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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Scalia seeks Justice over gesture |
| 2006-03-29 |
| Famously feisty Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia yesterday denied that he made an obscene gesture Sunday inside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, accusing the Herald staff of “watching too many Sopranos episodes.” In a letter to the editor, an almost unheard-of step for a Supreme Court justice, Scalia said a reporter misinterpreted the gesture he made when she asked whether his participation in Sunday’s special Mass for lawyers might cause some people to question his impartiality in matters of church and state. “Your reporter, an up-and-coming ‘gotcha’ star named Laurel J. Sweet, asked me (o-so-sweetly) what I said to those people. . .,” Scalia wrote to Executive Editor Kenneth A. Chandler. “I responded, jocularly, with a gesture that consisted of fanning the fingers of my right hand under my chin. Seeing that she did not understand, I said, ‘That’s Sicilian,’ and explained its meaning.” In his letter, Scalia goes on to cite Luigi Barzini’s book, “The Italians”: “ ‘The extended fingers of one hand moving slowly back and forth under the raised chin means: “I couldn’t care less. It’s no business of mine. Count me out.” ’ ” “From watching too many episodes of the Sopranos, your staff seems to have acquired the belief that any Sicilian gesture is obscene - especially when made by an ‘Italian jurist.’ (I am, by the way, an American jurist.)” Unlike most of his colleagues, Scalia is not shy about taking on the media, and has a penchant for doing so in a way that has caused some critics to question his decorum, if not his maturity. In 2000, he wrote a letter to the editor of the Legal Times, accusing the Washington weekly of making a “mean-spirited attack” on his integrity when it reported that he supported allowing federal judges to accept money for speeches. Scalia called the article “Mauronic,” an apparent play on the name of Legal Times Supreme Court reporter Tony Mauro. “I was in grade school the last time someone made fun of my name like that,” Mauro told the Associated Press at the time. |
| Posted by:ryuge |