O-Bits: Satan-to-None!

There’s a group of sallow youngish people who dress in black,  read books by Alistair Crowley and Anton LeVey, watch Kenneth Anger films, and favor doomy, psychedelic music made by bands with names such as “Death Valley Girls,” what else can the Los Angeles Times do but call them “Satanists”? But even the Times has to admit these are not your father’s Satanists. It’s a more feminist Satanism, a way for people to deal with the constant thrum of worry in the age of Trump, one that tries “to transform the witch from a figure of male fear and fantasy into a figure of female power and sexuality.” As one explains, ““if you don’t give people some sense of magic and community, you get (neo-Fascist groups”

We hope our Los Angeles Satanists don’t follow the example of a group of Argentine Satanists who are suspected of stealing the body of a one-year-old boy from his coffin. The whileAna Maria Caro,  state’s prosecutor, won’t say definitively if the Satanists are suspected, she did admit “there is a known satanic sect that operates in the area that carries out rituals.”

Steven Mirkin

Steven Mirkin’s diverse career has taken him from politics to pop culture to high art, offering him a front row seat to some of the most fascinating events and personalities of our time: writing speeches, fundraising appeals and campaign materials for Ed Koch, John Heinz and independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson; chronicling the punk/new wave scenes in New York and London; interviewing musicians such as Elton John, John Lydon and Buck Owens; profiling modern masters Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and Jonathan Safran Foer; and writing for TV shows including 21, The Chamber, Let's Make A Deal, and Rock Star: INXS.