A well-placed source tells UD that the next dean of the University of Southern California medical school will be Harvey Weinstein.

His sins trickled from his lips, one by one, trickled in shameful drops from his soul, festering and oozing like a sore, a squalid stream of vice. The last sins oozed forth, sluggish, filthy. There was no more to tell. He bowed his head, overcome.

Sluggish. It’s kind of like that at USC, only it’s not sins – it’s lies. The president, the provost … sluggishly, sluggishly, sluggishly, they begin to ooze the truth about their protection – nay, their celebration – of a (probable) drug addict, a man for quite some time notoriously disengaged from the responsibilities of his $1.1 million a year job. They seem more or less to have let Carmen keep doing his drug- and sex-addled thing and ignoring his job until those extremely annoying Los Angeles Times reporters couldn’t be brushed off anymore.

So okay. Okay! You wanna know what really happened? Not the blahblah we told you last week, but the actual stuff that happened? OKAYOKAYOKAYOKAYOKAY. The Times should be grateful, by the way. If it weren’t for our stonewalling, its reporters wouldn’t be getting a Pulitzer for investigative reporting this year. So you’re welcome.

The president’s letter was released hours after The [LA] Times provided USC with findings about Puliafito’s behavior during his tenure heading the medical school.

Fine. We’ll only stop lying when totally cornered. We’re totally cornered. So here’s the deal. Here’s the letter where the soon to be ex-president of USC finally coughs it up. (Not that ol’ UD thinks that even now he’s entirely coughed it up. Ol’ UD is sure there’s more even than this. But this is certainly something.)

[The prez] revealed late Friday that the university had [in fact] received complaints and imposed disciplinary measures against the then-dean of its medical school…

… Puliafito had [in fact] been the subject of “various complaints” during nearly a decade as the dean of the Keck School of Medicine. … Puliafito [had in fact] received [obviously toothless] “disciplinary action and professional development coaching.”

Nikias also provided new details about Puliafito’s final months in the job before he resigned in the middle of the Spring 2016 term.

In 2015, USC Provost Michael Quick put Puliafito “on notice for being disengaged from his leadership duties,” the president said.

UD would have loved to be in the room for the professional development coaching. CARMEN PUT DOWN THE BUTANE TORCH …

Oh, read the article. Feast your eyes on the USC receptionists, committees, provosts, and presidents who couldn’t be bothered checking up on whether the person in charge of medicine – you know, patient care, doctor education – at the university was as fucked up as he, well, yes, now that I look at him, certainly seemed to be. Consider an entire university leadership treating the local newspaper of record like a worthless piece of shit.

And sit tight – the producers of the film probably haven’t even starting thinking about casting it yet — they’re waiting out the story before they do that. Al Pacino should be finished doing Joe Paterno by then; he’d make a great Carmen Puliafito. For prez: John Waters.

What?

Me worry?

Only after The Times published its report Monday did USC address the matter publicly.

The University of Southern California not only ignored – for a year – well-sourced questions from the Los Angeles Times about deadhead supreme Carmen Puliafito; the office of its president went to the trouble of returning by courier, unopened, a letter requesting an interview.

Kids, can we think of a better way to say fuck you? I don’t think we can.

And now USC is trying to make us believe that they’re just getting wind of Carmen’s… uh… is there one word into which we can bundle what the $1.1 million a year head of the Keck medical school has been up to after hours – during hours – for years?

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How can we explain USC’s suicidal behavior? Carmen’s almost certainly gonna bring down the president and some trustees. Probably lots of USC patients are going to be suing the school, since – I don’t know – if you found out that your suspicions about the madman checking your eyes – the guy everybody told you was fine – the dean of the med school for chrissake! – were in fact accurate, wouldn’t you be a little pissed? How much money did you spend to get treated by a meth head?

USC sure likes to make fools of people – reporters, patients. On the other hand, it serves and protects people like Carmen Puliafito.

*********

Again, then: Why? Why did President Nikias and his provost, the wonderfully named Quick, not only do nothing as their million dollar man drugged his way into oblivion on screen, but ignore and insult anyone who tried to tell them what was going on?

Well, remember they did the same thing with the last high-level highly-compensated, high-profile, high-as-a-kite campus hero: Steve Sarkisian. So we’ve got a pattern here; we’ve got a culture here. Let me suggest what that culture is.

USC is Hollywood. The school is in (roughly speaking) and of Hollywood. School song:

Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out
It doesn’t matter much to me

Disgusting
Tragic
Outrageous
Despicable
Egregious
Shocking
Contemptible

“Watch this space,” announced President Nikias, “for additional adjectives as appropriate.”

Pileup because the scandal looks likely to take down the president of the University of Southern California, plus other high-ranking do-nothings.

“The mood on campus is one of stunned depression,” a USC physician said in an email to me, asking me not to use his name. “Students are upset that this was allowed to happen at their medical school, while the faculty are flabbergasted as well as embarrassed.” The physician said that in his opinion, Puliafito should have been immediately suspended in March 2016 [the meth incident] and an investigation launched.

“By allowing him to continue to practice,” he said, “patients’ health was put at risk.”

… 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.)

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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’

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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.”

It’s a list of categories UD introduced in 2012, and it has held up well over the years. Details of each type here.

The case of busybusybusy USC professor David B. Agus – known hereafter as David B.OGUS – seems overwhelmingly to have been ATELIER; his downfall, that is, probably involves his having hired an atelier of underlings to write his books for him cuz he’s too important to actually sire the little whippersnappers himself.

But, as UD always has occasion to say on these, uh, occasions, you can’t get good help these days. You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think, as Dorothy Parker pointed out; likewise, you can pay an atelier to write your book, but you can’t make it not plagiarize.

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A little Keck School of Medicine context: This school has the world’s most comically disreputable faculty: Drew Pinsky, Rohit Varma, Carmen Puliafito (oh wait; he wasn’t faculty: he was DEAN), etc etc etc; the larger institution has been right there out in front of the Varsity Blues scandal, a humongous political bribery scandal, and of course SCADS of sports scandals.

I mean to say that USC cannot really afford its latest Dr Bogus. But it’s got him.

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UPDATE: Cherchez la femme! The big mean lady who wrote books with my name on their covers is responsible for

more than 120 cribbed passages in three titles, some of which went on for pages. 

So UD was right – it was Atelier.

Her advice for Dr. Bogus should he try for a fourth title: Read your employees’ work before you append your name to it. Use a plagiarism-detector. Seek new hired help.

… Via the Los Angeles Times review of Bad City, a book about disgusting events at pretty much always-disgusting University of Southern California. My coverage of these particular grotesqueries can be found here. Put University Southern California in my search engine for years of scandal and corruption.

[T]wo major scandals at USC involv[ed] two doctors employed by the university: the medical school dean, Carmen Puliafito, and a gynecologist who worked at USC‘s student health center. Both doctors took advantage of young women to satisfy their prurient desires. Eventually, the book becomes a pointed critique of USC’s culture of secrecy and its shameful efforts to protect its public image. The university’s supporting role in the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal serves as a kind of coda to a dark tale of privilege, amorality and coverups...

In one especially outrageous scene, [Dean] Puliafito brings a pair of addicts into his office at the Keck School of Medicine, where they don the doctor’s USC lab coat and an inflatable Trojan hat after smoking heroin...

The University of Southern California is colossally corrupt. It’s corrupt almost everywhere: In its athletics program (I’d name names, but there are too many); in its med school (Puliafito; Varma; Tyndall); in its admissions system (Varsity Blues); on its board of trustees (Barrack), and now in its school of social work. (Click on my first link for details on all of these instances.) It has succeeded in attaining Yeshiva University levels of corruption.

You have to pay close attention to understand the massive social work school corruption – here’s a good, detailed description of it – but know that the person allegedly engineering the scheme was the dean of the school, a woman desperately greedy for money after she apparently mismanaged the school to a huge deficit. She and the local politician she bribed in exchange for lucrative contracts are currently under federal indictment.

And here’s the real beauty of it, given USC’s perennial, and, most recently, one billion dollar, problem with sexual harassment: The dean arranged the quick hiring onto her faculty of the politician’s son – even got the entirely unqualified dude a professorship! – although the guy only needed a job because he was about to be charged with sexual harassment at his current job.

The politician is “a graduate of the university, from which he received a doctorate in social ethics,” and yes, you cannot make this shit up.

“USC and its athletic department spent much of the past few years embroiled in various stupid scandals... USC was one focus of the Justice Department’s men’s basketball corruption case that went public in 2017, and the program finally got hit with NCAA probation earlier this year as a result. In 2019, USC was on the front page of the New York Times (and not the sports section) for its central role in the Varsity Blues scandal, wherein rich parents fabricated and bribed their kids’ way into elite schools. [USC] administrators [have been] dealing with racketeering and corruption cases and NCAA investigations… [O]utside legal disputes stemming from USC’s 2000s NCAA problems weren’t entirely wrapped up until the end of July. This July.”

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

“USC had to fire back-to-back coaches in the middle of the season. Find another major program so badly directed that it’s had to do that.

And then USC had to do it again this year, something no other major program has even had to contemplate. Think of the degree of mismanagement that requires. From an incredibly immature Lane Kiffin to an incredibly intemperate Steve Sarkisian to an incredibly incompetent Clay Helton, they turned the keys of one of college football’s historic top three programs to an over-their-head trio of not-ready-for-prime-time players.”

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

The second writer, who calls USC’s program “dead,” doesn’t even mention the very special Sarkisian/Puliafito/Nikias magic, about which UD wrote a few years ago. Surely he doesn’t mean to leave out of his autopsy the very top of USC’s leadership!

Now … how can that happen? You take a real squeaky clean athletics program like Auburn and you hire TWO dirty coaches in succession! Bowman was spozed to be the good guy who replaced the bad guy, but he’s another bad guy! It’s just like when the University of Southern California appointed Varma to replace Puliafito! Well, I’m sure head coach Bruce Pearl don’t know anything about it.

John Martin. Sarkisian. Puliafito/Varma. Tyndall.
Takes a whole lot of naughtiness merely to kindle
A bit of Oh me!
From ol’ USC.
It’s less of a school than a swindle.

Attorney Peter Osinoff also argued that [Carmen Puliafito] suffers from a mental illness that makes him brilliant and leaves him with “immense energy,” but instills an “ugly side” in Puliafito that drove him to be infatuated with a young prostitute.

… of its med school (a meth head-headed med school — say that five times fast) has played out poorly. (Put PULIAFITO in my search engine for background.). USC donations are down 55 percent — probably because people don’t like to think of their money going up the nose of the dean rather than down the veins of people with leukemia.

The dean made an unconscionably high salary for someone who spent much of his time tending to his dopamine receptors. It’s a sweet life when you make over a million and don’t even come in to work much. And when you do come to work and see patients, you’re high as a kite.

Replacing the dude with a notorious sex rascal was also counter-indicated; but what can you do? It’s virtually impossible to find ethical people who want to live in Southern California and assume a prestigious, highly-paid position.