IT'S SO GREAT that Youth Radio of Berkeley won a Peabody Award, which is the Oscar of the radio biz. Youth Radio is a fine organization, it does wonderful work, it's an improbable success story at a time when alternative radio struggles to remain afloat.

Its Web site, www.youthradio.com, is as smart as everything else about the organization, fast to load and easy to navigate, and it will give you a good sense of what the Youth Radio volunteers and its barely paid staff do.

I know a little about Youth Radio. From time to time over the years, I have recorded commentaries or stories for NPR at various radio stations around the area.

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It's an unnerving process. You sit in a very small room with a microphone and a voice in your ear. The voice belongs to someone in Washington or Boston. You read what you've written, get feedback, read it again, cut three sentences for time, read it again. It can turn very Kafkaesque very quickly.

Of all the places I've done this, Youth Radio is easily the most professional. Also the nicest and hippest, but that's not really the point: The young engineers know what they're doing, the staff knows why you're there and offers assistance as needed -- like, say, a useful pencil.

I expected the staff members to be all charming and admirable, and they were. They were also serious, competent and adept at handling emergencies. They do great stuff; the Web site will provide you with plenty of examples.

All of which leads me to provide you with one data point the other stories on Youth Radio left out -- you can send your tax-deductible donations to Development Director, Youth Radio, 1809 University Ave., Berkeley, CA 94703.

IN OTHER NEWS: Since the Denzel Washington-Halle Berry Oscar wins, there's been a lot of conversation about African American performers and how they're really doing. Was the Oscar mere tokenism or part of a trend?

Inevitably, some of this conversation has been about so-called color-blind casting, where blacks or Asians or Latinos are cast in Shakespeare or Shaw or Pinter. In The Chronicle's "Two Cents" section, one respondent was quoted as saying, "I wouldn't cast James Earl Jones in the role of Henry VIII any more than I would cast Richard Burton in the role of Othello."

I disagree. Theaters in the Bay Area have been using color-blind casting for a couple of decades now, and it has absolutely ceased to be an issue. The first time you see a black Gertrude with a white Hamlet, or an Asian Willy Loman with two Caucasian sons, a small bell goes off, but the 20th time you don't even notice it.

Great plays are about human emotions. A performer can bring his or her own life experience, including racial experience, to the role, but Hamlet is still about betrayal and revenge, and "Death of a Salesman" is still about loss and love, and those emotions are common to all humans everywhere. We all bleed red,

and all our tears are salty.

NOT ONLY THAT: A box on the front page of The Chronicle about the death of Dudley Moore said he "rose to prominence in the 1978 film 'Foul Play.' " That's like saying Alfred Hitchcock was famous for his movie "Under Capricorn" or Mark Hamill made the big time in "Corvette Summer."

Moore was one of the four original players in Beyond the Fringe, a hugely successful British revue. Along with "The Goon Show" (which was earlier) and "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (which was later), BTF redefined comedy and made possible everything from "Saturday Night Live" to "South Park."

All of the Goons are dead now; two of the four original Fringies have gone to meet their Coffeemaker; one of the six Pythons now sings in the choir invisible. Let's be clear on what's important.


Aspects of show business, including my brother Esau, an hairy man.
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