The Supreme Court has voted to uphold penalties for "fleeting expletives" uttered during primetime broadcasts.
Their moral leader on this one was Justice Antonin Scalia, who derided "foul-mouthed glitteratae from Hollywood."
This coming from the justice who bears a creepy resemblance to Tony Soprano. "Hey free speech, fungu!"
Posts
8 comments:
Scalia is a clown of a justice and leader of what I call the Court's Three Stooges. I pretty much count on every position he takes being the opposite of what is good and lovely and just. I often wonder whether he's being an a**hole on purpose--advocating for corporate fraud, employee abuse, sexism, racism, torture, etc. On purpose or not, he pretty much is. And aside from Dick Cheney he's maybe the man whose, ahem, judgement on this issue I am least likely to take seriously.
F*** you, Scalia. F*** you.
Trying my best to separate out matters political, I have to say that I have gotten the same impression about his personality. He reminds me of certain pathological types I used to run across in recovery circles who used to 1. consider themselves above the rules and 2. become enraged whenever anyone suggested otherwise.
No doubt, that's totally subjective and unfair. I'm projecting stuff onto a guy I've never met. But he sets off my "abusive psycho" alarm in a way that almost no one else in functional polite society does.
This thread is, of course, the one in which my glitteratAE post should have gone. Teach me to post comments on only one cup of coffee. Latin, shmatin. It presupposes a non-existent singular "glitterata". "Glitterati" is already plural. Except as a plug-in of some sort, "glitterato" is essentially non-existent in English.
It's true: One should never post without having consumed enough coffae.
Seriously, though, I wonder what "glitteratae" was about. That's how the LA Times spelled it. Twice. (See link.)
Mebbe I'll "wonderings and Googlings" it later when I have less work in front of me.
Funny how people, by acting like they know what they're doing, can make you question what you know. Like how I momentarily wondered whether "pornstar" was a linguistics term. (Happily, I recovered my confidence somewhere around the reference to "69.")
Yeah, what you said about that type. I guess that's what bugs me: the hypocrisy. "I will be the arbiter of righteousness in your life, but lay off me, because I'm exempt."
Re-reading my comments, I realize that I may have gone a little too far. Not that that's not how I feel; but I could stand to do a little less politicizing of your mostly grammarish, languagey blog (though, of course, you know for me that it all melts together). I wouldn't have blamed you if you censored me. And it would have been wonderfully ironic. ;-)
In my defense . . .
1) Scalia, Thomas and Alito (yeah, well, since I've gone this far, I might as well call all three of them out) are, um, "extraordinary."
2) As powerful as these folks are, it doesn't seem that most of us pay much attention to the damage they do. The part of the populace that does pay attention is more or less responsible for jokers like the three getting to where they are in the first place.
3) Yaknow what, they are bad for the language, the media, the culture etc. So, yeah, this is grammarly after all. Well, sort of.
Anyway, sorry I got up on my soapbox. Thanks for putting up with me.
No, no. I'm not at all oppose to strong political comments here. I just try to stay away from making them myself because that's not the job I do for readers, you know?
If they want to hear political commentary, they have lots of other, better blogs to turn to. I try to stay on the topic of language only because I'm trying to provide some reader value here.
That doesn't mean I don't enjoy a good politically motivated "F&@! you."
On the contrary.
Well, yeah, you know I was lying. It was going to happen again anyway. :-)
Let's just hope Don Scalia doesn't surf this way ...
Post a Comment