There was a poll released yesterday that said most people would rather give up sex than give up their cell phones.

What really terrifies Americans is the prospect that the Indian is very much alive, that the Indian is having nine babies in Guatemala, and that those nine babies are headed this way. This is one reason why Americans hold on so dearly to the myth of the dead Indian.

Most American Hispanics don't belong to one race, either. I keep telling kids that, when filling out forms, they should put "yes" to everything - yes, I am Chinese; yes, I am African; yes, I am white; yes, I am a Pacific Islander; yes, yes, yes - just to befuddle the bureaucrats who think we live separately from one another.

I think the universities have co-opted the intellectual, by and large. But there is an emerging intellectual set coming out of Washington think tanks now. There are people who are leaving the universities and working for the government or in think tanks, simply looking for freedom.

You don't know Mexico, man. You have trivialized Mexico. You are a fool about Mexico if you think that Mexico is five blocks. That is not Mexico; that is some crude Americanism you have absorbed.

Of course, since we don't see the Indian as a living figure - having turned the Indian into a kind of mascot for the ecology movement, a symbol of prehistory - we can't see the Indian among us.

I find L.A. very interesting, partly because I think something new is forming there, but not in a moment of good fellowship as you might think from all this "diversity" claptrap. It's not as if we'll all go down to the Civic Center in our ethnic costumes and dance around.