The Demon Pazuzu Appears To Be A Democrat…

…since he (it?) sure has been speaking for a lot of Democratic Party candidates…if you can believe its (his?) alleged victims.

Of course, you can’t.

In California, the leading candidate to replace Gavin Newsom as governor, Rep. Katie Porter, has been bedeviled by emerging videos of her abusing staffers, refusing to tolerate probing questions from interviewers, and generally acting like a witch on wheels (It’s Halloween!) Porter and her political allies insist that these clips don’t show “the real Katie,’ which is comforting, since that demon impersonating Porter just stops short of spewing green vomit.

Then there is Jay Jones, who in his passionate apology last night (during a televised debate between the two candidates for Attorney General in Virginia) characterized his extended discourse on how much he wants to murder his political opponents and see their children dead as a “mistake.”

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Update on the Jay Jones Fiasco

As related here, Jay Jones is the (black, so he can do no wrong and accusing him of such is racism) Democratic candidate for Virginia Attorney General who through texts made it clear to a colleague that he believed that his adversaries deserved to be killed, and worse, that their children (“little fascists”) deserved to be killed as well.

To those who, like his desperate defenders, claim this was “just a mistake”—you know, like Joe Biden’s debate meltdown was “just a bad night”—I reply that Jones’ rants were signature significance. He wasn’t joking (compared to Jones’ “jokes,” Jimmy Kimmel’s Charley Kirk comments were comedy gold) and a normal, decent, trustworthy human being never even thinks about wanting his adversaries’ family members dead, much less communicates them to others. No, not even once.

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Now THIS Guy Might Have a Good Reason to Try “The Pazuzu Excuse”…

I couldn’t pass up posting on this story.

As regular EA readers know, individuals, especially celebrities and elected officials, are found guilty here of resorting to the Pazuzu Excuse, named after that potty-mouthed demon who possessed poor Regan (Linda Blair) in “The Exorcist,” when they attempt to avoid accountability for their own words or behavior by saying, usually in a groveled apology, “That wasn’t the real me! I’ve never believed in saying/doing such horrible things!”

The incident of interest occurred on November 21, 2024. As he participated in a tour of the relic of St. Jude’s at the Queen of Apostles parish in Joliet, Illinois, Catholic priest Carlos Martins, the co-host of “The Exorcist Files” podcast, began behaving…. strangely. Father Martins “grabbed the hair” of a 13-year-old girl, placed it “in his mouth” and used it in a “flossing motion,” according to the criminal complaint. Then he sat behind the teenager girl and started “growling.” That’s Father Martins with his friends above.

His conduct prompted the immediate suspension of the tour, and police were summoned. The Diocese of Joliet staff confronted the priest and told him that “he must depart from our parish and out of our Diocese.” “In an abundance of caution, the veneration of the relic and evening mass were canceled,” the diocese said in a release.

That seems prudent.

Martins was processed by the Joliet Police Department, arraigned, and released awaiting his pretrial hearing. The Companions of the Cross, the religious order that Treasures of the Church is affiliates with, said Martins has agreed to withdraw from his pastoral duties in the wake of the allegations against him.

“He remains entitled to due process, as is any accused,” the church said. “The Companions of the Cross look upon allegations of misconduct as an urgent matter that requires serious attention. We pray for all those who are affected by this painful situation.” The Archdiocese of Detroit now lists Father Martins as “Ministry revoked.”

To be fair, Martins’ associates said that he has always been obsessive about flossing. All right, I made that part up. Sorry.

The attorney representing Martins, Marcella Burke, denied the accusations against her client, telling reporters, “Your mothers suck cocks in Hell!” and adding, “Why you do this to me, Dimmy?”

Okay, I was just kidding about those quotes too. What she really said was,”He did not put anyone’s hair in his mouth, let alone ‘floss’ with a student’s hair or ‘growl’ among other completely false and repulsive accusations. This remains a takedown of a good priest and an attempted shakedown of the Church.”

What’s going on here? I have absolutely no idea. I will opine that it must violate some code of ethics for an exorcist to growl at a teenage girl in church.

The Editor-In-Chief of Scientific American Invokes The Demon Pazuzu!

Odd. One would think that the editor of a (once) respected science magazine would not resort demonology to explain her own conduct. Indeed, one would think that such conduct would disqualify said editor from continuing in her position.

Laura Helmuth, a woke activist who has destroyed the credibility of Scientific American by politicizing its content, went bonkers after Trump defeated Kamala Harris and tweeted,

How professional! How trustworthy! How scientific! Who wouldn’t trust the analysis of a science magazine edited by someone who makes such declarations in public?

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Ethics Dunce (Professional Singer Division): Ingrid Andress

See, I have a fair amount of sympathy for alcoholics. But the time to check yourself into rehab is before you kill someone driving, before you blow that crucial case for your client, before you leave your scissors in a patient’s stomach after you’ve operated, and, if you are an award-winning Country singer, before you massacre the Star-Spangled Banner at the All-Star Game Home Run derby, like Andress did last night.

Just listen to that caterwauling!

I find the Home Run Derby a bore, so I didn’t hear her off-key, dying-swan version of our National Anthem until the social media complaints about it reached me this morning. Andress’s breathless, lugubrious style, much in vogue these days, doesn’t appeal to me anyway, but that rendition was especially awful even by awful National Anthem standards, a high bar. How could a multiple Grammy-winner be that bad is a public performance on national TV?

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‘Why Columbia, It Profits a University Nothing To Give Its Soul For The Whole World… But For An Ethics Villain Like Dean Josef Sorrett?’

I don’t understand the latest chapter in Columbia’s anti-Semitism scandal at all. I don’t understand how anyone connected to the university can look at themselves in the mirror after this. I don’t understand how alumni and donors can tolerate it. Most astounding of all, in its shameless embrace of The King’s Pass, Columbia University has managed to make Harvard look like an ethics exemplar by comparison.

No, I don’t understand.

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A Pazuzu Excuse Classic From Columbia U!

Paz

The Pazuzu Excuse is an Ethics Alarms term for when someone, often a public figure or celebrity, is caught on video or on a recording saying outrageous, offensive, career-threatening things. With no reasonable excuse at hand, such miscreants often default to claiming that for some reason what came out of their own mouths was not really “them,” and didn’t represent their “true feelings” or beliefs.

You know, like when sweet 12-year-old Regan, possessed by the demon Pazuzu, shouts out to Father Karras, “Your mother sucks cocks in Hell!” in “The Exorcist.”

The Washington Free Beacon reported (this reflects badly on a woke university and its leadership, so you wouldn’t expect the Washington Post to break the story, would you?) that during a Columbia panel featuring the former dean of Columbia Law School, David Schizer, who co-chaired the university’s task force on anti-Semitism and others, Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College, and fellow administrators Susan Chang-Kim, the vice dean and chief administrative officer of Columbia College; Cristen Kromm, the dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, the associate dean for student and family support, listened to the panel discussion while texting each other with snarky, dismissive comments.

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Oops! A Chief Diversity Officer Reveals The Real Biases Corrupting Her Field

Attention should be paid.

In the latest issue of the “Monthly Diversity Digest,”  Dr. Sherita Hill Golden defined as her “Diversity Word of the Month” privilege as “a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group.” “Given”? She went on to write that

“Privilege is characteristically invisible to people who have it. People in dominant groups often believe they have earned the privileges they enjoy or that everyone could have access to these privileges if only they worked to earn them. In fact, privileges are unearned and are granted to people in the dominant groups whether they want those privileges or not, and regardless of their stated intent.”

Golden then named these unfairly and unethically favored groups: “White people,” “Able-bodied people,” “Heterosexuals,” “Cisgender people,” “Males,” “Christians,” “Middle or owning class people,” “Middle-aged people,” and “English-speaking people.”

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When Is The Best Apology The Worst Apology?

One of the few benefits of the Hamas premeditated murder strike on Israeli civilians and Israel’s perfect response to it (‘OK, enough. You’re toast.’) is that it simultaneously ripped the masks off the corruption and the ethical vacuums in our two most ideologically compromised professions, journalism and education. Of course, the former will do its utmost to avoid reporting on the latter, but who knows? Maybe the truth will finally permeate the walnut shell-sheathed brains of the gullible and apathetic public.

Nah. What am I thinking?

Several professors have announced, often in truly disgusting terms, their belief that the Hamas terrorist attack was justified, and that it is “murder” for Israel to respond with deadly force. One poisoned school, CUNY, apparently has a faculty stuffed with such anti-Semitic fools: here’s a letter signed by over 80 professors and lecturers, including the celebrity ethics dunce Marc Lamont Hill, asserting the whole panoply of anti-Israel talking points. Any parent who allows their children to be indoctrinated at a college that would employ such intellectually dishonest activists as these as teachers is incompetent and irresponsible.

But I digress. Mika Tosca, an associate professor with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, went way, way beyond CUNY’s credentialed leftists in a rant on Instagram:

Yikes. Israelis are pigs, savages, and shit, disgusting and grotesque, and should rot in hell. How do you really feel, professor? Apparently, based on her subsequent post on the matter, she really feels completely differently:

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Ethics Observations On A Bizarre Conservative Tweet Exchange [Name Confusion Corrected!]

Lizzie Marbach, a former Ohio GOP official and currently director of communications at Ohio Right to Life, tweeted ,

This upset Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), who is Jewish,  so he tweeted, twice,

Ugh.

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