YOUNG AMERICANS.(The Talk of the Town)

Like many an overworked, ambitious television producer in this season of around-the-clock political coverage, Andrew Leon puts in long hours at the studio. "Any time they need me to come, I come," he said the other night. "Saturday, I come. Friday, I come. Basically, it's either my house, or my grandparents' house, or my uncle's house, or here. Mostly, I'm here." Leon, a twelve-year-old from Harlem, was readying himself for a live national broadcast of a panel on the Republican National Convention. Leon works as a cameraman and an anchor at the Manhattan Neighborhood Network's Youth Channel. He has a solid build and a gentle voice, and was wearing a blue-and-white athletic jersey, long shorts, and loosened, unvelcroed Air Jordans. He is going into eighth grade, and likes English. "Specifically, writing," he said. "And I like math a little, but I really like recess. It's like lunch--you just chill." He longingly eyed a chicken sandwich wrapped in waxed paper that was sitting in his lap.

In July, Leon covered the Democratic National Convention. "It was cool," he said. The Republican Convention, though, leaves him cold. "I think it shouldn't be here," he said. "I'm not Republican. I don't like Republicans, because basically Republicans are not what I like."

Leon's was the prevailing sentiment as the panel assembled on metal folding chairs before a homemade banner stamped with multicolored handprints: six young members of various liberal activist outlets (Books Not Bombs, Prison Moratorium Project, the League of Pissed-Off Voters); two moderators, Habibah Ahmad and Naomi, who goes by one name; and a Young Republican, Vanessa Salazar, dressed in khakis and a navy sports shirt. Salazar moved here from Colombia four years ago. She said that she was used to being outnumbered. "I'm the only conservative at my school," she said. "I was really tired of hearing all the liberal crap. New York Young Republicans is actually a club--it's the oldest Young Republican club in the nation. It's a pretty big group, I daresay two hundred plus." You have to be eighteen and a Republican to join; Salazar, who is seventeen, persuaded the club to give her an internship.

The program's opening credits, which included a shot of George W. Bush carrying a copy of "Presidency for Dummies," rolled over a rap performed

and written by one of the panelists, Gerardo (Promise) Vargas, a twenty-year-old Socialist and a former Latin King: "The Republicans are here, walking around / There's a lot of issues that need talking about / If you're tired of hearing it from a grownup's mouth, / bring the youth in, throw the grownups out." ...