Men and monsters
Nicholas von Hoffman Washington The commercial aftermath of the Guyana Mass-suicides has been almost as tasteless as the act itself was horrifying. Two instant Paperbacks are already on the streets: a television 'docudrama' is in preparation and talk has it that negotiations are being completed even now for a full-treatment Hollywood movie. Every saurian in the reptile Phylum of the social sciences has made his or her way on to every radio and television talk show to give the pop-psych or pop-soc exPlanation of this mass production, syncopated American version of The Oresteta. In the middle of these pleasantnesse s, a Franklin County (Ohio) judge acquitted eme William Milligan of three rapes, a kidnapping and a robbery by virtue of insanity. Mr Milligan, the court found, is the possessor of no less than ten different and distinct personalities, only one of whom, named Ragan and aged twenty two, is the evil criminal. Arthur, a poet of undetermined termined age and a British accent, s thought to be a wholesome influence although a weak one when it comes to controlling Ragan's behaviour. The threeYear-old girl personality who draws what are described as charming butterflies and the nine-year-old boy personality who sses his time screaming and knocking his head against a wall are below the legal age of reason.
At the time of the trial, the wicked Ragan Was out to lunch. Obviously the authorities couldn't try an innocent three-year-old girl who draws butterflies but happens to live in a male body which bops around raping ,WolLtteri, so the judge, who's shown himself `131,.13e Putty in the hands of organised psychiatry ruled that Ragan was out to lunch "nu Mr Milligan should be handed over to the shrinks. Since all of us have at least one nasty little other who threatens to take Control of the vehicle from the relatively stable, relatively benign person who's usually at the wheel, this case may have ugly e°, nsequences. If the schizophrenic imps zar what Milligan has gotten away with, el may be tempted to mug their masters and commence the reign of King Id. For all we know, that's what happened in Guyana. _Mr Milligan and his ten buddies aren't, of urse, being set free on the streets. He or they are , to be sent to some as yet Unspecified place for therapy. From the rses the analysts involved in this case are thaking, all eleven of these patients will be 1. eraPeutised to within an inch of their inives. Or is it life? Quoth Dr George Hard° g' a sPecialist in bodies with more than sign .person living in them: 'This is a very dicant case. Milligan's condition is very rare and what we learn from treating Billy can perhaps help us a great deal in helping others suffering from this disorder.'
So the ten-in-one Milligan family will be detained as long as they are of research interest. Unfortunately, many stabbers who are adjudged not guilty by reason of insanity suffer from common-or-garden psychoses lacking in amusement value. They're the ones who, cured or not, are released from confinement. We had a celebrated case of that sort here in Washington a few years ago. The malefactor tied up and assaulted a girl on the grounds of a private school. In due course, the psychiatrists lost interest in him and let him loose to find another victim, who was found murdered tied to the very same tree. If the multiple Milligans don't know right from wrong, Koko, a seven-year-old gorilla, who lives in a trailer on the campus of Stanford university, assuredly does. Her human godmother, environmental psychologist Penny Patterson, has taught Koko to speak and understand in sign language so well that she scores 95 or a dull normal on the Stanford IQ test. This may not be fair to Koko since the test has a cultural bias in favour of people and against gorillas. For instance, one of the questions is: if it rains, should you seek shelter in a house or a tree? Koko, as befits her ilk, picks the tree.
In addition to brushing her teeth every night like a good but not so little, great ape, Koko uses her vocabulary imaginatively when she wants to talk about an object for which she has no name. Hence .a Pinocchio doll is an 'elephant baby' and a face mask is an 'eye hat'. More small details about Koko: her favourite food is sweet corn, her least favourite is olives; she fears pictures of alligators or alligator dolls, although to the best of everyone's knowledge she's never seen one in the flesh. Koko likes automobile rides around the campus and she can be a pesky backseat driver demanding to be taken to the coke machine. Her vocabulary includes adverbs of time and abstract words such as idea, curious, imagine, gentle, stupid and boring. When she gets mad, she can curse — as when she calls Penny 'toilet, dirty devil.'
The syntax may leave something to be desired but 'yukking it up', as we like to say here, is a new idea in the gorilla community. Now Koko is learning to talk on a computer. She hits the words on the keyboard and a woman's voice vocalises them. In fact, Koko has become such a speechifier she's teaching a new male gorilla arrival how to talk. Apparently, though, original sin includes apes — since Koko lies. When she breaks something and is asked about it she will blame it on one of Penny's assistants, but when caught out in her misbehaviour, she'll make the sign for 'bad' and go sit in the corner. Even so she has a healthy selfimage. Ask her if she's an animal or a person and she'll reply 'fine, animal, gorilla.' Jimmy (I'll never lie to you') Carter has proved to be Koko's born-again moral superior, although verbally they finish in a dead heat. His alligator is inflation and the president travelled to Memphis, Tennessee, a few days ago to talk to the mid-term convention of the Democratic party about it. A mid-term convention is a new wrinkle — the Republicans don't even have them — but while it seems to be terribly democratic and participatory, no one knows exactly what it should do. It has no power, formal or informal, to instruct democratic office holders or do much of anything else. However, since the president bothered to come to it and tell his fellow partisans that welfare spending would have to give way to anti-inflationary budget cuts, the meeting made a certain amount of news.
Actually, both the president and that part of Washington that's in Washington — Congress won't be back until January — are in remission. The national attention is elsewhere; the glum reiterations of loyalty to the Shah as well as the new failure of Sadat and Begin to shake hands on a deal elicits no conversation in bar or cocktail party.
A suggestion by the internal revenue service to withdraw tax exemptions from private schools which discriminate against minorities, has detonated a clatter, however. The old, upper-class, Eton-like prep schools not only don't discriminate — they scout for promising, low-income, minority students and give them scholarships. Not so with the hundreds or perhaps even thousands of small ad hoc schools established by big city whites whose public schools have been integrated by the courts.
There's some dispute over how many there are of these schools, which are often vaguely denominated as 'Christian' and which have a tight sphinctered, Bible-belt quality NI. them. Nor is anybody sure what percentage of the white school-age population attends private institutions of any kind, though it probably is much less than 20 percent. Nevertheless, this autumn's court-ordered integration of the Los Angeles school system resulted in the disappearance of so many white kids that the push to do something about it began in earnest. The opposition is ferocious, with more than a hundred thousand letters of protest already received, and the fight will be a long one.
As far as the Yule season goes, there is supposed to be a Christmas tree shortage shaping up. Star Wars toys have completely sold out and there are complaints it's all the fault of the multinationals. Still in stock are the new 'baby wet-n-care' dolls. They come with disposable diapers and squirt a pinkish liquid, which causes the top to develop diaper rash. Recommended for kids without baby brothers and obscene breathers whose phones are out of order.
Previous page
