Split Personality

"The Double Life of Veronique," by Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, is a gently hypnotic fable about two women who lead separate lives, but who share an uncanny resemblance to each other. Kieslowski is flirting with the fanciful notion that for each person there is an exact double, or - at the very least - someone who shares the same thoughts and feelings. Your own feelings about the movie will no doubt depend on how much you are willing to accept the idea that our lives are ruled by moods and emotions that cannot always be explained.

Multiple Personalities: The Search for Deadly Memories is a shocking journey into a world that most viewers, fortunately, will never visit personally. The three people who allowed their cases to be examined in this documentary deserve credit for their courage and determination. Multiple Personalities, another episode in the admirable America Undercover series, begins at 10 tonight on Home Box Office. The narrators are Gloria Steinem, the feminist, who suggested the subject to HBO, and Michael Mierendorf, who wrote and directed this hour.

In an astonishing feat of political contortionism, President Bush extracted his foot from his mouth long enough yesterday to give a little homily on black and white togetherness in America. The scene was the Rose Garden. The occasion? Well, we'd thought that it was to be the ceremonial burial of the hatchet on the civil rights bill that Congress (including key Republicans) and the White House have dickered over for the last 18 months. You remember - The Quota Bill. The President had agreed to sign the darn thing a few weeks ago, after it became clear that its anti-bias provisions were playing well enough in the Senate to override a veto.

SO, WHICH IS the real DeSean Jackson? Is he the player who, upon scoring a 64-yard touchdown yesterday against the Kansas City Chiefs, decided to make a spectacle of himself as he crossed the goal line, doing a diving somersault that ended up with him doing a split? Or is he the player who, hours earlier, in the quiet of the Eagles' locker room, made the decision to take a pain-killing injection so that he would be able to play with a groin injury that limited his practice time during the week?

"I'm in an orange jumpsuit in jail right now," says Ali Larter, answering her cell phone. "Can I call you back in a half hour?" Larter plays the most dangerous woman on television (we're not counting Rosie O'Donnell). So you don't argue when she wants to push back an interview. On NBC's supernatural sensation, Heroes, Larter has a split personality. She's Niki, a doting single mom who resorted to hosting an online peep show to support her young son, Micah. But without warning, Niki can transform into Jessica, a ruthless, freakishly strong killer who can decimate the scariest gang in Las Vegas with her bare hands.

Half old, half new. Half trees, half fescue. That's perhaps the best way to describe the newly opened Presidential Course, aimed at the upscale daily-fee player, at Hickory Valley Golf Club in Gilbertsville. If you like your golf courses wide open, with huge, undulating greens and laden with tons of unruly fescue grass to snare errant shots, the front side of the Presidential may be for you. If you like a more traditional design, with smaller, flatter greens and narrow, corridor-style fairways walled by tall oak trees, you'll probably favor the Presidential's back nine.

Family members say that Carol DiGregorio, who was killed by her father in Bensalem on Easter, had suffered from paranoid schizophrenia since her teen years. Schizophrenia, a severe and common mental illness, is a chronic disease which most often strikes young people. Many experts think schizophrenia is more than one disorder. Though the word means "a splitting of the mind," schizophrenia is not a "split personality. " There is a psychiatric disorder called "multiple personality," which usually involves many more than two personalities, but the disorder is not connected to schizophrenia.

A detective investigating the shooting death last year of a Plymouth Township teenager told a Montgomery County judge Wednesday that a neighbor of the slain youth was the prime suspect, authorities said yesterday. The disclosure of a suspect in the slaying of Keith Stimson, 17, a junior at Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School, came during a Montgomery County Court hearing on a motion seeking the return of the neighbor's property. The property, including three handguns, had been voluntarily turned over to authorities, according to court records.

Thomas Morris has a split personality, so he's not sure which one is responsible for the murder of a 33-year-old woman in 1996. "His personality is divided into two people, Thomas and Robert," said defense lawyer Fred Goodman to Common Pleas Judge Carolyn E. Temin after Morris pleaded guilty to a general charge of murder this week. Today, Temin is expected to finish hearing testimony at a hearing to detemine the degree of guilt in the case, Goodman and co-counsel Dean Owens are hoping for a voluntary manslaugher verdict.

Before the primary, some pundits said Wisconsin was a liberal state because it has a history of electing progressives. They were wrong. Others said it was a conservative state because it has elected right-wingers. They were wrong, too. Having spent more time in Wisconsin than anywhere but Chicago, I think I understand it. The fact is, Wisconsin has a split personality. The primary results show it. But this personality quirk is illustrated even more vividly by the strange case of a fellow named Britton McKenzie.

Seventy years ago this summer, the Western democracies faced what may have been the most dangerous moment in their histories. We tend to be fascinated by turning points - those decisive moments when the fate of nations is at stake. June through September of 1940 was just such a moment. In a matter of six weeks, Adolf Hitler's armies - which had already dispatched Poland in a month - swept through Belgium, Holland, and France. France, which had defied Germany for four years in World War I, was effectively beaten after six weeks, in June 1940.

AS VERONICA Siwik-Daniels, this former Tiger Woods mistress held a press conference to say how appalled she was that someone whould put her face on a golf ball - something ridiculous to do with violence against women. Her attorney, Gloria Allred, was appalled right next to her. As Joslyn James, ex-porn star, Veronica spoke with "Inside Edition" about bedding Tiger. How does she decide when she's Veronica and when she's Joslyn? Our guess: Tiger slept with Joslyn. Joslyn tells "Inside Edition's" Jim Moret today that her 2006-2009 affair with Tiger resulted in two pregnancies - eerily at the same time as Elin's pregnancies.

Clayton Kershaw is a lefthander. In baseball, that alone is enough to explain the split personality his older Dodgers teammates witness every day. "He's special. He's goofy. He's quirky," teammate Doug Mientkiewicz said yesterday as the Dodgers' Game 1 starter prepared for today's opener of the National League Championship Series. "He wears the clothes that were given to him from Under Armor to the field every day. "But yet when it's his game, you would never know he's 21. " Game 1, as the Phillies are well aware, is Kershaw's game.

SO, WHICH IS the real DeSean Jackson? Is he the player who, upon scoring a 64-yard touchdown yesterday against the Kansas City Chiefs, decided to make a spectacle of himself as he crossed the goal line, doing a diving somersault that ended up with him doing a split? Or is he the player who, hours earlier, in the quiet of the Eagles' locker room, made the decision to take a pain-killing injection so that he would be able to play with a groin injury that limited his practice time during the week?

As he stood along Quaker Bridge Road Thursday morning, gripping a stop sign like a football yardage-marker, an orange-vested highway worker wearing a blue-knit New York Giants cap chatted with a co-worker in a green Eagles hat. Welcome to New Jersey's demilitarized zone, a no-fan's land between the hostile North-South empires of Giants and Eagles supporters, a place where geography, history and the media have combined to create a civic schizophrenia ?...

State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo is an ethical man - with a split personality. In social settings, he would be shy and inept. He was known as the Wizard of Oz because he preferred to operate behind the scenes, using friends as filters. But in political situations, he was a Type-A extrovert eager to charge into any meeting or issue. That was what a former girlfriend, Dorothy Egrie-Wilcox, had to say during cross-examination yesterday as the defense in Fumo's corruption trial opted not to attack her credibility after her day of pointed testimony Monday as a prosecution witness.

"I'm in an orange jumpsuit in jail right now," says Ali Larter, answering her cell phone. "Can I call you back in a half hour?" Larter plays the most dangerous woman on television (we're not counting Rosie O'Donnell). So you don't argue when she wants to push back an interview. On NBC's supernatural sensation, Heroes, Larter has a split personality. She's Niki, a doting single mom who resorted to hosting an online peep show to support her young son, Micah. But without warning, Niki can transform into Jessica, a ruthless, freakishly strong killer who can decimate the scariest gang in Las Vegas with her bare hands.

They are the yin and they are the yang. They possess both the known and the unknown. They excite and disappoint, usually within minutes of each other. They dominate play one night, then appear uninterested the next. They are Ken Hitchcock's Flyers, a team careening into the playoffs after a mystifying 5-5 stretch run. With the notable exception of the New Jersey Devils, the Eastern Conference is a toss-up as to which team is best suited for a long playoff run. The Devils appear focused to go very far. The once heavily favored Flyers have all of Philadelphia on edge these days as to whether they can make it past one round.

David Cronenberg's latest, A History of Violence, seemed a bit of a departure for the director of such deliciously disturbing oddities as Videodrome, Crash, Naked Lunch and The Fly. This seemingly simple story of a man's hidden past is actually complex. The DVD, released this week, fills in some of the blanks for those who expected this flick to have the usual mind-numbing flair of Cronenberg's films. Adapted from John Wagner's graphic novel, the film follows what appears to be the quaint life of diner owner Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen)

Federal solution Re: "On its own, Pa. must regulate mercury," editorial, Feb. 10: While Philadelphia demands that Pennsylvania join New Jersey to strictly regulate emissions from power plants, it amounts to a declaration of economic war on the western part of the state. Pennsylvania's split personality - with the west adopting customs and economics of Ohio and West Virginia and the east's similarities to New Jersey - demands a more reasoned, middle-ground approach such as the "Clear Skies" initiative, which imposes tough standards but addresses economic impacts on all regions.