Reputation
Some of those who believe in backward masking, along with some fundamentalist Christians, believe messages such as "Hail Satan" may subliminally inspire people to do evil, a view which may have received some reinforcement when the phrase was used as part of the vandalizing of churches, however its use then may have been the expression of a general anti-religious sentiment indicated by its use along with slogans such as "Think, don't Pray." Vandalism accompanying it may include the anarchy symbol or other slogans intended to shock, such as racial slurs. It may accompany symbols such as a swastika, inverted pentagram or inverted cross. Such vandalism is usually by rebellious young people rather than Satanists, whose activities are not often criminal.
Rick Ross, whose work involves studying cults, referred to the murder trial of Scott Peterson, in which the defense made the claim that the killings were by a "Satanic cult" rather than the defendant. Ross called this a ridiculous manifestation of the Satanic panic, referred to it as a "Hail Satan Pass", similar to the Hail Mary pass in football, a desperate and unlikely attempt.
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Famous quotes containing the word reputation:
“Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The reputation of a man is like his shadow; it sometimes follows and sometimes precedes him, sometimes longer and sometimes shorter than his natural size.”
—French Proverb. Quoted in Dictionary of Similes, ed. Frank J. Wilstach (1916)
“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)