Sunday Newscape Magazine

Last summer a picture issued from the US Supreme Court, Justice Scalia, et alii. It was not an instant Polaroid, but a picture long in development, like all Supreme Court decisions. A portrait, "felons and the mentally ill." Almost no one "saw" the double portrait, assuredly no one at the supreme court did. Copies spread throughout the country, editors faxed, photocopied and printed them. Newscasters flashed them, and advocacies, legislators, government agencies shouted them, without themselves "seeing" the picture.

You might not have "seen" it yet. Word images often fail to develop in our minds. They simply enter and reside there. Sometimes they develop at a later date and we see them.

"Felons" is a legal term of art, definable by every first year law student, and certainly known to the clerks and justices at the supreme court, probably to every secretary, custodian, window cleaner and intern dashing in and out of the supreme court building:

• felony n. 1) a crime sufficiently serious to be punishable by death or a term in state or federal prison, as distinguished from a misdemeanor which is only punishable by confinement to county or local jail and/or a fine. 2) a crime carrying a minimum term of one year or more in state prison, since a year or less can be served in county jail. However, a sentence upon conviction for a felony may sometimes be less than one year at the discretion of the judge and within limits set by statute. Felonies are sometimes referred to as "high crimes" as described in the U. S. Constitution.

A felon is the person who commits one of those "high crimes."

"The" mentally ill is a bit more difficult to address. It is, first, not a legal term of art, you will not find it in a legal dictionary, US law does not diminish groups to a "the," so its issuance from the supreme court is a puzzlement.

"The" Jews is a close relative, that picture played to a terrible conclusion in World War II. There it was accompanied by "the" mentally ill (for whom the gas chamber was invented, constructed and first employed), and a host of other 'the's," many of whom met similar fates, ash.

"The" Blacks is another close relative, that picture played to a large audience in South Africa and in the US for far too many years. We first learned to tire of it through video images transmitted throughout the world. The brutality somehow became apparent through those video images. Pictures do talk. The pictures shamed us, and then we learned through shaming ourselves, and broadened this democracy.

"The" mentally ill has not yet spoken to us. That image appears almost daily, well, daily, why not say it, in the "news." It is one of the "news" images I track.

Some images are hard to shake, we cling to them. "The" mentally ill, the caricature, entertains us still, so we accept, even promote it. It is an easily recognized vice, this "the," but vices are often very difficult to shake.

The reality behind each of the incarnations of this "the" is a broad variety of people: Nice, not so nice, intelligent, not so intelligent, rich, not so rich, educated, not so educated. Behind "the" mentally ill is that same variety. You will find us in the congregation of whatever faith you follow, perhaps in the pulpit, giving the sermon. You will find us at the head of the class teaching, or administering the educational facility itself. You will find us reporting, writing, winning Pulitzers, and not. You will find us as legislators, judges, elected officials of all sorts. You will find us as heads of state. You will purchase your gas and groceries from us, flowers even.

And you will, despite that reality, encounter people referencing us as caricature, a "the." Maybe even a Supreme Court Justice. Or all nine. We corrected Plessy v. Ferguson, though it took us more than half a century, maybe we can correct Scalia.