The exorcism started in January of 2017--and The Swamp trembles in fear. Liberals and RHINOS everywhere, are vomiting in their own mouths.
My taxes are much lower.
Regulations on business are being lowered
The invasion on the southern border--is decreased by 70%.
North Korea is considering giving up their nukes.
ISIS has been removed from Iraq--and is nearly destroyed.
The economy is growing above 3%--and accelerating.
Unemployment near all-time lows.
Wages are rising. Companies are paying bonuses.
Consumer and business confidence at all-time highs.
The Chinese want to talk about improving their trade policies.
Israel once again knows the U.S. is their friend.
NAFTA is being renegotiated--in our favor.
My 401K has gained over $120,000.
The Supreme Court is again following the Constitution--not making up laws at they go along.
As Liberals and Progressives, along with their policies are exorcised from Washington--and from many state governments, the horrors of the Obama years are rapidly disappearing in the rear view mirror.
Who is the man wearing the white collar, and swinging the crucifix? Father Donald. Thank God!
12
You forgot to mention the 1.3 trillion dollar Omnibus Spending Bill! And you left out Pruitt's most recent shameful actions...and let's see, what else...oh, Father Donald the serial sexual abuser and swamp creature-in-chief.
A list of his supposed actions are just that, a list and nothing else. We watch his actions and read his ridiculous tweets and listen to him read speeches he did not write...and we believe what we see and hear...I wouldn't be thanking god for this president.
71
You left out bombing Syria. That makes us look tough, is good for the polls, as a distraction, and shows we could work with international partners. Never mind how many innocent Syrians are being murdered every day by conventional weapons. And that America is taking in no Syrian refugees.
And who needs regulations? We can trust corporations to look after us, can't we? They'll look after the environment, too, because their business models are predicated on altruism? Most illegals come to the U.S. through valid ports of entry and overstay their visas, this "invasion" will not stop, because we invite them here to do all the jobs Americans don't want to do. NK will never give up its nukes; Kim holds them sacrosanct and China won't allow it. Obama deserves the credit for the fall of ISIS, not Trump. You honestly think unemployment and the economy will hold with Trump's irrational and erratic behavior? We were on a far better and more stable path with the previous administration. The Chinese will eat our lunch with Trump's insane tariff policies; Trump cannot fathom that it is now an interwoven global economy, not the 1980s; we will be left behind. Having moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem will provoke unnecessary violence and bloodshed in the Middle East; just look at Gaza now. NAFTA is being renegotiated, yes -- without the U.S. The Supreme Court is being stacked with incompetent, unscrupulous GOP opportunists. And enjoy your money -- will you be buried with it?
58
My taxes are not any lower. The regulatory rollback will make our air and water dirtier, our climate warmer, and our internet slower. The swamp is muckier than ever, with self-interested grifters and incompetents in most of the positions that Trump has bothered to fill. The United States’ standing in the world has dropped to the cellar. And the president* himself is a lying, whoring blowhard with skin as thin as an onion’s.
The one saving grace is an economy that is still performing well, thanks to Obama’s steady and effective policies.
You may see Trump as the exorcist-hero, but most of us see his head spinning round and green bile spewing from his orange mouth.
*Likely due to foreign meddling.
83
Democrats were evidently so traumatized by the election results that they are trying to read chicken entrails and appeal to exorcists. If isn't enough for the party to believe that Trump is Hitler reincarnated, like leftovers from 'The Boys from Brazil', now they are painting him as one the Devil's own. At least that would be refreshing after the endless variety of Hitler similarities that have been printed.
Puzzling as all it would have taken to have won was a platform that appealed to people outside of the urban Democratic strongholds, a campaign that supported such a platform, and even just for Democrats to vote. In the six states that Trump flipped compared to 2012 votes by Democrats were down by almost a million. But, that was evidently too much to ask, instead the mainstream media belittled Trump for wasting his time campaigning in the 'Democratic firewall', for trusting their inbred forecasts that said Hillary was a shoe in, and she wasted her time running votes in Democratic strongholds.
The result is 'we won the popular vote', and an endless series of articles where authors try to outdo each other exposing how evil Trump and the Republican party are. It is like listening to the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution describing how evil the running dog lackey capitalist war mongering imperialists were.
2
I think it’s more a piece about the director of a classic film that she still thinks about, conducted at a location made iconic by that film.
For crying out loud! Can’t we all just lighten up a bit?
And by the way, if you love film, Friedken’s book about his remarkable career is a must-read!
4
I used to run up and down those steps for exercise almost 50 years ago when I lived in Georgetown. Seeing their picture brings back a disquieting memory. Because they're sandwiched between a retaining wall and ancient brick buildings, they were always gloomy, claustrophobic and cold, even during the steaming heat of the D.C. summer. The air itself really did seem darker there; I would run towards the light and the open air at either end. I'd heard that in the 1800s there were meat rendering plants near the river, a short walk from the base of the steps, and although the area no longer smelled of death, you could imagine it lingered there. William Peter Blatty picked the locus for his tale of evil very well.
3
Satan stands behind the pulpit and claims the Bible is the literal Word of God and the righteous should regard it as the One True Religion. This is how the Christians become idolaters who routinely vote destruction upon foreign infidels. It's how the pro-lifers disregard the human caused Mass Global Extinction Event now underway as unimportant compared to all the aborted humans. Satan sings, the organ plays and their hearts of the poor-of-spirit swell with hypocritical self-righteous bigotry. Satan says only the GOP cares about your religion and so the spirit of America is destroyed.
9
So, what’s the thesis of this essay?
2
Be careful what you wish for! After the exorcisms you may not be able to find the Clintons, Obama, Pelosi or any Dem leaders.
1
Ugh. Really?
On November 6, 2018, vote for any Democrat running. If the Democrat running in your district is a dead squirrel, then by all means and with all conviction, vote for the dead squirrel. Walk purposefully through hell its very self to vote for the Democrat.
Do NOT surrender your country to this demon!
11
"And even after all these years..."
I know what you mean, Maureen. Here's a story from my personal vault of mystic Catholicism.
1957, first day of fourth grade, Sister Mary Florence told us of a previous student in a Chicago school. Nine year old Joseph was continually interrupting class with a need to go the restroom. The good sister refused his request. After school Joseph went home and that night became ill and was hospitalized. The doctors diagnosed uremic poisoning undoubtedly due to the devout nun not allowing him to urinate. A priest, Father O'Brien, was summoned for the last rites and Joseph was called upon to make his last confession. He was told that in order to attain his passage to heaven he must forgive Sister Mary Florence. He flatly refused. He said, "No Father, I hate her yet."
"After Joseph died I talked to Father O'Brien" Sister Mary Florence told us, and his words to her were, "Joseph died in the state of mortal sin and he is now in the deepest part of hell that there is."
6
That is SO religion.
4
I was 19 years old when the movie came out, I can't even remember who talked me into going to see it. I could never understand it's popularity, too me it wasn't scary, nor disturbing. Stories about real human beings without a conscience or who demonstrate an apparent lack of a soul do!
Today we don't need an exorcist because of Trump, we just need the religious leaders that support him to worry about where they're leading their sheople, instead of being so focused on forgiving Trump's sins, in order to achieve their agendas. Imagine their kids growing up under the influence of the poster child for the Seven Deadly Sins? Our country is heading to Hell in the wake of Trump's vomit and it's not made of green oatmeal! And I tremble at the debut of that movie!
2
Now that Mueller is going after Trump's lawyers, I expect they'll have shark fin soup back on the menu at eating spots around the city.
Leave it to Trump to hire lawyers who "aren't really lawyers." Trump famously asked "where's my Roy Cohn" when Sessions wasn't proving to be much of a buddy in the early days of the Trump administration. He should have known that Roy Cohn was run out of town long ago.
The next time an 'independent" wins the presidency, his first hire should be a Washington expert. It's possible to get a lot done in Washingotn as long as one doesn't cross the red lines.
3
Roy baby is now Beast apprentice.
I was sitting in a theater with a date when Linda Blair did her infamous thee hundred sixty degree rotation. I felt dizzy, then my skin got clammy, my stomach was unsettled so I excused myself and headed for the lobby and the restroom. I didn't make it, but instead fainted in the lobby short of the restroom. Thankfully the lobby was vacant and well carpeted. I awoke unharmed with no one around, so I walked back to my seat. My date asked, "Are you okay?" and I nodded and we finished watching the film. It is one of the scariest movie moments I've ever encountered.
3
Alien 1 is the best of the scarys.
1
Okay, I am going out on a limb here.
1. I don't think exorcism would work for Trump or a good many GOP politicians, their fixer lawyers, and Sarah Huckabee-Sanders and other Trump-GOP media propagandists. These cons, criminals, and nasty liars have no hearts, no consciences, and no empathy or genuine social bonds with others.
To me, these horrifying creatures are the real "aliens," very scary and treacherous, and they certainly do not behave like live, warm, caring human beings.
2. No, the exorcist is not our movie for the Trump era, "Dracula" is. Why? This is the most predatory, blood- sucking era of predatory capitalists, corrupt lawyers, Wall Street con artists, political donors, and lying media and PR spinners in my long life in this country.
Everyday it is another horror story about "vampires" who are dead inside and prey upon our citizens to "nourish" their egos and their wallets. Besides all the news about Trump and the RNC/GOP's blood-sucking behavior, read today's NYT story "How Profiteers Lure Women into Unneeded Surgery."
9
Donald Trump is not possessed, he is the demon itself. Trump is pure evil, in every sense of the word. Mentored by Roy Cohn, an evil, despicable person, Trump learned well. Donald Trump traffics in hate, whether racial, religious, economic, whatever gives him an edge, at the expense of anyone else. That's what the majority of his supporters and voters fell for. 63% of white men, and 53% of white women, gleefully voted for Donald Trump, because they swooned for his hate, racism, and white supremacy, the only thing Trump offers. To pretend other wise is disingenuous. Trump's supporters are as bad as he is.
14
By the time I saw "the Exorcist," I'd already spent 13 years in Catholic schools. The movie seemed tame by comparison.
12
For some scary reason, perhaps diabolical, or maybe my own head-turning , I kept imagining the head of Satan with Donald Trump on the front and Sarah (Colonel) Hucksbee Sanders glued on the back. Yuck. Thank God they’re just people, ya know! Coulda scared the skin off of a snake, which brings up Stephen Miller’s face!
There I go again!
5
One of the things that makes The Exorcist such an exceptional film is that, for all of the horror you experience every time someone goes up those stairs, the shock and fear that Blatty and Friedkin create are not ends in themselves. The Exorcist is finally not the story of a little girl being possessed by the devil. It's the story of a priest, played with such effective sorrow, who has lost his faith in God. In 46 years, no horror movie comes close. The Exorcist is a great film that transcends the genre.
6
I saw the film when it was released with three other friends who were doing LSD. While viewing the film and keeping my friends from flipping out was harrowing, it was comparatively easy compared to the dally assaults from the current resident in the White House.
2
A delightful article!
My hollywood mème du jour comes from the movie "Jaws", when Robert Shaw tries to warn the citizen how much worse their situation is (paraphrasing...):
"You're gonna need a bigger prison."
Drain the swamp of monsters.
Start by electing Democrats in November.
7
The only way to exorcise Trump and his Republican enablers from our failing government is to get out the vote like never before to overcome entrenched GOP election scams. Trump and the Republican leadership are evil personified. Get out the vote to get these fetid spots out of our national fabric.
8
"Evil, be thou my good" (Paradise Lost)
Fascilis descensus Averno (the descent to death is easy)
Trump, for some strange reason, has never in his recorded life ever considered doing good for the sake of doing what is right or will make things better.
He is so much less than human that it is unimaginable, even (I believe) to some of his supporters, that anyone could have no conscience and live only for himself, no matter how many people he hurts.
26
I’ve been calling Trump the Antichrist since he took office, and everday he offers more proof.
25
A waste of time and space.
9
After all these years, The Exorcist seems somewhat comical. For real fear, I read the world and national headlines. Only one other thing, FOX "News" is the thing that now turns heads.
15
Maureen, I think this is your best Trump idea!
Perhaps we could have a contest to find the best way to exorcise Trump, so we can move on.
I think that exorcism requires endless repetition to work. The attacks on Trump have involved too much rambling, that is easily forgotten.
For example, Trump uses the OK sign with his right hand, all the time. The exorcists should use OK signs, perhaps with both hands, at the same time.
Or, how about just repeating words like no, no, no, over and over again.
I say, have a contest and see what people come up with!
=========================================
2
"After studying up on the case, Friedkin has decided it was jive.”
I never thought it was "jive", but was not convinced how real it was until reading a lot more about it.
Do a search along the lines of "Exorcism at Alexian Brothers Hospital" or "The Devil Came To Saint Louis."
Then decide if you think it to be jive. I don't.
2
I'm afraid we'd have to exorcise half the country -- or at least those who support Donald the Trump. They are either ignorant bigots themselves, or they don't mind that he is. So... what's the difference?
10
Yes, we Do need an exorcist, though based on the number of his sycophants, mob-like cronies and supporting citizens, the movie line that most comes to mind is, "We need a bigger boat!"
2
Hilarious. Especially when you consider that a 2013 survey found that one in four Americans believed that Obama was the biblical Antichrist. The conspiracy was so widespread even Snopes took it on (concluding that he was not). I take it on faith (!!!) that these same people all voted for trump.
Just for kicks, does anyone know whether Jared's building at 666 has a 13th floor?
9
There's the 25 percent of the voting population who voted for Trump.
Yep, The Exorcist My wife and I went when she was pregnant with our first child. She got up to use the restroom in the middle of the movie and never returned. Creepy movie indeed!
3
I feel like connecting Trump to anything "mythical" or relatable is a bad idea, because even the devil gets some sympathy. Trump deserves no sympathy. And associating Trump in this way sort-of excuses or explains his behaviors as something that can be corrected or fixed. Trump cannot be fixed. Only prison will help us where Trump is concerned.
I get the impulse to make this analogy, though. Because what we have in Trump is a black void of humanity, devoid of all that is ethical, moral and bright in the world. He's a smarmy man-boy in a creepy, obese elderly man's body who has zero impulse control and throws temper-tantrums every 5 minutes.
He's also incredibly transparent, but apparently some people can't or don't want to see what he truly is. Among other things, he's a pathological liar. Trump lies indiscriminately, believes his own lies, lies about his lies, twists those lies around, connects those lies to other lies, denies lies, then calls everyone else liars....
Trump is a child who scoops up the darkness that oozes out of him and flings it at anyone he perceives as a threat or disloyal. Comey is just the most recent target of his insults and lies.
"Insults are the last resort of insecure people with a crumbling position trying to appear confident." --unknown
4
Yes. Excellent comment. Thanks.
2
Mo, what about that lady who got kidnapped and held in a hotel room for five days against her will? Her husband said she was crazed, and had her drugged to keep her quiet.
But she was just the Attorney General's wife who had a habit of talking with the press, and she just wanted to address this Watergate Break In.
Not a movie, but in this sequel that FBI agent who held her captive was made Ambassador to the Czech Republic last year. That scares the carp out of me, Mo. I don't need a movie to remind me those same villains who gave me Nixon are at it again.
4
Ah, "The Exorcist" -- what a cultural phenomenon -- both the book and the movie.
I was in the fourth or fifth grade when the book came out, and I got into terrible trouble when my teacher discovered me reading it at recess. My mother was called in for a stern talking-to about the evils of providing me with inappropriate reading material. Her sensible reply was that she would never censor my reading, but that she would ask me to leave books not written for children at home.
Thanks for bringing back a really lovely memory of my late mother.
Now it's back to my 24/7 job of hoping and praying that Father Mueller will succeed in exorcising this nation of the raging orange Satan that has infested it.
(Cue "Tubular Bells," AKA "The Exorcist Opening Theme.")
5
When I was a boy, a Methodist boy at that, I often was bad and swore in Italian. Now at 87, I often still do. Maybe I should see an exorcist.
3
The 3 scariest movies of all time:
3. The Exorcist.
2. Halloween.
1. The Astounding She-Monster.
Don’t forget “Curse of the Demon” from 1958—-it’s on YouTube!
And a Clinton documentary
Who exactly would the exorcist be? The United States Congress and its pride-full supportive Republican members? Country wide Trump supporters who see their presidential choice for the boondoggle he is?
2
For myself it is a toss up between "The Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby" as to which movie is the scariest. Right now with Trump occupying the White House, those movies can't hold a candle to real life. It is the scariest time for this country I have ever seen, and I am 72 years old. We definitely could use some divine intervention in Washington, D.C. right now.
5
Demons clothe themselves as angels of light. Only they understand the problems and know how to fix them. Sound familiar? Moreover, given the evangelical right’s steadfast love for Trump...what does THAT say about their “faith”?
3
This was an entertaining article EXCEPT for the reference to President Trump. There are MANY politicians about whom it could be said that the public would benefit if they were exorcised from office. Not every single article in the NY Times needs to take a gratuitous shot at President Trump. It would actually be refreshing to find one that refrained from doing so.
2
what other politicians?
So true! When the budget deficit hit $666 billion in 2017 (since changed to $665 for obvious reasons) I knew we were in for it.
However, with our formerly-Christian "Evangelicals" on Trump's side no matter what he does, we may have to look to outside the U.S. for the right Exorcist. Perhaps the Pope, who just said charity was as important as opposing abortion, much to their dismay, will do the job.
On a lighter note, it's hard to underestimate the damage Trump is doing. We've got about 3 million more without health insurance in 2017 vs. 2016 thanks to his ACA sabotage efforts (that's about 4,000 avoidable deaths/year), he's added about $2.0 trillion over 10 years to an already bad debt trajectory so the rich could have tax cuts, embarrasses the office daily, and has empowered the Make America White Again contingent.
I think it's probably the Republican Party that requires an Exorcism; Trump is a symptom of that problem. Perhaps Fox News can be taken over by Bezos and we can start intervening tomorrow.
Perhaps years of non-stop facts about how much better Democrats do in terms of job creation, economic growth, and stock market returns could help.
1
Back up, there. Some people need more than one exorcism?
"The Exorcist" is one of the best examples of a film that nails the requirement to establish a story question and then answer it. The protagonist is always the character who gets the story question, and the protagonist of "The Exorcist" is not the older priest or the girl who was possessed. The protagonist is the young priest Karras.
In the beginning of the film, Karras tells a friend he has lost his faith. It's killing him. He wants it back. But what's he to do? How does one gets his faith back? If it's gone, it's gone, right?
So the story question becomes -- Will Karras get his faith back?
And then he's called upon to face down the devil himself. At the end of the story, when we see the smile on Karras' face as he lay dead on the street, we know the answer to the story question is a resounding -- Yes. He got his faith back.
(Actually, the answer is more than just that. A story question is a yes-no question. So the answer is either yes or no. But the very best answer is, "Yes -- or no -- but ..." Will Tom Hanks get to be with Daryl Hannah? Yes, but he'll have to live in the ocean.
In "The Exorcist" the answer to the story question about if the young priest will get his faith back is really, "Yes, but he'll have to die to do it.")
22
I had read the book and thought I would be OK with the movie. I was not. I was around 14 and it terrified me and I never saw it a second time. For years after, if someone talked about the movie, I left the room. That being said, I do not believe in the Devil- it was just the movie that was so disturbing. I took that as a warning to myself and have never seen any slasher movies.
3
My mom loved Georgetown. I got a lot of groovy stuff out of tailing her trips there. She loved to return to the scenes of any DC scene that was brewing. My favorite thing was the onion soup at the restaurant where the waiter would not give up the recipe to their Italian dressing. But now I'm forgetting the names of things. It was a steak house.
Jeans, shoes, and that calendar with Nixon's face in place of each square so you could scratch that lottery ticket every day until he went away.
Mom was always keen on getting near to what fear drove her. I recall she was all eyes and ears while we waited for pizza and used the juke box in Vegas. This was after the Valachi hearings.
1
We ran up those steps a few times when my daughter was an undergrad at Georgetown.
1
There needs to be an exorcism but not on President Trump or the Republicans. Mr. Trump is doing just fine as our president and is implementing policies that he promised he would do if elected president. Our country is thriving and the haters are just up in arms that he has succeeded to the degree that he has.
He has created jobs, taxes have been slashed for most Americans and the economy is soaring. People have faith in America again and are once again living the American Dream.
3
I can celebrate the things he’s done to further the prosperity of our country. Can you decry the terrible effect he’s had on any progress that had been made to protect our environment? The level of vitriol has created a terrible divide between neighbors and family members all across this nation. Can’t we have jobs and a safe, healthy and caring country too?
5
Job creation is slower under Trump than the last few years under Obama, he's added about 3 million to the ranks of the uninsured thanks to his ACA sabotage, and by running unnecessary stimulus tax cuts for the rich he's blow up the deficit.
CBO just reported that growth (real GDP) will average 2.0% from 2017-2027 because of these much larger deficits, vs. 1.9% under the pre-Trump Obama baseline. We gave a couple of trillion dollars back to the rich for that "benefit."
Don't give Trump credit; the economy is succeeding despite his best efforts.
9
I cannot stand President Trump, he represents everything that is wrong with America, but I defend him from vicious, personal attacks on a daily basis.
Those attacks are often as nonsensical as the rosy picture you paint. Like you, I believe the President is largely doing a lot of what he said he would do. Stopping the PC insanity, trying to seal the border, etc...
Our agreement stops there. He is creating the same low paying gigs that Obama created. Taxes have been "slashed" for the already filthy rich. For the rest of us, a small and temporary reduction. The economy is still "soaring" on the coasts and Washington. In flyover country it remains largely grounded.
Most people have lost even more faith in America. Te swamp has not been drained. The American dream remains the American nightmare.
2
I saw The Exorcist with my roommates as a freshman at my Nigerian university. One of my roommates was so scared that when we got back to the room, she fished out her Bible and read it most of the night sleeping with it under her pillow. Another, who had already seen it in London, thought the whole thing was very funny. I was terrified.
4
Blatty’s extraordinary novel had me pulling the covers over my head. The film was exceptionally well done but by that point I’d been inoculated against the terror.
4
Again, totally facile and not even humorous attempt to write something for the sake of writing something. What we need is serious pundits looking at the pathetic situation we got ourselves into (and Ms. Dowd you surely did your fair share to get us here) and offer real ideas and hopefully solutions. 63 Million voting for a complete fraud and a sidekick who is not even describable properly is a malaise, perhaps a cancer, the United States has to deal with. It is not an exorcist we need but a highly competent surgeon to cut it off the body.
30
I wake up each morning in disbelief that a party, any political party, would tolerate trump in their midst.
27
Welcome to the reality that people have different opinions. Except for a few densely populated areas, voters decided the’d rather wake up with Mr. Trump in office than Mrs. Clinton.I’m surprised that anyone could vote for either of them. I couldn’t.
5
The 666 Building, is not, in my information gathering opinion, Jared Kushner's building. Leave The Exorcist movie, and focus more on The Sentinel 70's movie, and Damien Omen. If there is a Jared involved, it is the Jarod from the TV Show: Pretender coupled with Chrissie Hynde's Pretenders band. If you put all of those clues together, you will get someone who's lucky number is 5, and not 6. Someone who has visited Akron Ohio, perhaps went to University at The Ohio State University. But, I am not talking about the Beast. I am talking about The Messiah. Stop at 5, don't be greedy and possessed and go to 6. ---- I have some more clues too. Maybe I'll make a movie someday. Of course I would hire Madonna, she already has a song called The Messiah that I have been listening too lately. (smile).
Exorcism would be a picture of DJT riding shotgun in a Allied Van Lines truck loaded with all of his possessions on it's way back to NYC with a large banner on the side reading "Mission Accomplished"!
19
Forgive any concern I cause Trump Tower's occupants, but Trump might burn that whole thing down just for the insurance. Disaster films are his favorite.
2
Scariest movie ever. At 53, I still can't watch it when I am alone. It's not the pea soup, the demonic growl, or the head spinning that is frightening. It's a metaphysical and psychological horror!!
8
Since neither Paul Ryan nor Mitch McConnell are into criticism of Trump an exorcism is not imminent.
Bob Mueller is only special counsel. He is no exorcist.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin's foes end up in hospitals, mental institutions, prisons, urns and coffins.
We need a KGB agent.
7
I never liked horror films or mean people who seem to enjoy frightening & harming others.
My father didn't like horror films either and used to say if you want to experience horror, pay attention to what is going on in real life, especially when you consider the things people do to each other.
l am 76 and this was within the context growing up in D.C. as a young child experiencing the WWII atrocities that we found out about after the war ended and saw those films of the Nazi concentration camps. [I think this is one reason I became a social psychologist, haunted by 2 questions: (1) how can humans do such things to each other; and (2) how did the survivors manage to keep themselves together under such conditions?]
Then as school children we experience the threat of atom bombs dropping on us at any minute, seeing required films at the Sat. kid movies about what to do if we hear an air raid siren, and those many cover drills at school.
I told my father we needed to build an air raid shelter in the basement. He told me we live within a 7-mile radius of the nation's capital and would be blown to smithereens if an atomic bomb were dropped, so "we aren't going to waste our money on a shelter."
Then there were the witch hunting McCarthy hearings of deranged politicians terrorizing citizens just to get attention and votes, and later the civil rights marches in the South full of brutality, injustice, and horror.
Need a horror fix? Pay attention to the Trump reign.
25
I was with you — until the last paragraph
Yes, this was the scariest movie of all time...mainly because a lot of people thought it was real. Or that it could really happen. Demonic possession was what was invoked to explain mental illness. Or anything that was outside the norms of society. You'd think that by 1973 we'd have progressed past that...
5
Tuesday, April 17, 2018 will go down in history as the day when the American people -- far too timorous and lacking in appreciation for the freedoms they enjoy to understand the Horror he truly is -- failed to carry out a “Twenty Million Person Tax Strike” against Donald Trump and thereby lost one of their last chances to save the Republic.
7
Probably because if I don't pay my taxes I could end up a lot poorer and/or in jail. There are those who pay no taxes and end up as president. Maybe I've been checking the wrong box on my return.
2
I've never heard about William Friedkin. Now I know it was not Roman Polanski, but aWilliam Friedkin, an opera director, who created The French Connection and The Exorcist. Now that's creative rewriting of film history.
I laughed all the way through The Exorcist. I saw it as a very silly and ridiculous movie and couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.
3
Imagine seeing it 40 years ago. Guarantee you wouldn’t be laughing
7
That shark movie was also rather scary, but today it's just a toss away next to Shark Week. We are gonna need a scrap ship to clean up after Trump's frenzy.
Someone asked me what was the scariest movie I ever saw, and of course, I answered that it was "The Exorcist." I was eighteen when it came out. I grew up Southern Baptist, and we, too, thought the devil was real. I carried so much guilt that I was baptized three times, once in a creek, and twice in a baptistery, and we didn't sprinkle but dunked. My wild youth was spent mostly going to revivals my father preached, but I was certain that somehow I had still not got it right. Now, of course, I recognize that it was mostly clinical depression. I slept with my light on for years after, well into my twenties. Like the psychiatrist, I thought that WAS the documentary. Scary stuff.
11
We, the college roommates & others, saw it as a matinee. I, probably others too, definitely wanted to leave the theater in daylight.
And i’m too squeamish to watch the film again.
But 45 years later, the scene that remains vivid is from the early part of the film, where the older priest / the first exorcist, at an archeological site comes face to face with a satanic statue. I remember it as being the juxtaposition of Good vs Evil, as manachaesistic an exposition as anything. It remains a very power image in my mind to this day.
It is tempting to view the comings and goings of the world in such a light, to project a good vs evil dichotomy on what I see as our dire situation.
Unlike the possesed girl of the film, her soul taken over wholesale by the devil, the soul of this country has been auctioned piece by piece, the net effect being at times appearing as disfigured as the face in the film.
True evil is rarely one great Being deciding the fate of the souls like the demon depicted in Fantasia’s/ Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain”. Rather, as Hannah Arendt wrote, “most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil”.
Sometimes it seems as if we’ve been possessed wholesale. There is a cure. It’s individual actions to actively do good things, to actively resist bad things.
And to go out and vote.
32
"The Exorcist" was a very useful movie for me. I occasionally got depressed back in those days over things like breakups of love relationships and whatnot, and I knew that, whatever mood you entered the theater in, bad or good, you would come out of that theater in the same, horrified post-Exorcist mood, with whatever you were feeling beforehand completely erased.
An interesting aside: On the greatest game show ever with the greatest game show host, "You Bet Your Life" with Groucho Marx and George Fenneman, they had this one episode where two of the contestants were little Candy (Murphy Brown, Shirley Schmitt) Bergen as a young child and little Peter Blatty, author of "The Exorcist," as a little boy.
One of life's amazing intersections.
8
We were juniors at a Jesuit college (Jason Miller's alma mater) when eight of us appropriately heightened our senses and sat frozen in visceral speechlessness in the theater balcony as heads twirled and demons spoke. The book was required reading in class and our professor, a dedicated cinephile, brought in a guest Jesuit who described several of his own completed exorcisms. This was practical Catholicism at its most graphic extreme and we were immersed in it.
Immersed, that is, until it morphed into practical jokes. In one instance, an unplugged vacuum cleaner with the switch 'on' was placed under a victim's bed, the power cord cleverly concealed beneath the dirty laundry strewn on the dorm room floor, awaiting his
return from the movie. Eventually he slept, and at the stroke of two the perpetrator pushed the plug into an outlet- and we were rewarded with the sight of a true levitation, no Jesuits involved.
10
That is so mean!
1
I am severely disappointed that Ms. Dowd made it all the way through this column without once comparing Hillary Clinton to the Linda Blair character (possessed by the devil, complicit with her demon husband, etc.). Do better next time please! Those of us who live to clip-and-save your Hillary bashing are counting on you to keep the streak going!!!!
12
.....come on, Mo, what do you really think about the Trumpster....and, with that said....where you been, girl?
12
I always thought the Omen with Gregory Peck was more disturbing. Son Damien the antichrist born into the world of power, money and privilege. Protected on this earth by sinister forces (for example, Devin Nunes, Sarah Huckabee, GOP). Born of a jackal, errrr....orangutan. And 666 on Damiens scalp to match the Kushner bldg. People didn't spin their heads 360 and survive that, but a lot of the deaths were believable. Ruled by the corporate world.
25
All your excoriations (pun intended) regarding Trump ring hollow considering your pre election normalizing of him. Where were your pithy observations when it mattered most?
66
You gave Trump tons of attention, Maureen. I don't want to hear it. And NOBODY at the NYTimes gave Bernie Sanders his just due. And that was a done deal long before he started I now understand. You are liars. There's not enough truth in any of the media these days to carry the day, I'm afraid. You do the bidding of those who make money on war and banking, and so do those on the so called conservative "side". It's all just so much crap, it is hard to distinguish one pile of manure from another.
38
Agreed. Both sides are complicit with the destruction of America. Only the brianwashed "useful idiots" (as Lenin liked to call them) don't see that all the hate, be it on the Right or the Left, serves only to distract us from the Elites enriching themselves. Why has the CEO pay gone up hundreds of percent since the 1970's? while the working class survives paycheck to paycheck at best? Why is over 90% of all weath in the hands of the less than 1%? This is not a Liberal or Conservative issue it is an American issue, and whether its Maureen Dowd or Rush Limbaugh both are complicit. Its time for a pro America party. Congress id filled with corrupt politicians and as many on the right as the left are retiring before we can find out about their kickbacks. Reid's son and all his son in laws are Lobbyists. Biden and Kerry both have sons running a hedge fund filled with Communist Chinese funds to the tune of hundreds of millions. McConnell's wife's father is one of the largest industrialist in Communist China and has funneled tens of millions into McConnell's hands. Wall Street has many more so called "Liberals" than anywhere else except maybe Hollywood. As long as our self appointed "Masters" can keep us divided over race, religion or any of the other issues they use to divide us they will only keep gaining more power.
5
Hahaha. The Exorcist indeed.
Your meaning?
MD: “I grabbed lunch with a famous person. I will now devote my weekly column to nonsense.”
Unreadable. Incomprehensible that there are devotees of this celebrity-worshipping name-dropping Obama-hating snark-delivering space occupying lesion.
42
You can say that again.
10
Well, that's the formula for her column. The message is always the same: I lunch with rich and famous people. See? That means I'm one, too.
7
Fortunately, the community of comment posters is quite an articulate one and makes the quick read of her column worthwhile, despite the price of admission.
1
It is the scariest movie ever filmed, largely because the Evil One may, for all we know, truly exist, whereas all the other demons and monsters put out by Hollywood are merely creatures of someone's imagination.
1
The United States needs less of an exorcism as it needs an all-rncomassing impeachment and conviction to purge oh land of this clown.
26
What is your point Ms. Dowd? Is it that you had lunch with a former Hollywood directer and watched him eat green soup? You should have taken this week off.
26
We all could use an exorcist. We are each and all culpable for the hell of hate for each other that we choose to live in today. It erupted on politics and poltical parties, and now the demon has taken it hating anyone who disagrees with us on anything. It all stems from pride and the belief that we know all things better than anyone. That belief is the lie that Screwtape embedded in the spirit-poisoned apple. Wait! There's hope! Forget Dante and the levels of hell and purgatory. Paradise has been purchased for us. All we have to do is....love one another and ask for forgiveness of our sins. Yes, it's a tall order. But it's an order that destroys our spiritual chaos. In his "The Great Divorce," C.S. Lewis shows us that we create our own hell on earth and we unforgiven take our curse with us to the outer gate of Paradise. There's no fire and brimstone. Just the longing that you can't get in.
3
Maureen,
I don’t recall the line about his mother rotting in hell. In the movie I saw the sentence is considerably more graphic.
3
Friedkin overdubbed the demon's lines in the TV and cable versions, not Mercedes McCabridge. The director here was shouting what he remembered recording, or else he had the good sense not to shout your recollection of teh original film's lines in public.
Think of it like Charlie Daniel's two takes on calling the Devil a Son of a Xxxxx, vs. a son of a gun on the album v. the radio-play song on Devil Went Down to Georgia...
2
Funny column. I do remember when he movie came out. I was a young married guy. After listening to the commercials on radio about the movie, I didn't go to see it. I did see it years later. It was a disturbing movie.
I might see it again sometime. By the by, I'm an Episcopalian priest. And no, I've never done an exorcism. I'll leave that to people who know what they are doing. My ministry is with fallible human beings, like myself.
10
People!!! He edited the film at 666 Park Avenue! Jared Kushner's property..
What more do we all need to know?
Evil is alive and well at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. There are no coincidences..
26
Ms. Dowd, take responsibility for this mess. YOU vilified Hillary Clinton for years, and actually endorsed the person who is in the Oval Office instead of her.
You are no longer relevant.
87
And when she wasn't vilifying Hillary (and Bill) Clinton, she was vilifying Barack Obama, a decent, honorable, intelligent and well-informed President whose greatest weakness was he was too nice and willing to try to get along with Republicans. I never understood that till I saw Dowd soft-pedaling Trump's blatant and extreme disqualifications for the Presidency. She's really a Conservative at heart, like her brother.
59
Dear Mo, can you ever do anything like an apology for what you did to Hillary and Obama? You have a lot of past sins to atone for. Oh. I know you are a journalist who doesn't need to take responsibility for what you write. But you could at least, say something about the brick bats you threw at those other people you so scurrilously denigrated.
32
Oh yes, it was the devil's fault!
8
I see Pence as more the real devil in DC. Patiently waiting his turn while neck deep in the chaos. Pence is all feigned piety and patriotism followed by bald-face lies and denials wrapped in born-againism. Trump is not and has never been that slick.
40
I like to save you for last, but I often fail. Reading your best words, like the first paragraph, is like eating candy.
7
Did you read her during the 2016 campaign? How in the world do you reconcile what she wrote then with what she writes now? Just how short are people's attention spans, really?
12
I heard that about Gene Hackman, that he was difficult to work with, but you needed someone in the role of Popeye Doyle who was antagonistic, aggressive and an athlete, since most police officers are athletes!Casting him with Roy Scheider was astute since Scheider was an Air Force veteran. But I don't want to know about the mechanics of film making.about the pea soup and the oatmeal.Takes away from one's interest in the film in case one wants to see it again!But Dowd is smart to lay off the anti Trump rhetoric for a change, the proselytizing!
1
I purposely avoided seeing this movie when it was first released because of all the crazy reaction from the audience over a made up situation. Years later, I finally rented it out of boredom and laughed through the whole thing especially the rot in hell comment.
I feel this way about all these horror movies. The more interesting ones are those made by guys like Hitchcock like "Pyscho".
But we do have a real life demon in Washington and his name is Donald "the con man" Trump to really fear.
9
I do not think Ms. Dowd wrote this with the intention of eliciting comments about DJT. I appreciate the diversion and agree that the Exorcist was the scariest movie I ever saw. I was 22 at the time. Even now, I would not watch it again. Once was enough.
2
Like The Exorcist, there have been other landmark movies of that era including Carrie, Mary’s Baby and The Omen. The parallels of each of these classic films to our President are easy to draw.
In Carrie, Trump is the lead and when the world around this character goes to hell, they blow it all up
In Rosemary’s Baby, we are all Rosemary and Trump plays all the other parts. He tries to make us think we are crazy and paranoid.
In The Omen, Trump is the little devil himself. Didn’t quite like how that one ended.
2
Lovely. We humans are such fools that we ignore actual peril and make stuff up to help ourselves feel important. "The Prince of Darkness is interested in me!" Please.
Your parallel, Maureen, to the current diabolical administration that lies like a snake in Eden and tortures the damned that come within its purview, is apt, but the focus is wrong. We should use the cheap entertainment (and entertainment it is!) as a lens through which we can view the theatrics emanating from the Mad Tweeter and his Tea Party.
One might say that the current situation on the Potomac combines the grisliest aspects of The Exorcist with the most hallucinatory scenes from Alice in Wonderland. Cast the Silent Majority who still wanted their country back as the naive girl who sees going down a rabbit hole as a solution.
Rather than see the random beauty of the world and the universe, we conjure fairy tales. Rather than celebrate the goodness of creatures born with free will, we ascribe that virtue to an invisible CEO in the sky. And rather than identify and deal with the reality of human depravity, we cast Lee Van Cleef as The Bad and somehow evade responsibility.
It would befit Trump's grandiosity to accuse him of being Old Nick incarnate. Rather, he's a sad little man who was elected by sad little reactionaries trying to bring back Tara, Rhett.
The bile will rise again.
15
I was hoping that Mr. Mueller would perform the exorcism but as it appears now it is going to be left to sane and decent citizens but first we must shoot down those flying monkeys who protect him in Congress on election day.
11
Exorcist is my favorite horror movie of all time. It set a standard that no other horror movie has ever passed.
Mr. Friedkin once said that he wants to make a great movie like Citizen Kane. Mr. Friedkin, you already have; The Exorcist. Your fans can’t thank you enough.
Too bad the late great Richard Pryor is no longer available:
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/the-exorcist-2/n8617?snl=1
3
Thank you for one of the most amazing movies ever made, Mr. Friedkin.
How fitting that it was made at a time when Americans were beginning to recognize it's President as the lifelong liar he'd always been. Republicans with spines rose to exorcize that demon from office.
Fast forward to today. Trump makes Nixon look like a rank amatuer. Instead of spines though, we have jellyfish who either cling and enable, or will soon flee the premises, leaving the beast to run free.
Father Mueller, we are counting on you.
10
An exorcist would not be my first choice.
1
The "666" has vomited one more chapter of his mini series The Asparagus Soup: Its symbolic rejection of the atrocities of a madman in power, beyond the seas, "He, the Fel Templar, desires coins printed with his august face. Father Carras prays, and more and more persecuted and harassed his dark circles reveal their long journeys through the stinking underworld of the pervert. Know that the devil is deeply rooted in the instincts of the beast. While a whole town contains breath and a Muchenian cry of horror in front of the TV, their lives. Carlos knows that God is great and will give his life so that, with asparagus soup and tantrums, he will run down the stairs with his neck broken.
The horrific truth about Trump is that, unlike predictions that evil will look like a lamb but inside be pure predatory wolf, Donald Trump presented himself as the predatory wolf howling invectives at minorities, immigrants, Dems, the EU, etc., and Republicans howled with him. They were not deceived. They saw their image in him and thrilled to its dark heart.
9
Washington D C is clearly possessed by demons and the American public chose Donald Trump to perform the exorcism.
The American public chose Hillary Clinton. The Electoral College chose Satan.
14
An Irish priest who was a friend of my family's told us of an exorcism he participated in in Ireland. The poltergeist (as he named the being, an invisble but physically capable spirit) threw a tin of shoe polish at the priest, barely missing his head. That's all I remember. The priest, when I knew him, was on the faculty of the Department of History and Logic of Science at Notre Dame.
Of course there is a movie in the works about the current devil in the White House. The writer is goings nuts trying to figure out what genre the movie will be. Comedy?, Love story?, Coming of Age?, Thriller?, Revenge?, Porn?, Foreign Espionage?, Crime Caper?, or the most likely genre, Horror. Whatever it is, it will make the audience's heads spin and vomit.
8
I'd rather see another sequel to the Hannibal Lecter series. Trump would make quite a meal for the good doctor. Possibly Devin Nunes as an appetizer or dessert! Actually, Dr. Lecter should have an unlimited pass to the hallowed walls of Congress, though, he'd have the worst bouts of indigestion.
2
I am a HUGE film fan. If I had a different career, it probably would have been in the film industry. Possibly looking for events or reading books which I thought would make a good film. I believe Bill Friedkin is a brilliant filmmaker. Sure, he has made a couple of "flops", but who hasn't? Barring Stanley Kubrick (the absolute best of the best), Friedkin is way up there in my choices of the top American directors. Definitely in the top 10, easy.
I remember when "The Exorcist" came out. I saw it 3 days in a row. It was rated "X" (now called NC-17), and I think it was and still is the scariest film ever made. I put "Alien" (1979) second. Apologies to all of you "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" fans, but it is not in the same ballpark as those 2 films. "The Exorcist" and "Alien" are in a class by themselves.
Regardless, politicians (or "actors and "reality show" judges don't belong in public office, period. I find it demeaning bringing up "The Exorcist" (in any way) to what is or isn't happening in Washington, DC. That is a slight, and a big one (for me).
2
Ms Dowd I was the same age when I saw the Exorcist. I remember being so afraid sleeping with the lights on for one week and harbored a nagging fear for a lot longer. I'm not afraid of the devil anymore, it's nice to have grown up.
It's easy to succumb to fear but it's a lot harder to face those fears with resolve. For me it's using some credibility tools, intuition, logic, trusted sources and evidence based information. I've learned to trust these far more than anything else.
4
The Evil Snake Oil Salesman who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, if he had any sense, would
call for an Exorcist on himself. You'd think that even his vapid family would perhaps try to help him get some sort of professional help. But no, America is having to attempt to live through the worst and most dangerous Presidency in our short History. God Help Us and Satan you need to take a Vacation.
11
Mo, you only just figured out that you advocated for and endorsed a demon for President of the United States? Really?
30
What? Why?
3
The point eludes me. Humor? Warning? Hysteria?
6
The best performance in that film was Max von Sydow. He was probably around 40 and played a 75 year old convincingly.
7
Why does Christina need multiple exorcisms? Does an exorcism wear off?
6
Father Amorth (as described) seems like a "dead-end" for Friedkin.... in terms of searching for "the real deal". I suppose Friedkin's documentary can point-out more flaws with The Vatican, thus reinforcing beliefs that The Pope is a fraud. Like so many Trump appointees being investigated for "negative" things, similarly Father Amorth would be that for The Pope. ----- Possession really is about: Ownership. The lesson learned: Don't get too caught-up with possession or you could look like one of those ugly possessed characters in the scary movie.
As for Satan ruling The World. Impossible. The Messiah has that position. As for Satan being in the Vatican, I don't know. ----- The 666 5th Building and Jared Kushner kind of got my attention! I believe they were trying to present Jared as The Messiah... with his involvement in the peace talks. They probably purchased such a biblical building to add to Jared's Messiah costume. Jared would be a dead-end.
But, now would be a great time for The Messiah to arrive, and rule The World. Perhaps, this person would first appear in a job position at The World Level in some way.... like The Top Level of The BusinessWorld or The Top Level of Higher Education. Maybe does both! Jared is not educated enough to get a job at The Top Level. He does not have enough Education Achievement.
No, Dear. YOU need an Exorcist. Or just chronic Clinton Derangement Syndrome ??? Seriously.
13
Wait Maureen, wasn't the most evil, devilish candidate- you know the one you lambasted week after week- the one who needed to be exiled into voter oblivion?
When do we hear your mea culpa or gee, Hilary I goofed?
26
How do we perform a mass exorcism on the trump base and FOX propagandists that sold or gave away their soul to the trump? Exorcise all those evangelists without a soul memorialized by the photo in the Oval Office of them surrounding their demonic leader?
Is cofefe is devil-speak? For what? Or is it secret code for Putin?
13
Maureen,
Hollywood in DC is still Hollywood. Don't make the NYT pay for the lunch.
6
While I don't think I've ever watched The Exorcist all the way through (and I was too young to be allowed to see it when it came out), when it's been on television, I've usually watched a scene or two (including the head-spinning blah blah) and thought, "This is dumb" and switched the channel. What I find more bone chilling, appalling on a far deeper and more significant level is that Maureen Dowd, after having helped elect Donald Trump by fawning shamelessly over him and hounding Hillary Clinton relentlessly ("but her emails"), now thinks it's cute and funny to suggest an exorcism. THAT's what makes me think the world's gone mad. Exorcisms, and devils, aren't real, people, and 666 is just the street number of a building where the president's son-in-law, now under investigation for various sorts of corruption, made a very bad business deal. The horror in Washington is far more real than stupid movie special effects and ancient religious superstitions.
18
While Linda Blair’s head spinning in “The Exorcist” was done using special effects, Donald Trump’s head spinning presidency is nauseatingly real. Voters can exorcise some of his demonic power by sweeping away his GOP congressional enablers in November’s midterm elections...
12
And yet they're still your idea of a Grand Old Party.
What would compel you to exorcise that branding statement from your comments? I really would like a reply.
1
An exorcist? We need Ghostbusters.
Trump isn't possessed, he is an evil spirit. It is Washington and our government that are possessed. It is 60 million Americans who are possessed.
Trump is not the only evil spirit. Republicans in Congress make up an army loosed by their master, Trump.
The solution is Ghostbusters to capture them and send them back to Hades.
But since Ghostbusters is alternate reality, we will have to rid Washington and our government the old fashioned way, by voting.
That won't free the 60 million Americans. They are lost. The most we can do is hope to save their children. We need to commit to improving schools in red states even when red states refuse to fund their schools.
9
" When you’ve got a demonic child in Washington "
This is hype, and part of the confusion being sowed by Democrats of whom you seem to have become one. Most of Trump's decisions look rational to me, and he seems to have pulled off the Syria attack without causing too much damage. The attack is limited, Russia huffs and puffs, but is probably not very serious and we are back to our usual quarrels.
This is far better than what I expected a week ago.
I wonder how some of the "non-demonic children" writing for the NY Times would have handled the Syria "chemical attack" problem. You were not faced with this problem so please do not pat yourself on the back.
2
A perp walk by the President out of the White House would suffice.
21
Asparagus soup indeed. From the first, "the demon child...spewing vulgar personal attacks, lying, whining about unfairness, croaking (see the "baskets" speech)...could have been a sketch of the candidate we sent up against "the clown." If only we had an exorcist before the election...wait ! we did! Bernie was on the job but he underestimated his task and his subject, and the demon's devil, debbie, took him out before he could get the party started on the jack daniel's and raw eggs. Afflicted thus, trumped, if you will, we can only wonder: what would gene hackman have done?
More hysterical musings from the increasingly shrill Dowd on our president and leader Donald J. Trump. It is blather like this that undermines the confidence Americans have in their democracy. Hey Maureen! Trump won!! Get over it!!!
2
Uh, Steve, the shrill one is your man. Read his tweets. He shrieks and shrieks like a frightened little girl. Loves his double exclamation points, too.
Good luck, both of you.
4
trump won the electoral college...giving four states the power to decide the presidency. The majority popular vote went to Hillary.
1
Great review of a 45 year old film. Huh? Why didn't you just reprint one of your columns slamming Obama, so everyone will remember how "spot own" and prescient you were. You helped get trump elected. No one should ever forget that.
24
Who, may I ask, picked up the Restaurant 1789 check, Mo or Bill? Just asking.
6
Director Friedkin is bolstering his commercial viability on this Father Amorth project. I'm not sure who was using whom. Father Amorth had something to say when he lived; and Friedkin's movie won't be the first or last "something to say" beyond the grave.
The Republican National Church and its priesthood shock me, Ms Dowd. Let's not get distracted with the individual tragedies of possessed persons.
1
Maybe it was a bad idea to cozy up to that devil, yes?
9
What? Slow week?
8
Do you miss "Barry" yet, Ms. Dowd?
19
Maureen, we do need an exorcist in Washington, but just down the street a ways. Big white house, columns, you can't miss it. Send an exorcist there, please, its urgent.
1
Okay, so we call in an exorcist. He waves his hands about and prays a lot and then pop goes the weasel. But it really scares the heck out of me imagining what that weasel will look like! An if the subject in the movie spouted green pea, might will this one be spouting green . . .
3
You are right! Trump is a circus clown; Pence is bible thumping evil :-o Be afraid people, be very afraid.
5
This is vaguely (very vaguely, kinda, sorta) interesting. The point of including it in the Sunday Review section is what, again?
4
You have nobody to blame but yourself. Lookin the mirror. During the 2016 election there were 2 choices. Trump or Clinton. You articulated we you had disdain for Clinton. You and others bet on the wrong horse. You had a voice that influenced people. You are now not a respected voice but yet another carnival barker cheering for whatever pop culture is favoring. Shame on you.
10
What's needed is a MASSIVE turnout of democrats in november including young voters, women voters, people of color to remove republicans and put up a firewall against trump.
9
I wonder what Mike Pence would think if Trump started turning his head 360 degrees and levitating . Would the base still support him ? . Would the Republicans members of Congress vote to impeach him ? .
3
The exorcism America needs is to eliminate tax exempt status for religious institutions as well as fraudulent social welfare groups masquerading as abortion clinics and think tanks that are really lobbyists and lets not forget everyone’s favorite charity - the NRA. You can eliminate tax exempt status for the NFL too while you are at it. All of these groups can continue to do their crazy but their donations are revenue and should be taxed. Only then can we begin the cleansing - pass the sage....please
5
DO IT! and maybe save some fine print for singles who are
mugged by discriminatory tax policy....
1
Way to Go, Deirdre!
1
After reading this column I can only ask why? Yes, there was the sly reference to a national exorcism, but mostly this is a gushing, pointless trip into irrelevance.
This article is probably the most column inches that “The Exorcist” will get until Friedkin’s obit is published, which will be its last mention outside of a university film class.
5
Cutesy little piece Maureen. Regrettably those who could begin the process of exorcism are scaredy cats who are afraid of their own shadows let alone Trump. When Trump begins to spew his endless venom, about all the congressional Republicans do is shrug their shoulders and say it could be worse. To them, Hillary was the devil incarnate not Trump. No need to hold our breath or gasp in fear we will bear witness to the devil leaving the White House. Our only cure is at the ballot box. No cross waiving, just an X marking the spot for the Democrats running against these cowards.
6
The Trump presidency must have been an exorcism gone wrong - Beezelbub has been unleashed upon the world. Whoever took him out, can you please now put him back in? Better one person be inhabited by the devil than all the rest of us.
2
After reading the first paragraph, I thought at first you were talking (again) about Hillary Clinton, and was so relieved you weren’t. We, don’t you think, must all be ashamed for the vilification of Hillary, which produced what we have now. Be more careful with who you hate.
9
Haven't seen Exorcist, but some topics in the article seem timely.
Outrageous spews, spinning heads and the number of that building, for example.
2
Quite a funny one, Maureen. I’m still chuckling.
1
"[W]ho do you call?"
You certainly don't call Maureen Dowd who gave a major assist to the devil by continuously denigrating Hillary Clinton. She can be called the devil's accompice.
11
Excuse me. No one worked harder to put Trump
in White HOuse than Dowd we need an exorcism
from her.
REtire and answer your true calling-souring milk
13
What perfect timing for anyone in Rome next week:
"Vatican trains exorcists as demonic possession claims rise"
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vatican-trains-exorcists-as-demo...
If I am not mistaken, Ms. Dowd, your colleague Ross Douthat can be called upon to broker exorcisms.
7
Hmmmm. So...why is Donald Trump afraid of stairs, then?
1
"We Need an Exorcist!"
How did you manage to read the minds of billions of people on planet Earth?
I have one bone to pick with Friedkin. If Linda Blair had only gushed cheap cheese burgers! Wow!
Excellent writing, Ms. Dowd.
3
What we need is a 2018 election, followed by a Democratic House which will facilitate the completion of the investigation into Trump, unhindered by Republican obstruction. That will take us to the 2020 election, which will complete the sweep of the Senate and the Presidency.
Once Trump is no longer in office, he can and should be prosecuted. The Statute of Limitations will have not expired, especially on New York state charges. We have only scratched the surface on those items.
Only then, when Trump is sent to prison, will the rest of the country get it's exorcism, regardless of what Trump voters think. Hitler was in the bunker, and retained a twenty-five percent popularity, as did Nixon during Watergate.
The majority of the country; Trump voters aside, needs to know that the rule of law still applies, which is why sending him to prison is so important to exorcising Trump - and the lawlessness he represents - from our democracy. The country needs to see that there are consequences to the lawlessness, and obstruction. That is the exorcism to which you refer.
We do not need a resignation; we don't need pardons. We need prison time for Trump and his accomplices.
4
Maureen Dowd does lunch with a once-famous Hollywood director in a piece too slight for the Style page. How does she keep her prominent position on the Opinion pages?
10
Bile. Gibberish. Vulgar personal attacks. Confusion. Whining. Diabolical.
In one paragraph, Dowd, in a weird deflection, describes DECADES of her writing attacking the Clintons and the Obamas. The damage she did to our country has yet to be put into words— and accounted for.
8
Good one Maureen! I didn't know you could tell a story so well without relying on snark. Really good.
1
What is the purpose of this article? The NyT is turning into a blog-portal. Friedkin is widely known as a #metoo poster-child and Dowd briefly touches on his abusive tactics in her article. But why write an article about your lunch conversation? The only thing missing is a selfie with your food.
7
Maureen, with all else going on in the world, this is all you got?
You should be all over this immoral, corrupt and clueless White House.
Carson, Pruitt, Zinke, DeVoss and the grand buffoon Trump, the material is gold. Let em have it.
5
"Carson, Pruitt, Zinke, DeVoss and the grand buffoon Trump, the material is gold"
Yes, and now you know why she worked so hard to sandbag HIllary.
5
You cannot exorcise stupidity. To wit: No one knew that healthcare is so complicated. TPP is the worst deal in history.... but let's take another look at it. Perhaps the likes of Pope Francis himself could conjure out the rot that encrusts the soul of our shameful president, but not even God herself could lift the shroud of stupidity that envelops our moronic chief of state.
5
Exorcism, impeachment, conviction for past and present crimes, it's gotten to the point that no one much cares how we get rid of the devil in the White House, the only exception being that his removal follows the rule of law.
This thug and his gang can't be allowed any more access to weapons of mass destruction, tax dollars, the air we breathe, the water we drink.
5
Sorry, again, but I repeat in view of our "Condition", Sometimes the sanest reaction to an insane situation...is Insanity. We, the People, need Therapy.
2
Be it fiction or history, the darker world has its appeal. Voodoo is fascinating. Seers and fortune tellers still hold court in many places in the South. Want to see a Voodoo ceremony? Go to New Orleans and ask the right people. The appeal of exorcism is that it might be founded in a real need. Maybe America as a whole needs one to extract any demon occupying the White House.
5
For those of us who merely foam at the mouth, Maureen is always an inspiration. With her as our fearless leader and girl guide to the early 21st Century, there are more than a few of us who would like to crawl under her covers with her. Long may she write and reign. It is always a treat to read her observations about depravity under the broad, and otherwise, Saturday night sheets while we contemplate another rainy Sunday with "The Times."
5
Congratulations Ms Dowd! This column has some real historical, psychological, sociological meat in it.
Friedkin is extra-ordinary in his insights (and I never heard of him before and have never seen "The Exorcist").
And he was married to JEANNE MOREAU! And believes in MILES DAVIS! Why can't we have a President who understands psychology and history and social movements?
My husband and I are getting through the TRUMPERA by listening to Mozart who exorcizes our minds.
5
Somehow i just don't find this funny. When I read this:
Yeah I was scared too by the movie and given that the “When she breathed into the mic, you’d hear five or six sounds come out at once, like John Coltrane playing the sax,” he says. “When I first called her, she said, ‘I’m in A.A. I had a serious drinking problem. I am a lapsed Catholic, but I still have strong ties to the church. So in order to do what you want, I’m going to have to start drinking Jack Daniel’s again and smoking cigarettes and eating raw eggs.’ And she wanted to have her own two priests with her at all times.”
Why would he want someone to go backwards to a hellish experience ? Is this about Friedkin's ego ? How is he different from Trump ?
5
“Before Donald Trump became president, the most frightening thing that happened in the capital was “The Exorcist...”
Nixon was no slouch in the terrifying department, thank you. :)
12
Great movie, and a great fun column, Maureen
2
I don't use the word "evil" lightly. I do think that Trump is an evil, soulless man. His eyes are dead. He gets his kicks from humiliating and hurting others. He enjoys the powerful feeling of keeping people in a constant state of fear and anxiety. He completely lacks compassion. He has no moral compass. I challenge anyone to come up with ONE redeeming feature or quality of Donald Trump.
And, yet each Friday night in synagogue, during silent prayers, he's the one I pray for. And, I pray for our country, that we may have the strength to withstand the evil that lives among us.
33
Perhaps we are developing greater character and understanding as we face the White House horror show. At least it is hoped that we might go in that direction. Actually there is some evidence that this is happening with the youth and women marches and the rise of people willing to run for local public offices.
in the meantime I understand your attempt to escape into the now in hind sight the mild film versions of horror that possess you. That only lasts a few hours, but our daily news horror seems to go on endlessly and is hard to ignore when it is in our face with every tweet and news cast.
3
This was all written on the wall before he got elected. Still you endorsed him. Are all his endorsers in need of exorcism too?
19
"Are all his endorsers in need of exorcism," no. Just the GOP.
3
THAT is an article. Thank you.
1
Okay..Ms Dowd you did it. You brought back those images of Linda Blair that had me hiding my face until the end of the movie while my husband teased me...the whole time... To this day I can not tell you how it ended. Even scarier than Hitchcock's Psycho!
Which brings me to Trump. I really don't think that anyone possessed or otherwise not, scares me more than this man. And, lord above, I would not want to be the priest on the other end performing this ancient rite. In fact, the "exorciser" would probably flee out of utter fear and defeat from the "exorcisee." Very likely the character defects are so numerous and entwined within his DNA that if an exorcism were successful, Mr Trump would be nothing more than a dried dandelion weed that would blow away with a huff and a puff. So we are left to watch in real time this horror film play out. But let's at least hope it has a happy ending...for us.
7
Must we insult dandelions which at least have the capacity to amuse children?
4
Thinking of a different movie; The Omen. Maybe Trump is actually the Devil?
1
Exorcist: indeed maybe the scariest move I've ever seen. Either that or "War of the Worlds," which gave me nightmares at 8 years old. But hands down, the Catholics do better than the Martians at shaking you up your whole life.
3
Certain members of the press could have used the services of an exorcist during the last presidential election when they were full of demons and couldn't stop raving about the Clintons. Sorry, Maureen, no absolution.
8
Funny stuff. Just wanted to point out, when someone like me doesn't buy into Catholicism, doesn't have superstitions, and so on, The Exorcist is nothing but silliness. Also movies like The Omen are a lot more amusing if you root for the evil little kid.
Really, the assumption that Satan would do something like possessing one puny human is ludicrously narcissistic. Humans, in the universe, are completely unnoticeable and of zero consequence. Anything that has dominion over the universe as a whole could not possibly be interested in us, just as humans walk around without taking undue interest in the tardigrades underfoot.
8
To all the people who have never seen the movie or did and were not that impressed it's just a long dark stairway.
1
How would a 2018 remake of The Exorcist look? Bad guys from the film Spotlight? Updated movie icons to include Hannibal Lecher, three snappy billboards outside the house and a spectrum of absurd officials who could never, ever hold political office in real life. And most important... the protagonist would have to regurgitate kale shakes.
Maureen, The film came out on Dec. 26, 1973 and likely remained in the D.C. theaters in January 1974. Think again where you were on your 21st because it was likely the next year the movie had you in bed under the covers. (Sorry to be pedantic about the math. Never saw this movie, but I have seen Amityville Horror. My mom took me! Interesting story about the soundtrack being the Exorcist original...)
1
Right in your wheelhouse Maureen. Hollywood. and with 97 comments at 8:00 A.M. on Sunday, I'd have to say if you want popularity you need to feature an entire column on Trump, not just every adjective you can think of strung together, then giving us an interview with an 82 year-old director who was best known by work in the 70s and what frightened you when you were 21.
3
A devil who can clearly be seen is not a great threat. It is the devil who appears to be an angel that will bring you into the darkness.
3
Yes, what the world needs now is not love sweet love but rather an exorcist! The question is where to send him first, the White House or the Vatican. I pick the Vatican.
1
I passed by those infamous steps in a taxicab while they were filming “Exorcist” and my driver told me that his friend picked up a lady wearing a veil and was told to drive to a secluded location near a cemetery. When he got there and turned around, the veiled lady was no longer in his cab. The cab driver told this story without putting me on. But later, I thought, maybe someone is imagining August St. Gaudens’ statue of the Veiled Lady as a ghost (taken for a ride!).
True test of a Georgetown freshman circa 1973/4 was to bound those steps in both directions in various states of inebriation
4
I never have watched The Exorcist movie, didn`t want to have several sleepless nights.
Fast forward to current, President trump like the Director the popular belief is he never drinks alcohol or have experimented with drugs but the similarity ends there.
What is Oatmeal when breakfast sausage is available at McDonald`s ?
Now the reality is the Country is polluted with bad breath and venom by trump spewing garbage of lies by his daily tweets and hateful massages.
But the old bountiful man does not care if he is ruining our living spaces because he lives for the moment with his insecurities watching fox and friends.
So now I want to crawl under the covers.
2
Given the current Washington environment and the sheer number characters involved I believe only one excorsist wouldn't be nearly enough.
1
"I think Miles Davis is a reason to live."
I agree, and John Coltrane, and Ellis Marsallis, and Joe Henderson, and ...
1
He is not a child, he is an adult! It is way past time that we stop labeling children as demonic and sick. It is adult behavior that we are speaking of here, right?
1
The Jimmy Breslin story made me laugh hard.
God bless and keep him.
Trump… eh…he can spend eternity below eating pea soup.
2
Is your point that we need an exorcism at the White House? I couldn’t finish watching the film to the end nor can I stomach watching Trump destroy our country. We need all the “taint teams” available to cleanse our country from Trump’s inner demons.
5
The book was good and scary. The movie, which I finally watched last year, was neither: So many newer movies, with their buckets of blood and vastly improved CGI, etc., makes "The Exorcist" bland and almost a failure. That cinematography looked so videotapey that I just couldn't buy it.
A scary movie to me was "Interview with a Vampire" the Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise movie. And, of course, the original werewolf with Lon Chaney, Jr. Him slowly morphing into a hairy monster in black-and-white was, and is, terrifying. His hair wasn't perfect.
If Trump underwent a successful exorcism to evict the demons inhabiting his body ..... there would be nothing left but a foul puddle and a hairball.
3
Reverend Mueller is the exorcist.
3
Yup, sounds just like Trump!
2
Who can we count on to go after the spooky Mr. Trump?
Spooks at the FBI who know what skeletons are in Donald's closet. Comey is bringing them to light. What really scares Trump is that our intelligence agents will unearth them all, and he won't be able to hide his dirty hands.
2
My first job out of college was as a costume mistress for a play that was touring England before going into the West End. One such stop on the way was in Bath. I was at in the attic of the theatre where the costume shop was located. It was a dark and stormy night- no kidding! I, for some insane reason, was reading The Exorcist to pass time during the play's performance. I couldn't put the book down because I was too terrified. That book, and Rosemary's Baby scared the bejesus out of me. I would love to see Trump as scared and perhaps at night, as he roams the WH, he is.
2
The Exorcist was the scariest movie ever. It took months to be able to sleep after seeing it. No one came close. Well. Maybe Rosemary's Baby. The Dakota is spooky, too.
But. Trump is much more a kakistocratic capo than a demon. A diminutive don. He's not smart enough to be that evil.
2
There is nothing supernatural or quasi-demonic about Donald Trump; there are no flying fire-breathing dragons, no aliens or angels, no Harry Potter and his magic wand or anything else like that to come save us. We did this to ourselves. We made a bad mistake, all of us. The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, isn't it? Now it is a long slog of tedious and meticulous work to get us back on the path to sanity. There is no exorcism or exorcist; there never was. There were only those who believed this could never happen, and so it did happen. Now we learn from it, make certain we don't make these same mistakes again, educate our children about our faults and shortcomings, and move on from this wretched ephemeral interstice, or we stagnate and are lost. Churchill was right when he observed that eventually we Americans do the right thing. I don't expect we'll let him down this time, either.
2
"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do."
John 8:44 LJV
"... there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
John 8:24 NIV (Easier to understand)
Sound like anyone we know? I've suggested before in a comment that the White House could use a resident exorcist. But the November elections will have to do for a start. And we won't even have to learn Latin!
27
Nope, not an Exorcist needed here. Just find your principles using your moral compass (SOMEONE in the US must still have one) and get together to harness your integrity, lash it to your spines and banish this vulgar, ignorant demon!
35
That first paragraph captures the essence of our situation better than any description I have yet to see. Second best is Nabokov: 'Behind (his) quiet boyish smile, cesspools full of rotting monsters'.
11
The most frightening horror movie for me was "Silence of the Lambs"-and I had read the book several times! In these dark days I often think about Hannibal Lecter, who despised bad manners and said that he liked to eat the rude. Do I have a dinner suggestion for him!
15
But wait,,
Even as Trump’s head does 360s, there is hope, he can now get a complete head transplant.
Reported from China, a team of Chinese and Italian surgeons have completed their first experiment, using cadavers now, but human volunteers are already lining up. Rather than a brain-dead human donating multiple organs to individual recipients, the donor donates their entire body (from the neck down), to a recipient with a disease like ALS.
Cost estimates: about $100 million each, quite affordable to our ultra-elite like Trump.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/11/17/worlds-first-human-head-t...
Problem is, in Trump’s case, the disease is in the head, not the body.
Never mind.
Guess we could use a real exorcist after all.
Too bad Father Amorth died last year.
7
When you can watch “The Exorcist” knowing that the special effects people in Hollywood concocted the bile spewed by the Linda Blair character from something as wholesome and inoffensive as oatmeal, albeit colored green, it makes watching those scenes almost OTT comic. That goes ditto for Hitchcock’s (black and white) “Psycho” which, although it scared me exponentially more than “The Exorcist” I’ve never watched since with the same terror since learning that the blood used in the infamous “shower scene” was liquid chocolate.
Now if only all the horror emanating from the Oval Office these days could be as easily dismissed as “fakery.” Unfortunately what’s currently going on at the highest levels of our government is only too real and it scares the bejesus out of me.
6
Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells' should have won the Oscar for best original soundtrack instead of Marvin Hamlisch's renditions of Scott Joplin rags for 'The Sting.'
11
You make the case why we need separation of church and state more than ever. THAT is where we need the extraction.
The country has its overblown influence from evangelicals who have hypocritically supported this President and administration, as they both go against almost all of the tenets they hold dear.
The country has innumerable shady 501c4's that are supposed to act as charitable entities, but only serve as political slush funds. Religious entities that are tax exempt are very much doing the same. ( again with the hypocrisy from above )
Religious dogma and the politicians that follow through on it with blinders on to science are the real threat to our existence. ( climate change being the punching bag )
It's enough to make this atheist's head spin round...
19
Scary movies? Rosemary's Baby (and I read the short, terrifying book by Ira Levin, when in high school, too.)
And Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Can barely tolerate just saying the title, so scary. Imprinted on the memory, as The Exorcist is for many here.
8
Interesting. I saw Rosemary's Baby for the first time a couple of weeks ago and didn't find it the slightest bit scary. There was literally not one scary moment. I suppose that's because I already knew the whole story. I can imagine earlier, less jaded audiences finding it pretty freaky, and the topic shocking. Now it almost seems camp.
1
You make the case why we need separation of church and state more than ever. THAT is where we need the extraction. The country has its overblown influence from evangelicals who have hypocritically supported this President and administration, as they both go against almost all of the tenets they hold dear. The country has innumerable shady 501c4's that are supposed to act as charitable entities, but only serve as political slush funds. Religious entities that are tax exempt are very much doing the same. ( again with the hypocrisy from above ) Religious dogma and the politicians that follow through on it with blinders on to science are the real threat to our existence. ( climate change being the punching bag ) It's enough to make this atheist's head spin round...
9
When I was in second grade a young priest came into our Catholic school class and regaled us with a thoroughly scary story about a little girl who was possessed by a demon. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember Sister respectfully saying "Father, I think you're frightening the children." Father didn't think so. So, at the tender age of 6, I came to believe in demonic possession.
I'm pretty old now and in my life I have suspected a few nasty people who came into my orbit of being under the influence of an evil demon. But now we are all witnessing a classic possession. A demonically disturbed crazy man has crawled into our White House and a complicit GOP refuses to notice. Thank God for the exorcist, a/k/a Robert Mueller. He and his team of investigators/exorcists are working tirelessly to exorcise the orange hued, yellow haired, evil entity from our government and hopefully confine him and his minions to locations where they can do no harm.
16
I loved that movie, partly because of the scenes filmed in Georgetown. I once broke the heel off a shoe climbing those stairs. But as scary as it was, it doesn’t come close to the horror the Trump administration supplies on a daily basis.
11
Glory be! William Friedkin is 82. No one's fave go-to movie is "The Exorcist", despite the daemon in the flesh inhabiting our American presidency today. Period. The end. P.S. Remembering Jeanne Moreau, Friedkin's first wife from Paris in the 1950s and 60s is still a great treat. She said "age doesn't protect you from love. But love protects you from age." RIP she died at 89 last year.
7
When I moved to New York, my first job was at 666 Fifth Avenue. The building was so ugly that we called it "the crate that the Seagram Building came in."
Jared Kushner paid a record price for it. And Donald Trump at first put Kushner in charge of an astounding percentage of his agenda.
Sadly, that wasn't Trump's worst mistake. There have been so many that's it's hard to decide what is.
10
Kushner was compelled to buy the building so he could have ready access to the penthouse offices where he visits Al Pacino. You saw that movie didn't you?
1
I also saw "The Exorcist" in my early twenties. I'm surprised by Dowd's reaction and that of many commenters. I recall sitting in a packed movie theater, stifling my laughter, so that I didn't spoil anyone's scary fun.
7
We the American people need to step up against Trump by:
Demonstrating in our communities
Demanding accountability from the House and the Senate
Calling and writing House and Senate leaders
Being alert and informed
Read and watch media
Demand the truth and accountability
Fighting against discrimination and hatred
Most important VOTE in the midterms!
8
I always thought the most disturbing scene to watch was mmr brain scan. The film did have some of the worst ever sequels.
2
I watched the edited, censored TV version when I was in grade school. I think ABC aired it. It scared the hell out of me. I never watched it again.
3
Having been raised a faithful Catholic, I couldn't get to the DC theatre where I saw the Exorcist with my soon to be wife fast enough. Over the years, I've watched the movie multiple times, the most recent about a year ago and I continue to be mesmerized not by Linda Blair's head turning, vomit spewing contortions, but the scenes of Father Damien Karras in the NYC subways, his apparitions of his dead mother and with her as she's dying in her Bronx apartment.
The Karras character struck me as a smart, tough, soulful, educated Jesuit who seemed flawed and ready to fall in love at any moment, if only God would let him.
When I lived in DC those years in the 1970s, I would walk along the street astride the Potomac frequently, inevitably passing those steps thinking often of Father Karras' fall to his death, his fall from grace, while contemplating the perpetual and continuing battles of Good versus Evil. I see the movie is a metaphor for our current political dilemma not really finding yet our Father Karras exorcising the evil from the White House.
48
I saw the movie "It" as a metaphor for our current time in American existence.
Red balloons. Horrifying clowns. Disappearing children. Ignorant adults.
2
Yes! But Trump won’t pay them so we’ll be repossessed.
9
Trump has no need for an exorcism.
His fixer Cohen would contact Satan, offer him money to leave Trump's body, get him to sign a settlement agreement with an NDA, and have Satan sign it with a fake name (David Devilson?)
And, of course, the money for Satan would come from Cohen's personal funds--never, for example, from Trump's own pocket, or his campaign, or a rich GOP donor, or a conservative PAC.
It would make a lousy horror movie. But it would be a great courtroom drama.
7
"His fixer Cohen would contact Satan"
Trump has a deal with Satan already.
His name is Rupert Murdoch.
3
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
There are now incarnations of sin in the White House. The man in our highest office has turned the presidency into an unrecognizable entity.
And yet, scores of self-described Christians believe that Jesus personally handed Donald Trump the reins.
Who could have conceived of a plot so absurd?
16
@NM -- President Obama embodied all the virtues the "Christians" revere and hold sacrosanct, yet scorned him and choose to be the devil's disciples. The righteous right should say to the president, firmly and finally, "get thee behind me, Satan".
6
Exorcist was scary, still only a movie. Now what we are witnessing is a lot scarier. After Trump is gone from the White House, we may have to exorcise the the place by washing it with holy water from the Vatican. As to Trump's bed and bedding, we may have to ship that stuff to Moscow for the Golden .... treatment. (It feels too dirty to spell out the full phrase even in jest). We may also need to request the Russians to keep the stuff as a souvenir of the golden days between Washington and Moscow in Trump's times.
7
The Exorcist was terrifying because it felt real. We all have moments when we lose control of ourselves, and we fear those moments in others when we're at their mercy. Man is his own worst enemy.
All the spin twirling out of the White House is making my head spin, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
Some people thrive on crazy and chaos, and the disorienting effect it has on others, but its no way to run a country. Unless you're trying to destroy it.
9
I'm a fairly secular man, so it takes some doing for me to point this out.
Donald Trump is the embodiment of:
Sloth
Lust
Wrath
Gluttony
Greed
Envy and Pride. He lies without effort. He lies constantly, almost as if he were the King of Lies.
If I were a religious man, I would be alarmed. Seems to me that the most religious are not, which kind of says that up is down and the right is oh so wrong.
16
With planet X about to turn us all into toast, and thus usher in the rapture, the fanatic fringe are rolling their eyes, speaking in tongues and gloating in their superiority. Bt the way, you left off coveting thy neighbors wife (and daughters, goats, etc.).
2
Madam, You perhaps remember one of Norman Mailer's politically-inspired books, in which he expressed the wish to exorcise the Pentagon. Perhaps it is the evil of time passing, thus preventing you from returning to those days when you could hide under the covers from imagined, scary threats, which prompted you to write this nostalgic, informative column. One cannot imagine a directly-linked current source of need for the obscure process to be instituted. All else resides in the nether world of the subterranean said to be ruled by Pluto (not the former star). If Hollywood type distractions help to calm the nerves, and institute ease of the pace of life, so be it. I, on the other hand, recommend a recording of an opera, Orpheus, by G.P. Telemann recorded on the Harmonia Mundi label, I think, directed by Rene Jacobs. Beautiful singing and music and high (intuited) drama will ease your pain. If not, then settle back and read some of his stuff...at least you'll be distracted.
1
His movie Sorcerer is one of the great movies of all time
1
With all that is unfolding in the world, the most influential and powerful voice for the most influential and powerful media source on the planet writes about.......this? Great piece, but better suited for Parade Magazine or TV guide.
2
Damian Karras confessed, early on in the novel, "I think I've lost my faith."
I have re-read this book many times since it was published in 1971. Rather than sit through William Friedkin's cinematic melodrama, I would suggest the original. In it, the horror of evil is far more insidious than the metamorphosis of Linda Blair from cuddly, naïve 11-year old Regan to the hideous form of the demon, Pazuzu.
After November 8, 2016, I lost my faith, Ms. Dowd, in the American experiment. America is a mistress with a pockmarked face; who wouldn't be at 240+ and counting? But she had something (seemingly) for everyone. She was both welcoming and forbidding. She was equal parts grace and tasteless. She would often go about with her dainties showing but apparently unmindful (or unwilling) to straighten herself out, regardless of who might be watching.
She even had it in her to bring about a non-white president in 2008, a man of uncommon dignity and intelligence and noble purpose. These virtues were his undoing as his "partners" in Congress were unwilling to see how high this Icarus could fly. Might his wings be impervious to the sun's rays? Spare us the thought.
But now America walks the street, splashed and stained and soiled and sullied by an awful man who has no control over the four-in-hand that he whips up on the road to destruction.
Perhaps Mr. Friedkin could find a way to put this tragedy on the screen, but I doubt it. Who'd pay to see a remake?
Now, where's your faith?
12
PERFECT.
4
Well .... don't sell Trump short. There might still be head spinning and levitation. Consider that we've all seen other evidence of possession
2
Ran up and down the steps at age 19. I will never forget the first time I saw the movie. There have been at least 20 copy cats since then. (Demonic possession movies) Even a couple of foreign ones have mad the big screen. But the real possession exists at 1600 Penn Ave NW, all the state houses across the country and the Capitol building at the other end of Penn Ave. The demon is supplysideitcus. It turns the individual into a foaming at the mouth, spewer of nonsense believer in monetary alchemy. Cutting seems to be part of the possession.(cutting taxes) Where is Father Karras when one really needs him.
5
In 1963, I was a Chaplain in Residence in Lutheran General Hospital, Park Ridge, Illinois. It was a highlight of our time in that suburb of Chicago to
be involved with Director Bill Friedkin in the process of a Production on a
documentary on the training of Chaplains at Lutheran General Hospital. Our second child was born at Lutheran General that year. Please, Someone, who, knowing William out in Wonder Land, greet him for Me. Our beautiful
Daughter, JEANNE, is now here in Mora, Minnesota, in a residence for
Alzheimer's patients. Born in January, 1963, at Lutheran General. Unfortunately, for my "Acting Career", Mr. Friedkin left the "production"
to move to Holllywood to launch his Directing Career. As an actual Friend
from his Chicago Life, I wish to Greet him and Celebrate his Success.
4
My mother gave a dinner party about six months before the Exorcist was released to theaters and invited - a bona fide exorcist. My parents were always having Catholic priests to dinner - I believe my mother thought they were all starving in their dingy rectories. He was tall, slim with a wonderful mane of prematurely grey hair and deep set dark eyes. A square jaw and melodious voice completed the picture. He was trained to be an exorcist in Rome and was friends with Mr. Blatty. So he was a consultant for the film. He had not been called upon to do an exorcism yet and when pressed about it, he said he never wanted to do one. He would not want to meet the devil incarnate. I later heard that he walked away from consulting for the film, believing it to be too much of a consumerist enterprise.
5
It was XMas in Denver and my girlfriend of 4 years decided that she had seen enough of my post-graduate malaise and it was time for her to head back east and re-establish connections with her previous life. Good judgement was in short supply in my head those days so alone and bereft I went to to Cinerama and took in The Exorcist. Another bad move, not my first. Reeling from the emotional impact of the film, I stumbled out of the theater and observed that The Sting had opened across the street. Talk about an antidote to despair... I owe a lot to Redford and Newman for bringing me back up that day. BTW, that woman and I have been together now for 45 (usually) blissful years.
32
I saw the movie in Waikiki, and when I stepped outside, there were several religious groups lined up handing out pamphlets. The night was balmy, the trades were gentle, but man, I saw none of that and was this close to converting to whichever religion would save me from being possessed.
Never underestimate the power of fear.
29
Friedkin can tell a story. I do think that Trump was sent from the antichrist. He’s lured the evangelical movement under its control. Brilliant.
But I dunno about exorcism. Trump does seem to lean evangelical (this is wonderfully odd, given Stormy and the others) so I don’t know if they buy exorcism. Trump is a little like the Blair role in “Exorcist”. He’s a recalcitrant child who uncontrollably blurts out lies and obscenities... and tweets them out. Maybe his head spins when he tweets. It certainly did with the release of the Comey book.
Catholicism is rich with mysticism from its scrapes with medieval cultures. Trump’s problem with Catholicism is that it has a Pope who would be higher than Trump, were Trump a Catholic. Unacceptable.
And anyway, I think that Franklin Graham has tagged Trump as the second coming of Christ. What we’ve got now is Bannon, et.al. as Trump’s disciples who fan out across the countryside carrying the message from Trump. It varies daily via Twitter. In that regard, I suppose that Fox News is evangelical programming. Maybe they can get a tax break.
Well, if you’ve got eight billion dollars, you can exorcise the curse out of the Sixes and smoke cigars up there to provide the ceremonial incense.
We just might miss Trump. This guy is one entertaining president. And he knows it.
15
Good synopsis. Bannon = Krampus; Jared = Lucifer (as that 666 address is obvious); Murdoch = Bezelbub. And other sycophants = lesser devils and harpies.
12
Your article was real interesting. Looking forward to the documentary. I certainly can relate to your analogy of Trump's circle. I was raised CathoIic. Lived across the street from the church. Went to the Catholic school there. Became an altar boy. Before the movie I never heard of exorcism. It wasn't talked about. But, I will never forget seeing the "Exorcist" at the theater when it first came out in 1973. I'm 66 years old and it's still unnerving. After seeing the movie on a Saturday night I went home and read the Litany of the Saints before going to bed. Sorry for getting off track. Somethings in life leave an indelible mark.
18
When the news finally sunk in that Donald Trump had been elected to become President of the United States of America, my head spun 360 degrees and failed to stop. My head's still spinning but this behavior has become totally normalized partly because the head of everyone else I know still spins too.
Since that fateful November day in 2016, I have struggled to find the most apt string of adjectives adequately to describe whatever it is in that garish Halloween costume of a human being that we catapulted into the Oval Office. Again and again I miss the mark but your first paragraph, Ms. Dowd, comes the closest I've seen yet. Congratulations!
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
142
Love it, love it, love it. Still have the Cartman idea when it comes down to if.
Back in the day I worked with a woman who was besties with Jimmy Breslin's sister. Her father was a newspaperman so they all knew each other. I had left the greater NY area before the Exorcist film so I have no inside info on that.
Have to ask about the apartment fire in 666! Coincidence? Or!!!
4
Glad I wasn't raised Catholic, Maureen, thanks for sharing.
Your essay shows the power of fantasy and hallucination. We see it every day in our President.
Trump is too damaged to change, and so are his friends Adelson, Koch, Murray, Putin, and McConnell. They will not change, and are equally unresponsive to love and facts.
We defeat them by exposing and then defeating them. The Fourth Estate needs to step up its game before we accomplish the first goal.
107
It is very interesting and kind of eerie that Friedkin did the editing at the 666 building. The # of the Beast it is and owned by Jared Kushner, who has that Damien of The Omen look. .. The Exorcist is up there on the all time scary list, but is also used some pretty heavy shock value. Still fun to watch now and then..... I still think Psycho is at the top. The original House On Haunted Hill with Vincent Price. The Shining should be on the list. There's also movies like Alien, my all time favorite, which while being Science Fiction, falls into the horror genre, and can be awfully scary,
21
After reading this, I'm tempted to pull out my old DVD of the film and watch it again, it's been many years. I saw it during its initial theatrical release at the now long gone Fox Theater in Albany , NY. The movie was a sensation, both at the box office and numerous critical raves, though NY Times film critic Vincent Canby thought the film basically 'claptrap' if memory serves. Those were the days when movie hits were more prevalent and lines formed all the away around the outside of the cinema. I drove down from nearby Saratoga Springs with one of my sisters, who had just broken up with her steady high school boyfriend and was, to say the least, heartbroken. On the drive down, I wondered if I was cruel in having her accompany me to what was purported to be a very disturbing horror movie. "The Exorcist' proved to be a shocker all right, with plenty of creepy ambience, hair raising moments, and (to this day) incredible visual and sound effects. I tend to agree with the late Mr. Canby that the film was more canny hokum than immortal masterpiece but will concede it's remains a one of a kind experience. Maureen Dowd's title and first paragraph to this Op/Ed, as another reader notes, is an ingenious prelude to her fascinating interview with William Friedkin.
10
I don't believe a word he says. Old movie guys like to embellish. One sentence novels.
8
Great idea - an exorcism.
With the head spinning amount of news out of Washington these days, we're also going to need some physical therapy when all is said and done.
15
Wow I like all of your stuff Mo but this was very enlightening. I watched The Exorcist when I was 20 and there is something unique about it that qualifies it for Scariest Picture of all time. I’m sure my Catholic upbringing had something to do with it, and I’ve seen many more horror movies that made me jump more, but none with the lasting impression of The Exorcist.
Anyway, nice job. And nice to read about something other than Trump, although I suppose we could argue he is the demon possessing the country and we could use a 50-state exorcism. Or a global exorcism. Need lots of crosses and candles for that one!
27
Since trump's election, I carry a bottle of holy water in my purse. Not sure why, but it can't hurt.
10
It's comforting to hear so many others' reaction to The Exorcist was as extreme as my own. The only truly frightening movie I've seen, lo these many years - I was a little ashamed it affected me so much.
It was roughly the same time as Watergate, oddly enough, a horror in its own right. And here we go again.
31
I went to see "The Exorcist" with my then-boyfriend, now- husband. We got a speeding ticket on way to the movie. I was only 17. My mom was out of town. I was staying alone in my large, rambling house that was bordered by woods on three sides. My dog howled in the night. I slept with a knitting needle under my pillow. There were knives in the house, but that was too scary. A knitting needle to the heart is what I envisioned, at 17. I must have been too Catholic to ask my then-boyfriend/now-husband to stay with me.
"The Exorcist" movie had a certain dark power about it, despite SNL skit parodies--"Your mother sews socks that smell!" Years later, I read the book, and was again chilled to the bone. Can't look at a ouija board. And now, there's the most lifelike, powerful demon, inhabiting the spirit of democracy. It's hard to type with crossed index fingers.
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Years and years ago, me and a few of my teenaged coworkers got together on a Friday night after finishing work at Woolworths. Jerri pulled out a Ouija board so we could find out if we would be married, get a prom date, etc. After a short while the thing we all had our fingers on (forgot what its called) start moving so fast that it was squeaking. It started spelling out filthy words and eventually flew off the board. This terrified us all.
I later read somewhere that playing with a ouija board was like going to bed with all the doors and windows open. You never know who or what will come in.
All right, who the heck was playing with the ouija board and let trump in?
3
Though I am 71 years old, I have never watched "The Exorcist." But I am on tenterhooks waiting for the release of "Our National Exorcism." Coming to a polling station near you on November 6, 2018.
274
Simmer down, Ms. Dowd, just as I have come to the conclusion that if a ghost shows up at this small house, where bears are prowling in the garden, the counselor for the lost soul will this reader, you are carrying on about The Exorcist, which we saw at the same age. My companion long gone now, one of the most powerful literary agents of her time, she thought the movie was a lot of fun because it made her feel young again.
Never has America been in possession of a president with this amount of coverage from The Press. A dullard with a big mouth and edging toward being exalted as a Cult Figure.
The Nation's sole stepped on some powerful political chewing gum, and we are having trouble walking as a result, with this heel-coated goo.
Poor old Trump, looking awful and sans family, first seen with Bannon out of Star War, only to be abandoned while the tough gets going.
Presidents are often figures of fun, and Carter was done in by a rabid rabbit; the Media had a field day when he enjoying a paddle on the river.
A frozen Congress, an uncertain Policy of Governance and a President boxed-in. Call it virulent glue, but the Nation is in need of a breath of fresh air. It is We, Thee and Me, who are in need of an exorcist to get back on track and for the Nation to get going in a sensible direction, before we expire from ennui in a case of Trump stupor.
30
Brilliant! (as usual).
2
As long as we’re summoning the current demonic child in Washington, let’s update the most famous line from “The Exorcist.”:
“Your lawyer’s got lots to tell, Trump, you faithless slime.”
38
I read the original long screenplay (It would have been a four hour movie,) at twelve, before I saw the film in the summer of 1974. I was certain that I was going to be possessed. By the time I saw the movie-- second run-- we had smoked so much that it only struck me as funny. Maybe we are all possessed in one way or another, Not by demons, but by experience and the horrors of time passing.
10
It became clear as the Trump campaign advanced that Donald Trump could do or say just about anything and his supporters would still back him. It reminded me of the zombies in "Night of the Living Dead." No matter what, they'd follow him anywhere with that same relentless devotion the zombies had for the taste of human flesh. The more vile his actions or words, the more devoted the trumpsters seemed to become.
I find it far easier to understand what motivates Donald Trump than I do what motivates his supporters who look the other way as he breaks so many promises he's made to them. That's the horror that is most terrifying.
When is enough, too much? That's the question that keeps me awake at night.
106
A 90-year-old explained it to me. He said we have to get back to Christian Values. That's it. That's all. Nothing else matters. Until they rest in peace, the war will go on.
15
Are we talking about the Christian values as exemplified by Trump?
"It would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven."
"What you do unto the least of thee you do unto me."
Jesus Christ
When Mr. Trump said that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it, I was horrified. I still am, but I'm no longer horrified by him any more than I'm horrified by rats hosting the plague. That's just their nature. What's even more horrifying is that there are so many of us stupid or malevolent enough that what he said is true. And even worse that the once proud GOP has either joined them or turned a blind eye in order to rob the country blind. A pox on all of them.
11
What? We thought Scooter Libby was pretty scary. W and Cheney lying us into a war in Iraq, pretty scary too. GOP spending 8 years saying NO to Obama and trying to dismantle healthcare access for millions was frightening. Trump is the natural son of a long line of scary and evil men. They just have better manners, bit of polish and charm to gloss over the basic bad. Paul Ryan, suited or shirtless, bad. Mitch, old creepy and awful. If someone reported that their heads rotate on their necks and they eat their young, we wouldn't be shocked at all.
196
The Exorcist still sends a cold chill down my spine. I will only watch it by the light of a sunny summer day.
This is one of your best pieces. A very interesting man with stories to tell.
22
President Trump is much scarier to me than Linda Blair vomiting green bile.
However, we don't need priests and an exorcism to put this vile being back in his place.
We only need the majority party controlling Congress, the Republicans, to stop being such cowardly quislings, to step up and stand up to this grotesque demon trying to destroy our democracy and our norms.
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I recall reading "The Excorcist," when I was around 13 years old--I wasn't allowed to watch the film. To this day I believe that my imagination was far worse than anything the film depicted (which I saw later as an adult. Truly the most frightening films are those who allow the audiences imaginations to run wild, rather than those quaint horror films that show far too much.
21
I saw The Exorcist when it was first released in 1973 in NYC. I was 13. That movie shocked and terrified me then and haunted me for decades. The images and sounds were burned into my brain and were not easily erased. I'm 58 now and if I accidentally stumble across an image from the movie I look away immediately. I'm grateful the radio no longer plays Tubular Bells. A rush of fear would course through me the second I heard the first few notes. Even now I still feel the fear, laying dormant deep down but easily stirred by this article.
27
"Lying" dormant, you mean--but yes, I agree.
1
I do not believe in exorcisms, but I believe in Proust. Proust's precocious understanding that each time a memory is remebered it is changed, is the kindest explanation I can imagine for explaining Donald Trump. This understanding has been recently verified by neuroscientists. Notwithstanding my failure of belief in exorcisms, if I am incorrect, no one needs an exorcism more than Trump.
57
The first time I saw "The Exorcist" is when it was aired on television. I was sitting on the couch with my Siamese cat sitting next to me. The first time the demon's voice was heard my cat jumped off the couch and ran out of the room. She did not come back into the room until I turned the television off. And yet she was notorious for terrorizing a German Shepard in my neighborhood.
90
Funny, funny, funny!
1
Absolutely, hands down, the most compellingly clever, powerfully eloquent, and sidesplittingly funny opening paragraph of ALL TIME. Thanks, Maureen Dowd
38
I enjoyed this. We can use a little levity now. It's a bit frightening that the subject of demonic possession provides it. Reality is scarier.
28
It was sometime in the last quarter of 1973 that “The Exorcist” was launched exclusively at two theatres in the whole country, one in NYC, the other in L.A., some miles from Occidental College, where I attended. A bunch of us decided to take it in. It was a young, macho thing to do, because there had been news stories about people being carried out to ambulances, completely hysterical.
It was the most horrific thing this lapsed Catholic for one had ever seen in his life. I had nightmares for weeks – in my case, Satan’s head sliding up in the wee hours from the crack between my dorm bed and the wall and saying to me what s(he) said to Father Karras that started “Your mother …”. One of our group was the dorm druggie, constantly blown big time on pot, hash and pills, but mostly massive quantities of beer. I would glance at him during the movie, knowing that he’d come about as blown as he ever was. While all of had huge eyes and were mouthing “oh, my GOD” constantly, he was completely silent and still throughout the movie, with unblinking eyes the size of dinner plates. We couldn’t get him to speak one word until we were all back in the dorm and he’d consumed numerous MORE beers. Beelzebub only knows of what horrors HIS dreams consisted for weeks.
But even ultimate horror palls – within a month, there were stories of patrons carving out cheering sections for Satan.
The holds on us that we allow atavistic fears to take can be astonishing. Ahhh … those were the days.
15
There undoubtedly are profound depths to Life, the Universe and Everything. Who knows if life beyond death, if it exists, includes the kinds of demonic possession that Friedkin witnessed and that Father Amorth performed. I’ve always been a pretty relaxed agnostic, not seeing in my life so far any real evidence of either extreme view of religion.
But if Friedkin REALLY wanted to plumb the depths of horror, he’d examine on film the possibility that Satan DOES exist, but that God does not. Oh, and I’ve always agreed with him that Gene Hackman was miscast as Popeye Doyle in “The French Connection”.
6
I laughed with tears. Great post
2
Richard,
I was trying to think why I wouldn't have seen that movie, and then realized in 1973, I was in Lebanon in the middle of "The Wrath of God".
I was stupid and naive enough to find it exciting when Syrian forces roared through Baalbek on their way to Beirut, their machine gun fire splatting against the walls of our compound. We fled to the hills in an old Mercedes to live in a shepherd shack till things settled down below.
I was young and invincible in that adventure, but I don't think I would have had the guts back then to see "The Excorcist". That's a horror of a whole other order.
Maybe I should imbibe a little and try to watch it now and see what stuff I'm really made of.
2
If I had my way, I would suggest using the Aztec method of exorcism.
15
Who do you call? You call on Congress. And failing that, you ask for a military coup.
I do believe, however, that the Sign has been given. The next cover of Time resounds from depths of the psyche to tell us Trump is finished.
41
YES please and Pence as well thank you!
3
The new documentary sounds like a good one. But a slight correction on the great William Friedkin's career. His To Live and Die In L.A. is a cult classic, one of the great cop movies of all time and was released in 1985. The Sorcerer is another classic made or released in 1977. He did not peak in the early '70s unless you're using box office as your gauge. He did great stuff after the two blockbusters. And a Chicago native - how cool is that. Cheers man!
31
Definitely agree concerning Sorcerer; Friedkin was at the top of his game for that one. It deserved far more attention than it got. And what I appreciate most about the The Exorcist - at least nowadays - is that its effects were undertaken strictly as a hand-made affair while CGI was still a long ways off. Pure ingenuity that was remarkably ambitious. That, of course, and Friedkin's decision to strictly maintain a tone of bleak, earnest realism throughout the film - that was the genius stroke.
5
Well said! “To Live and Die in LA” is one of the great underrated cop movies.
6
Thank you so much for this. As a lifelong lover of Georgetown, who tended bar there in the 80s, those steps will always be, oddly, a reminder of great, crazy, happy times. Back then, if you were going to meet people in Georgetown but couldn’t decided where, the answer was always simple: “top of The Exorcist steps.” Then off to the Tombs to start the evening! Thanks again!
24
We will be exorcised, rid of trump, vote by vote.
Today I met a staunch Republican friend for lunch, the first time we've talked for an extended time since Nov. 2016. Near lunch end, I took a deep breath and asked her what she thought of djt. The gist of her response, she is beyond sorry she ever voted for him and is disgusted by his actions as president. We can hope she is representative of millions more who are appalled by this harmful being occupying the Oval Office.
413
Sadly, none of the people I know that voted for Trump are sorry they voted for him. Breaks my heart.
185
I am not sorry I voted for Donald Trump. Quite honestly, I am glad I voted for Donald Trump. My friends who voted for Donald Trump have no regrets either.
5
It is so hard for me to fathom how any honest right thinking person can continue defending this horror.
96
Trump can be dealt with through a new Democratic Congress, impeachment, a criminal conviction and a well-deserved prison sentence.
What really requires an exorcism is the 63 million spirits who were messianically inspired by a Birther Liar fraudster...a debt shirker and scofflaw...a cheesy tabloid TV entertainer who was slightly more sophisticated than a late-night infomercial for Spray-On Hair.
How do you help millions of easily duped souls who think 'beautiful' coal is a terrific idea and that manmade global warming is a conspiracy ?
How do you walk back millions of angry white males from their gun-fetish nirvana fantasy cliff of fighting the government from their front porches ?
How do you inform millions of radical Christians that they live in a country...not a church ?
What do you say to millions of Americans who deride universal healthcare the rest of the civilized world enjoys while suffering the greatest and most obnoxious 'free-market' healthcare rip-off in the world ?
What do you do with millions of Americans who are okay with widespread voter suppression tactics and laws, unConstitutional gerrymandering and 0.1% campaign finance corruption as long as their team wins ?
The Republican Party and its followers slipped the surly bonds of reason and democracy decades ago to touch the face of fraud, fiction and fantasy.
It's time to cut off their political oxygen with a massive blue wave on November 6 2018.
Call it an exorcism...or justifiable political homicide.
778
Sophocles, I think we need a Golem!
89
Socrate indeed!
12
@Socrates
Great commentary, you did not disappoint this morning.
21
I want to crawl under the covers too, most days, these days.
But not to avoid the Exorcist, which I confess I've never seen.
But I have something in common with Friedkin who you quote as offering "an eerie connection to the Trump White House, noting that he edited the film at 666 Fifth Avenue, the accursed Manhattan building with the Number of the Beast at the center of Jared Kushner’s money problems."
I worked in this same building in the early 80s, and I so hated my job it certainly felt like hell.
I'm sorry Father Amorth passed away, because we could sure use him now. Perhaps he could have driven the devil out of one candidate who allegedly, in a bit of very fake news, had the support of the Pope.
Can you imagine? How many other people on earth could pick a fight with one man who knows a thing or two about turning the other cheek?
85
A story for our times. I remember being riveted by this movie and the frozen breaths of the exorcists as they crouch over the host of Hades. But frankly movie demons don’t compare to the real thing. We’ve gotten a taste of that recently, and it ain’t pea soup.
These demons don't rise on their own. It takes some deplorable assistance to make that happen.
To illustrate: there’s a great little story in the book “Fairy Tales,” by Terry Jones called “Dr. Bonocolus’s Devil.” In it, a man sells his soul in exchange for wisdom, style, knowledge and power, figuring that when he dies he’ll so charm the Devil that he’ll get a cushy position at His right hand in Hell. When he finally descends to his ultimate fate, the Devil appears to the throng of the recently damned. Dr. Bonocolus looks into the Devil’s eyes and realizes to his horror that the Devil is stupid.
It’s the same look on the faces of all the president’s aides, advisors, lawyers, spokesliars and everyone else who sold their tattered souls to work for this man. Most of them are quickly shamed, ejected, humiliated or indicted, making hazardous duty pay a job requirement.
So while there are some similarities between real life and the sort of experience we’re going through now, there are some notable differences.
For example, the president does not spew oatmeal. Oatmeal is good for you, if a little bland. What he does spew cannot be mentioned in print. But you know what it is.
512
A twist worthy of O. Henry. Perfect analogy: it not just that he's full of hate, and suspicion, and requires hourly ego stoking, he's too stupid to understand what's going on in the first place.
248
But of course we know gemli, the president trump spews venom several times a day and pollute the space we live in.
He does not believe the environment needs to be protected `cause he is an old man who lives for his pleasure.
38
"These demons don't rise on their own. It takes some deplorable assistance to make that happen."
We are a tribal nation and will remain for a long time. Obama’s 2004 claim to the contrary has proven false. Obama-though he may not admit-got a taste of it himself when McConnell made it clear in 2009 his objective is to see Obama fail. It’s not Conservative vs Liberal/Progressive as I doubt Trump’s base even know what Conservative philosophy stand for or mean.
It’s skin color. Half of Whites among us will never change. And because they control 99% of communications, they will always have the last word.
Trump is not a one-off.
He will not be the last demon.
49
So Mo, on your descent down the Stairway to Hell that you mention - which undoubtedly leads to the Republican National Committee's war room operation against Comey and the FBI - did you encounter more Complicit White House aides traveling up the stairs, or were there more ascending ?
We suggest making the pathway into a tolled 'user fee' avenue, in the best GOP'er tradition, so the obviously heavily trafficked route can help fund FBI golf cart rentals and defray the reported $40+ million expense of flying His Unhinged Unraveling Unfitness back and forth to his resorts.
Perhaps the pathway could be renamed 'Congressman Devin Nunes Parkway' ?
123
Yikes! Trump's racked up that much in travel expenses on the taxpayer dole?! When we finally get hold of his tax returns--it'll be great to stick him with a bill and penalities!
5
Compare that $40 million in less than 1 1/2 years to a total of $114 million during the eight years of Obama's presidency.
2
I have been wondering who will take up the epic project of the Trump mini-series. This seems like just the guy.
Imagine the lurid hotel encounters with porn stars intercut with scenes of a wife and infant at home in the Trump Tower and evangelical leaders singing his praises, rally attendees heil-saluting their future leader while he calls for violence against protestors, secret meetings with mobsters, criminals, hostile foreign agents and Congressional committee leaders, hushed conversations with attorneys and "advisors" about monetizing the Presidency, suppressing scandals and obstructing investigations, daily Tweet insulting and firing sessions while raging at the TV in the White House living quarters, Cabinet meetings full of sycophantic Secretaries.
The only question is whether anyone really really wants to see this movie twice. Once is bad enough and its only getting crazier by the day.
271
Seems to me that the more appropriate horror movie on which to model the Trump administration is Richard Donner's "The Omen." The Antichrist is "born" to a jackal and switched by malevolent priests with the son of an American diplomat and his wife. That infant ends up killing his surrogate parents and grows up to become a world leader, attended to by legions of supporters most of whom have no idea of his origins or his ultimate plans (see "Omens II and III"). Needless to say, if our Kitty Grabber in Chief were, in fact the offspring of a force higher than Fred Trump, he'd never stop talking about it. Even so, his supporters likely wouldn't care (not even the Evangelicals, so long as he continued to oppose abortion rights and Muslim immigration).
169
@Look Ahead - Though each day's reality episode seems to be a remake of 'Wag the Dog', it's too soon for a re-do that flick. The next best choice would be as a slapstick comedy, but every imaginable historically accurate script of what's been happening would have The Marx Brothers' estates suing - bigly - huuuuuge.
38
Thank you, Mr. Freeman, because for no reason I was thinking of 'The Omen' earlier, while wondering if a purgatory season would be obligatory in reading of the sound and the fury of Trump's young days and escapades or better, a time to revisit and decipher the predictions of Nostradamus.
It was 'The Blob' that did in this viewer, seen at age six with two playmates, one babysitter with her boyfriend, a felon whom we all loved, and duration time of the above was ten minutes, as we were ushered out of the movie theater; the three young ones in tears and screaming for ice-cream.
For the noise-sensitive, 'The Exorcist' is a masterpiece of horror movies, but oddly enough just hearing a murmur of Trump's voice is enough to make this voter's skin feel crawly.
There are far more Republican supporters these days than Trump enthusiasts to be seen in this neck-of-the-woods.
Ms. Dowd is in high dudgeon for scaring the wits out of some of us with this revival of past frights on the screen, but we will forgive her this time.
With demonic Trump running free
Mueller is exorcist of choice
And Beelzebub's progeny
Speaks to me with an unheard voice.
I wake every morning half sick
To vulgar illiterate tweets
I've no inclination to pick
Mysticism which Trumplestiltskin beats.
213