UD likes to write poems whose words are taken from a newspaper or magazine article.

DARKNESS VISIBLE

Imaging hyperspectral, fluorescence,
Revealed the meaning of the hidden notes:
The old precursor text was in essence
A group of sixth-century Roman codes.

One of them had the audacity to suggest that the president of the University of Southern California should resign, given how incredibly badly he dealt – continues to deal – with his beyond-disgraced million-dollar med school dean (Is the now ex-dean on leave? The school seems to say that he is. Is that leave with pay?).

“If this is true, if it turns out that it is a cultural problem with the university, with President Nikias, will you [She’s addressing Carmen Puliafito’s replacement as dean.] fight for President Nikias to be let go, so we can bring in another president who wouldn’t let this happen?” the student asked.

Because it sure looks as though the prez knew a lot was wrong with Puliafito, and that he therefore knew this worst of outcomes – a big national scandal – was possible… After all:

At the meeting on the Keck campus, students — some wearing hospital scrubs — said university administrators should have known more about Puliafito’s troubling behavior, including reports that he appeared drunk or otherwise intoxicated at campus events. One woman said that it “seems shocking that no one has been able to figure anything out in the last 10 years. … People are now going to be questioning our professionalism.”

So that’s a new but not surprising thing – he appeared drunk or otherwise intoxicated at campus events.. In earlier Puliafito posts, I’ve anticipated that we’ll be getting reports of his having exhibited signs of trouble at public USC events. You don’t reach this guy’s depth of squalor without revealing it in various ways. But, as the student’s comment suggests, the thing that needs explaining here is why the university kept the guy in his position for years. Achieving his degree of debauchery is not the work of a day. What sort of university president lets his medical school dean – his $1.1 million man – slide down the long slide and not do something about it? Especially given the simultaneous meltdown of his football coach, Steve Sarkisian?

Or was that in itself the problem? Was the president simply overwhelmed with a pretty amazing set of events – the alcohol/drug breakdowns at the same time of a dean and a coach? A 2015 Newsweek opinion piece is titled:

USC IGNORED THE WARNING SIGNS ABOUT STEVE SARKISIAN’S DRINKING

And the writer asks:

[W]here were the real adults — [USC Athletic Director Pat] Haden, university president C.L. Max Nikias and chief operating officer Steve Lopes —

when Sarkisian showed up drunk at one USC event after another?

For sure the university should ask itself whether a president who mishandled both of these crises – Sarkisian and Puliafito – is fit for the office.

Even though Morris and Sadie had been married for a very, very long time, they still decided to visit a divorce lawyer in Camden Town. At the first meeting, the solicitor asks them, “Why in the world do you want to get divorced? You each look well into your nineties. Why now of all times?”

Morris replies, “Actually, I’m 102 and my wife Sadie is 101.”

The solicitor is totally bemused and asks them again “So why do you want a divorce now?”

Sadie replies this time, “Well, we wanted to wait until all of the children were dead.”

***************

A variant of it is playing out in Palm Beach, with an 88 year old wife demanding a divorce from her 89 year old husband because of the 61 year old tart he has on the side.

All of their children are still alive, but the article about them still made me think of the joke.

They’re both characters, so the whole article is worth reading. Especially the bit about the Wite-Out.

“For 12 years, the defendant … cut the genitals of countless 7-year-old girls.”

And, as the Assistant US Attorney might have added, cutting the genitals of countless 7-year-old girls is for the defendant a religious commitment, so she’ll start right up again if you release her from custody. God calls her to do it. God wills it. She would be sinning not to do it. She’s a saint for doing it. She’s the Sainted Clit Slayer.

Good on Jumana Nagarwala’s judge for denying this fanatic’s request to be released from custody. Let Nagarwala – who took a place at what is arguably America’s best medical school in order to learn how to forcibly slash, infect, humiliate, and neuter little girls – let Nagarwala remain in her prison bed, visions of a clitless universe dancing in her head. Her victims face a life in prison. Now so does she, lucky girl. She gets to be a martyr for her holy cause.

When you don’t know which scandal has so disgusted people that they’ve stopped – en masse – donating to your university, you’re probably talking about the University of Louisville. Which scandal, which mix of scandals, accounts for gifts to the university tanking by over twenty percent?

Was it the dorm for the basketball players that turned out to be a whorehouse? Was it revelations about UL’s recently deposed, corrupt, leader – a man who took loud offense if you questioned his need to be both president of the university and head of the now-notorious U of L Foundation?

[A] forensic audit found that the foundation wasted money on virtually worthless real estate investments and startups as well as football tickets and bowl games.

It also says [President] Ramsey’s administration raided the university’s endowment – a pool of investments worth about $800 million – to fund at least $42 million in unbudgeted and “overbudgeted” expenses.

And it found that the bad investments and loans forced it to spend money from its endowment at a dangerous rate, despite warnings that such spending couldn’t be sustained.

An outside attorney for the university, Craig Dilger, has estimated losses at $60 million to $65 million.

If you’ve read this blog for any time at all, you know that along with these two scandals, there are many many others – all of which has earned for U of L the nickname U of Smell. If you’re not too averse to bad smells, you can read all about it here.

*******************

How did U of L get so bad? Just put it together. Just put it all together: The southland, good old boys, football, basketball, sex, and money. Add a hundred jiggers of Kentucky bourbon for a brilliant finish.

Their football coach reportedly showed up to practices and games stinking drunk; at a major fund-raising event, he gave a speech so rambling and foul-mouthed that institutional attention finally had to be paid to Steve Sarkisian’s drinking problem. He doesn’t work at the University of Southern California anymore, but his memory lingers on in a massive lawsuit he filed against the school for wrongful termination.

While the school grapples with the lawsuit and the ongoing bad publicity, the head of USC’s medical school, whose shady past and ongoing meth-fueled insane behavior the university appears to have been treating with the same avoidance it treated Sarkisian, finally erupted into public view two days ago, with a big LA Times story.

So, these are the two sexiest positions at any university – the massively overpaid and overpraised football coach; the similarly celebrated med school dean. Even when they’re not drunks and meth heads, these people tend to present schools with problems having to do with justifying their outsized compensation, anticipating outsized legal bills when the schools try to fire them, and just generally attempting to handle people who know damn well they make far more than the school’s president and indeed may have more institutional clout.

So at USC you had this hopeless, intimidated president gazing with horror upon a coach and a dean who may have been highly effective fund raisers and all but were also imploding or threatening to implode from addictions and addiction-generated naughtiness. The understandable impulse is to control the situation, to quietly make it go away, to avoid at all costs an award-winning press exposé of staggering corruption and hypocrisy at the top of a major American university.

To make matters even worse than this, both “coach” and “med school dean” are clean-limbed, healthy-living type things, allowing the school to lecture the student body and indeed the country about teamwork and exercise and the whole mens sana in corpore sano thing. USC had two rampant substance abusers coming out with this shit, which means they found themselves solidly planted in farce territory.

There’s yet another wrinkle with the Carmen Puliafito thing. Unlike Sarkisian, who became visibly fucked up due to his drinking, ol’ Carmen had been, far as we can tell, functioning at a very high level as dean even while snorting up everything in sight in every luxury hotel room in Pasadena. The guy was only exposed because the police got called by a hotel where Puliafito’s girlfriend overdosed. Word of it got to USC’s president, and then to the press, which ran with it.

Franchement, UD has trouble believing the guy was in fact managing to run the med school smoothly while spending most of his time drugging. UD’s gonna predict that as this story develops we will discover Puliafito’s behavior had been deteriorating for some time, and that people on his staff were increasingly doing his $1.1 million a year job for him.

Oh, one more thing. Expect Puliafito to sue USC, just as Sarkisian did. For… I don’t know. For not curing him.

Big-time athletics, we’re told again and again by its boosters, is the front porch of the university — that’s their favorite cliche. It means sports are by far the most visible part of the institution, and they should be financially supported big-time because they’re the first point of contact for potential students. A winning football team makes the number of applicants rise dramatically – or so people claim. This might not really be true. Or it might be true, but the additional applicants might turn out to be jocks who wouldn’t be accepted anyway.

But anyway. That’s not our focus here. Our focus is the pesky little problem of rapists and other varieties of sex offenders among the recruiting classes for big-time university sports. (Of course, it’s not just the players; there’s plenty of rape to go around when you’re a major football school.). It’s a pesky problem because after all especially if you’re talking football you want a big big bruiser of a guy who’s incredibly aggressive on the field – and while most such types will confine their aggression to the game, some number of them reliably will not. Hence all the football-player rape trials always going on.

But if you’re a coach you’re totally incentivized to – er – overlook said bruiser’s history of sexual misbehavior, and to exploit all that testosterone-rage on the gridiron. If the coach is lucky enough to be on a conceal carry campus he can try redirecting his player’s sex-rage to pistol-rage and let him shoot his gun off all over town rather than his dick.

And yes, yes, I know there are problems connected to the gun solution; of course there are problems … But, for instance, a group of students at Washington State University has asked that school to deal with the sexual rage problem, never mind the gun problem…

The leaders of three student groups at Washington State University recently sent a letter to president Kirk Schulz and athletic director Bill Moos asking the school to implement a policy regarding the recruitment of athletes.

The letter, sent June 28, urges the university to have a policy that prevents “the recruitment of any athlete with a history of sexual violence.”

It refers to “those who have pled guilty to or been convicted of dating violence, domestic violence, stalking, sexual harassment, rape, sexual assault, or sexual violence.”

A quick review of this blog’s posts on WSU indicates that its primary problem among athletes is their propensity to beat the living shit out of random fellow students and townies. It didn’t help matters that for a time WSU even boasted twisted, violent Mike Leach as coach. But no doubt these students – the ones requesting that WSU not recruit sex criminals – are responding to the fact that there may be sexual problems as well.

So… UD will predict that after extended dithering WSU will very self-righteously announce that it’s compelled to admit plausible applicants who have paid their debt to society and we’re really sorry but we’re not going to do anything. Being at a jock school, after all, means willingly assuming certain risks, like getting beaten up or raped by an athlete. Small price to pay for a winning season.

****************

UD thanks Seelye.

University of Southern California goes tabloid.

The Little Policeman from Pass-a-Dean-a

[Pasadena police did not write a report on the (USC medical school dean Carmen Puliafito) incident. After The Times made repeated requests for information, the department acknowledged that an officer at the scene should have prepared a report, and he was belatedly ordered to do so…

No arrests were made, and (a witness) told The Times that Pasadena police never interviewed her.]

The little policeman from Pass-a-Dean-a
(Snort Carmen, Snort Carmen, Snort Carmen, Snort)
Is very unlikely to intervene-a
(Snort Carmen, Snort Carmen, Snort Carmen, Snort)
If you’re rich white overdosed and close to death
He’ll leave you alone with your crystal meth.

They don’t file reports in Pass-a-Dean-a.
(Snort Carmen, Snort Carmen, Snort Carmen, Snort)
They’re very good sports in Pass-A-Dean-a.
(Snort Carmen, Snort Carmen, Snort Carmen, Snort)
For a med school dean in a luxe hotel
The policy is: Don’t ask, don’t tell.

… are a special challenge. But already one of UD‘s readers has produced a fine one. Inspired by that reader, UD tried one of her own. (Background to Carmen Puliafito here.)

****************

My Reader’s Limerick.

Dean Carmen A Puliafito
smoked meth and was not incognito
invented OCT
and took ecstasy
still gets to be an MD, though

*******************

My Limerick.

RIP to Dean A Puliafito:
Done in by his meth apetito.
Now sad little Carmen
Calls out to the barman:
“Just give me a wee mescalito.”

*********************

UPDATE: A third, from another reader. This one takes the route I thought I might take at first, until my other reader threw down the rhyme-on-Puliafito challenge. It chooses Carmen, and does a first-rate job with it.

A Third, From Another Reader.

USC med school dean Carmen
Was with big donors quite charmin’
But with a young hooker
He was a meth cooker
Which his trustees found most alarmin’

*********************

And a Fourth.

Dean Carmen was so freaking charmin’,
Nobody saw cause for alarmin’
Till the shit hit the fan
Despite his U’s press ban
And caused just a whole lot of harmin’.

*****************************

One More! From Greg, A Reader.

Puliafito, MD, as a dean,
Brought in money like you’ve never seen.
He said without sadness
“There’s a meth to my madness,
Sex and drugs really bring in the green.”

Man Accused in $132 Million Medicare Fraud Scheme Is Building $6.8-Million Home

Sarah and Charles Warren said Puliafito wrote them prescriptions for asthma inhalers to soothe lungs raw from smoking marijuana and methamphetamine.

That’s Dr./Dean Carmen A. Puliafito, until recently the much-lauded head of the Keck School of Medicine, and a man whose compassion for his favorite fellow druggies extended to writing them prescriptions for some of the less attractive symptoms of chemical excess.

Carmen Puliafito’s career tells you all you need to know about why there’s a Black Lives Matter movement. Single-handedly Puliafito proves true everything anyone ever said about the breathtaking immunity white criminals may enjoy over long lucrative prestigious careers. I mean, Puliafito continues to represent the University of Southern California to the public.

******************

And why not? I mean, sure, he had to, er, resign his deanship with full honors when one of his mad meth-filled nights turned sour and got anonymously reported to USC’s president (the police knew about it too, but didn’t even write a report); but he remains on the faculty. And the same president who knew all about Puliafito’s criminal mischief a few weeks later enthusiastically hosted his elegant goodbye party:

“Today, we have one of the, not just the area’s, but the nation’s preeminent medical schools and medical enterprises — and, in many ways, thanks to the leadership of Carmen,” [the president] told the crowd.

Carmen himself, in his farewell remarks, really nailed it: “[T]he primary job of dean of a medical school is to bring leaders that will really set the tone of the organization.” And tone-setting starts at the top!

Who cares if Carmen’s penchant for hanging out with crooks for long nights of drug overdoses – sometimes in his offices on campus – was the reason for the goodbye party? Rich white people using illegal drugs in front of hotel cameras isn’t, it turns out, illegal in Pasadena.

White Lives Matter, in other words; and in fact Puliafito came to USC trailing all kinds of other shit no one bothered acting on:

His time at Miami was not trouble-free. Marc Brockman, an optometrist at the [university], filed a lawsuit against Puliafito in 2006 for assault and battery and accused the university of negligence in hiring him.

Brockman alleged in sworn testimony that Puliafito, in a profane “tantrum” over an inoperable piece of medical equipment, grabbed him by the collar of his lab coat and choked him.

Puliafito denied wrongdoing.

During the case, it emerged that the university had investigated separate complaints of sexual harassment against Puliafito, according to sworn testimony and court filings in the lawsuit. The records do not reveal the outcome of the investigation, and a university spokeswoman said in response to questions about the probe: “We don’t have anything to provide.”

Puliafito and the university reached a confidential settlement with Brockman in June 2007.

Two months later, USC hired Puliafito.

And what a hire!

In a court battle that is still playing out, the University of California filed [a $1.85 million] suit in July 2015 against USC over its poaching of a leading Alzheimer’s disease researcher.

Puliafito was the self-described “quarterback” of efforts to land UC San Diego professor Paul Aisen, a star in the state university system.

… The suit accused USC of civil conspiracy, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty and other misconduct.

And he’s still a highly respected, high-profile faculty member at the University of Southern California!

******************

The latest thing is that someone got hold of a series of emails Puliafito wrote to the Los Angeles Times reporters who broke the story about him…

Fuck you.

I’m on you now.

You are fucking with me now.

Watch your back.

You are such a piece of shit.

Call me. Don’t be afraid you piece of shit.

Oh wait. Those are President Trump’s lawyer’s emails. I get mixed up.

************

UD thanks John.

The first woman to win a Fields Medal, Maryam Mirzakhani, has died at the age of forty from breast cancer.

“She had a sort of daring imagination,” [said her Harvard mentor.] … “She would formulate in her mind an imaginary picture of what must be going on, then come to my office and describe it. At the end, she would turn to me and say, ‘Is it right?’ I was always very flattered that she thought I would know.”

Just before she became ill, she talked about her “big plans for the next chapters of her mathematical story. She has started working … to try to develop a complete list of the kinds of sets that translation surface orbits can fill up.”

Outraged Twitter feeds abound.

************************

You don’t get these outcomes – you don’t get a whole culture like this – without the character-formation that happens for many in the frats and the clubs.

As I said in an earlier post, these places are structural to our country’s economic success because they help make these people:

At Peter’s memorial service in 2015 — held in a place he loved, with sweeping views of the Pacific — a young associate from his firm stood up to speak of their friendship and of the bands they sometimes went to see together, only to break down in tears. Quite a few of the lawyers attending the service were bent over their phones, reading and tapping out emails.

Their friend and colleague was dead, and yet they couldn’t stop working long enough to listen to what was being said about him.

And these people:

Wall Street CEOs like to think they are the adults, the big men in the room, the ones who know how the world works. Well, you know what? They screwed up their own banks, the financial system, and the economy like a bunch of two-year-olds. Every single major bank would have failed in late 2008 without massive government intervention — because of wounds that were entirely self-inflicted. (Citigroup: holding onto hundreds of billions of dollars of its own toxic waste. Bank of America: paying $50 billion for an investment bank that would have failed within three days. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs: levering up without a stable source of funding. Etc.) The financial crisis should have put to rest for a generation the idea that the big boys on Wall Street know what they’re doing and the politicians in Washington are a bunch of amateurs. Yet somehow the bankers came out of it with the same unshakable belief in their own perfection that they had in 2005. The only plausible explanation is some kind of powerful personality disorder.

They’re making another, similar, version of these people at Penn State. They’re making them at most of our universities. You couldn’t have Wall Street without them. You couldn’t have Marc Kasowitz without them. You couldn’t have (had) Lehman Brothers without them. You couldn’t have contemporary America without them.

So Niall Ferguson doesn’t have to huff and puff. The clubs are where you learn high-level substance abuse and arrant indifference – the heart of our red-hot economy. They’re not going anywhere.

**************

UD thanks Jack.

… which looked like this, and drove – slowly – to Florida, camping all the way.

This trip accomplished two things dear to my father – it saved money on hotels and food (he was cheap), and it got him and his little Jewish tribe away from the madness of the Christmas season.

UD has grown up to detest camping, so I’m thinking I didn’t have the greatest time during all of this.

My one clear memory is being marooned in some state park that smelled of sulfur, and trembling in my half-dome tent as something close to a hurricane whipped the guy lines.

But it wasn’t all a nightmare. The one thing my father threw in to thrill the kids, to make it all worthwhile, to delight and amaze us totally, was South of the Border.

*****************

South of the Border! We were allowed to stay one night at this immense garish wonderland that announced itself miles and miles in advance, in the form of billboards with hilarious messages on them. I don’t remember any of the messages, only that everyone in the car (father, mother, four kids) read them aloud (there were tons of them) and screamed with laughter.

The article UD just stumbled on, which informs her that – incredibly – South of the Border is still open, quotes one of these billboards:

Ees onlee wan South of the Border, Amigos

The article wrestles with the staggering political incorrectness of the place, entirely constructed as it was around the image of a fat lazy Mexican named Pedro. They dumped some of the most offensive billboards (like Ees onlee…), but have retained (according to the article) the basic fat lazy Mexican motif.

The article invokes the word kitsch, and indeed South of the Border must have been wee UD‘s first serious encounter with the phenomenon. Whenever she talks about kitsch in her course on beauty, visions of South of the Border dance in her head.

UD‘s not sure why she’s so happy to read that tacky campy South of the Border continues to thrive.