobs opening at The Times, along with five or six other candidates, including ex- Daily News critic David Kehr, ex- Wall Street Journal critic Julie Solomon and National Public Radio critic Elvis Mitchell.

"They are all under active consideration," confirmed culture editor John Darnton, to Off the Record's list of contenders. "But there are even more." With Times executive editor Joe Lelyveld on vacation, the decision is not likely to be made imminently, either. "Our object is to exhaust the interest in the subject," said Mr. Darnton.

While the replace-Maslin follies continue in Times ian slo-mo, Mr. Darnton is faced with another hole to fill: that of his second-string theater critic. Peter Marks, who's had that job for three years, is defecting to the paper's national desk to cover the Presidential campaign. "I'm going to be covering paid media-the advertising, the radio, the campaign message," he said. "I like to think of it as the theater of the campaign." Hmmmm.

Mr. Marks, a former metro section reporter, had a reputation for being a bit bored with his alternative theater beat of late. (When asked what the worst thing he'd had to review was, he said, " The Mysteries of Eleusis at B.A.M. It was the most incomprehensible thing I've ever seen. It involved people waving their arms and wearing bizarre togas.") "I sort of made it be known that I was available," he said. "And this is what they offered."

It's not an unusual proposition for The Times: Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich teamed up to cover the "theater of the campaign" in 1992. Mr. Marks is planning to leave the week after Thanksgiving, and Mr. Darnton said the newspaper hadn't made a hire yet. "We need somebody yesterday," he said.

"I don't think I handed this to him at a particularly good time," Mr. Marks said.

The paper of record is trying to go back and change history. At least when it comes to new freelance writing contracts, which The New York Times has recently started circulating. Not only is The Times asking for all rights to the new pieces-which means it doesn't have to pay writers more to put a piece on their Web site or if it gets optioned for a movie. But there's a new clause-No. 2B-which asks the writer to sign away certain rights to articles that had been written for The Times in the past.

That has some journalists up in arms. "They want all rights past and future and give the writer nothing in return!" said one writer who's been faced with the new contract. "It's rather a horrifying story of The Times ' oppressive power."

All this is because Jonathan Tasini, a freelance writer and the president of something called the National Writers Union, brought a suit six years ago against The Times and several other publishers over their not giving writers a split of the take they get by selling articles to Lexis-Nexis database.

At the end of September, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decided that Mr. Tasini was right, and The Times had put articles on Nexis without having permission to do so. So The Times is cracking down, trying to get that permission retroactively.

"Starting in 1995, we've basically been fairly successful in having freelance writers give us permission to put their stuff on Nexis," said George Freeman, assistant general counsel for the New York Times Company. But now that the company lost this appeal, it decided it needed to get rights retroactively so it doesn't have to pull pieces from the Nexis database. "To the extent we haven't, we are trying to make up for that. And the reason is that this decision pretty much makes us do it."

Mr. Freeman said it was not possible for The Times to go back and pay for Lexis-Nexis rights to these old articles because it would be "a huge administrative nightmare."

"We want to minimize the harm from 1995 on," he said. "Or else we are in this position of having holes in history."

Not all agents are sympathetic with Mr. Tasini's suit. Some don't care about writers not getting paid when their pieces show up on Lexis-Nexis at all and blame the suit for scaring The Times into generally clamping down on rights. "They're not going to pay it to you," said one entertainment lawyer of Lexis-Nexis money. Making money off electronic databases "is their new business model."

Time Inc., another defendant in the suit, is holding off on changing history for now. Robin Bierstedt, vice president and deputy general counsel for Time Inc., said, "We're not doing it at this point, but we might do it." Generally, Time Inc. has bought all rights "for several years now." She said that it appealed the decision last month.

This spring marks the 10th anniversary of Entertainment Weekly , and this time it might not be just the advertising department strivers who are getting a sunny group retreat. The long-suffering trend-spotters, nugget-crafters, reviewers and celebrity profilers are speculating that they might get to go, too. The current rumor: They're going to ship off to the magical homeland of EW 's pop-sensibility kinsman, Ricky Martin: Puerto Rico.

Is this just a case of the editing staff living la vida loca ? EW spokesman Sandy Drayton said it could happen. "We are discussing a lot of options to reward our staff for the 10th anniversary," she said. "Puerto Rico is currently in the wishful-thinking category, but you never know."