Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia And The Weirdest, Most Interesting Interview Ever Printed
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has a lot of thoughts about a lot of things.
In a lengthy interview with New York Magazine, the controversial lawman addresses everything from Seinfeld to where the heck the Devil ever got off to on the even of a brand new Supreme Court session.
It’s a very candid, off-the-cuff and at-times bizarre interview. Just so you don’t have to pluck through eight 700-word pages of a Supreme Court Justice’s deep dark (unless you really want to), you can check out some of the highlights below:
On Streamlining Constitutional Interpretation:
“A lot of stuff that’s stupid is not unconstitutional. I gave a talk once where I said they ought to pass out to all federal judges a stamp, and the stamp says—Whack! [Pounds his fist.]—STUPID BUT CONSTITUTIONAL.Whack! [Pounds again.] STUPID BUT CONSTITUTIONAL! Whack! STUPID BUT CONSTITUTIONAL … [Laughs.] And then somebody sent me one.”
On Shredding His Invitations To State Of The Union Addresses:
“Because it is a childish spectacle. And we are trucked in just to give some dignity to the occasion. I mean, there are all these punch lines, and one side jumps up—Hooray! And they all cheer, and then another punch line, and the others stand up, Hooray! It is juvenile! And we have to sit there like bumps on a log. We can clap if somebody says, “The United States is the greatest country in the world.” Yay! But anything else, we have to look to the chief justice. Gee, is the chief gonna clap? It didn’t used to be that bad.”
On Why He’ll Never Accept Your Friend Request:
“I’m nervous about our civic culture. I’m not sure the Internet is largely the cause of it. It’s certainly the cause of careless writing. People who get used to blurbing things on the Internet are never going to be good writers. And some things I don’t understand about it. For example, I don’t know why anyone would like to be “friended” on the network. I mean, what kind of a narcissistic society is it that people want to put out there, This is my life, and this is what I did yesterday? I mean … good grief. Doesn’t that strike you as strange? I think it’s strange.”
On Minding Your Manners, Ladies:
“One of the things that upsets me about modern society is the coarseness of manners. You can’t go to a movie—or watch a television show for that matter—without hearing the constant use of the F-word—including, you know, ladies using it. People that I know don’t talk like that! But if you portray it a lot, the society’s going to become that way. It’s very sad.”
On His Gaydar:
“I have friends that I know, or very much suspect, are homosexual. Everybody does.”
On The Devil:
“You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore. It’s because he’s smart. What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.”
On TV, Seinfeld:
“I watched The Sopranos, I saw a couple of episodes of Mad Men. I loved Seinfeld. In fact, I got some CDs of Seinfeld. Seinfeld was hilarious. Oh, boy. The Nazi soup kitchen? No soup for you!”
On Why He Doesn’t Give A Crap What We Think Of Him:
“You know, for all I know, 50 years from now I may be the Justice Sutherland of the late-twentieth and early-21st century, who’s regarded as: ‘He was on the losing side of everything, an old fogey, the old view.’ And I don’t care.”
Like we said, Judge Antonin Scalia is definitely a polarizing and often divisive figure, but his straightforward and honest interview with Jennifer Senior might earn him a modicum of your respect. The engrossing read can he found in full at NY Mag.
[Image: Wikimedia Commons]
