The AP writes about Justice Scalia’s response to the Boston Herald story:
Scalia said in the letter, written to Executive Editor Kenneth Chandler, that the reporter leapt to conclusions that it was offensive because he initially explained his gesture by saying, ‘That’s Sicilian.'”
“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.),” he wrote.
The Herald had referred to him as an “Italian-American jurist.”
Funny that Justice Scalia would have misquoted the Herald story that he was criticizing that way, no? Except that here’s a quote of the Herald story from the Boston Herald Web site:
“That’s Sicilian,” the Italian jurist said, interpreting for the “Sopranos” challenged.
The NEXIS version of the story says “Italian-American,” and perhaps the print version said the same. But it seems wrong to implicitly fault Justice Scalia for misquoting the story when he quoted one version (quite likely the most easily accessible one) correctly. (“The Herald had referred to him as an ‘Italian-American jurist,'” in context, seems like an assertion that it had referred to him as that rather than as what Scalia quoted — an assertion that proves to be incorrect.)