NEWS LITE\Oprah defends Oscars.

Byline: Compiled by Terry Murphy from Daily News Staff and Wire reports.

Oprah Winfrey says she's furious with civil rights leader Jesse Jackson for organizing a protest of Monday's Academy Awards.

The Chicago-based talk show host, actress and film producer will interview celebrities on the Oscars broadcast. She says Jackson picked a bad year to complain that blacks are poorly represented in Hollywood.

Jackson and other critics have pointed out that just one of 166 Oscar nominees this year is black.

Winfrey said in addition to her role in the show, Quincy Jones is producing the Oscars, and Whoopi Goldberg is the host. Winfrey, Jones and Goldberg are African-Americans.

"When I heard Jesse was asking people to boycott the Oscars, I got on the phone to Quincy, and believe me, he was furious, and so was I. Particularly because this isn't the year, if ever you were going to do it," she said.

She said other black actors will present awards, and she said this year's broadcast will be "the most multiethnic Oscars show anybody's ever seen."

No steamy stuff for Quayle

Former second lady Marilyn Tucker Quayle and her sister, Nancy Tucker Northcott, are back on the book beat with the publication of "The Campaign," their second political thriller.

"I wanted my children to be able to read the book, and my father, too, and not be embarrassed," Quayle told The Washington Post last week, explaining the novel's noticeable absence of sex and profanity. "I would be too embarrassed writing it, to tell the truth."

The sisters, who attended a book-signing Wednesday night in McLean, Va., also insisted the book pass muster with Dan Quayle, who didn't edit out a thing. The former vice president, by the way, kicks off his second book tour next month, promoting "The American Family: Discovering the Values That Make Us Strong."

His wife, now practicing law in Indianapolis, told The Post that like every other political animal, she's read "Primary Colors," the anonymously-written, barely-fictional account of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential race. "I was amazed, actually, that members of the Clinton campaign and White House staff said publicly, 'How could anybody so close to us have done this book?' I would hope, had I been in their place," Quayle said, "that I would have said, 'What a work of fiction. How could anyone involved in the campaign have written this?' And that would have been the end of it."

Frozen assets may mean early thaw for Marcos

Imelda Marcos will buy a generator to keep the refrigerated body of her late husband Ferdinand preserved if a local power company cuts off electricity because of unpaid bills, a report said Thursday.

The power cooperative in Marcos' northern home province of Ilocos Norte, Philippines, has said the Marcos family has until April 30 to pay some $154,000 in unpaid bills going back to 1989.

The crypt uses about $460 of electricity a month.

FORMER SURGEON PUTS HIS HEART INTO HIS TEACHING

You could say Dr. Roy Selby takes his work to heart.

Then again, you could say he takes his heart to work - in a Tupperware container.

Selby, who received a heart transplant from a 13-year-old girl last year, asked to keep his old heart, hoping it would come in handy someday. This year, he dug it out of the garage and took it to Texarkana College, in Texarkana, Texas, where he dissected it for his anatomy and physiology students.

"It's like a child and a toy," explained Selby, 65. "You want to take it apart and see how it works. And I thought the students would be more appreciative if they knew the person whose heart it was."

For the retired neurosurgeon who admits he likes pathology more than patient care, keeping his heart was the logical thing to do.

"I've had other organs around from time to time, when I was doing research," he said. "One time I was cleaning out my garage and found two brains.

"I just didn't want (the heart) to end up in an incinerator," he said. "The doctors were surprised when I asked if I could have it, but I wanted to see what it looked like. I told the doctor, 'I want it. It's a part of me.' "

Shortly after Selby awoke from the operation in April and made his request, his surgeon at the Little Rock, Ark., hospital sent his secretary in search of the organ. "He brought it to me in a Tupperware container," Selby said recently.

"I took it out to look at it, and my son took some pictures of me with my heart."

As for his plans for his old heart? When he finished dissecting it, he sewed it back together and returned it to its plastic container.

"I need to find a glass specimen jar to appropriately store it," he said. "Then I'm going to put it on my mantle."

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Photo True to her word Debbie Wilson, principal of Monticello Elementary School in Tracy, promised if students read 20,000 books she would kiss a pig. Associated Press