This interview with Scalia was truly awesome, both in terms of how crazy he is and how candid he is. Covers a wide range of topics:
Well, you’re saying the Devil is persuading people to not believe in God. Couldn’t there be other reasons to not believe?
Well, there certainly can be other reasons. But it certainly favors the Devil’s desires. I mean, c’mon, that’s the explanation for why there’s not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament.
[….]Did you watch The Sopranos? Mad Men?
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!
(h/t commenter Jewish Steel)
LanceThruster
Mark S.
In all of Antonin’s Catholic education, was he never introduced to Occam’s Razor?
Wow, I never knew he was this fucking crazy. I really hope he dies soon.
beltane
On behalf of Italians everywhere, I would like to apologize for Crazy Tony. He belongs in a community center in Ozone Park, playing cards with other like-minded old men, not sitting on the Supreme Court of the United States.
My father says crazy stuff like this all the time, but he is not in a position to hurt anyone.
Cacti
@Mark S.:
He’s 77, overweight, and a cigarette smoker. The clock is ticking.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
The Sopranos, check.
Mad Men, check.
Seinfeld? WTF?
jon
The Devil is too busy convincing Scalia that there’s no possibility of a wrongful death sentence in the American justice system to bother the rest of us with anything other than the occasional stubbed toe or weird-looking potato chip.
joel hanes
@Mark S.:
I never knew he was this fucking crazy
Really? The man is Opus Dei, fer crissake.
(though not for the sake of any Christ I can recognize)
Numeraries in Opus Dei generally wear a cilice for two hours each day.
Jewish Steel
Hats off to the interviewer, Jenifer Senior. She did a great job coaxing out the deranged ramblings. To me he does indeed come across as charming. But also totally nuts.
Bonus points for the mention of Katherine Graham cocktail parties. Barf.
shortstop
Successful Satanic sophistry is what’s responsible for nonbelief. Well, it’s no nuttier than the “Now we’re all going to be forced to eat broccoli!” comment; the comparison of homosexuality to murder and other things of which we as a nation are understandably “morally disapproving”; or any claim that he’s a strict constructionist. But remember, even though he’s insane and evil, you have to admit he’s a great intellect.
Sad_Dem
@Cacti: “He’s 77, overweight, and a cigarette smoker. The clock is ticking.” Clearly, Satan is keeping him alive and will do so for another decade or more.
kc
He IS the Devil.
cvstoner
You want to know what happened to the devil, a-hole? Just look in the mirror.
shortstop
@jon: Nice work.
c u n d gulag
Scalia wants to be, “The Justice Nazi!”
NO JUSTICE FOR YOU!!!
And isn’t it just like a Conservative to pick an episode of a show where people are being denied something they want, as one of his/her favorites!
Of course, he’d have a raging hard-on if the episode denied people something they desperately NEED!!!!!
Tokyokie
Of course Scalia believes in the Devil. To whom to you think he sold his soul, some guy at a used-car lot?
Tractarian
I didn’t believe in the Devil until I read this interview.
PurpleGirl
@LanceThruster: I’m not sure it’s about loneliness. Sometimes I think it’s about being able to accept randomness and uncertainty in life and having a need for simple directions/instructions. Respecting and obeying someone else’s authority.
jibeaux
I posted downthread my thoughts on this, you won’t thank me for them so I’ll repost and then move on to a question.
Lord knows I’m not reading an interview with Scalia, but I saw some highlights on the twittermachine last night. Apparently there’s a bit about how there’s too much nudity in movies, although of course it’s understandable when it’s essential to the plot. Maybe I’m a sicko, but the vision of him wankin’ it wildly to nudity while muttering “it’s o.k., it’s essential to the plot, it’s essential to the plot” was compelling. I am a victim of my own imagination.
Okay, moving on to the question. My Neanderthal rep, after redistricting, won with 56% of te vote last time. That’s a comfortable margin in a presidential high-turnout year, no doubt. He is cast as a “safe” seat now. This could be wishful thinking, but he’s a) a new guy, first term; b) his opponent was a nice man but has serious health problems, no visibility, and basically just let his name go up there so that we didn’t have to concede the seat without even a challenge; c) he’s a flabby pasty white tub o lard who looks 15 years older than he is and has no charisma whatsoever. Anyone know enough about local elections to give an opinion on whether, with the right opposition, this could be a gettable seat? I’ve read the HuffPo thing about the 20 or so vulnerables and he’s not there.
PurpleGirl
@beltane: Good point. Although Ozone Park now has a lot of blah people from India, and areas that Asian Indians had moved to in the Empire.
? Martin
On it’s own, that should be cause for a national facepalm – that one of the 9 permanent arbiters of legal reasoning in this country is so blind from his own ideology to be able to execute a basic logical construct.
Combined with the utter shitshow fail parade which is the GOP House, I now fully understand why someone would salute the Capitol and then set themselves on fire. I’ve always been optimistic about these things, but I’m really not now. We’re fucked. We’ve reached a point where our leaders are genuinely curious whether pushing the doomsday button will actually do anything, and have determined that it is politically acceptable to float the idea publicly. The electorate should recoil in horror at the idea, and most are, but you’d never really know it from the media.
There’s only two ways out of this, long term. Either Boehner backs down at the 11th hour and is roundly punished for it – he’s voted out in 2014 and the GOP loses in a landslide. Or Boehner goes through with it, and we do blow up the system, and they get eviscerated as a party. That’s it. Both scenarios demand that Dems and Obama hold tight and ride this over the cliff. Both scenarios demand that the public punish the GOP (which we all damn well know won’t happen to the very tea party members that are demanding this).
This is effectively a coup. It’s nonviolent but the stated goal – going all the way back to when a lot of these people were first running for office – is to stop the government from functioning. I don’t think we have the tools within the Constitution to deal with this sort of thing. If the GOP insists on holding this position the only solution we have to this is to wait until Nov 2014 to vote them out of office. They can’t be arrested. SCOTUS can’t compel them to act. There’s no provision for a recall of federal office holders. Other than hanging them from a lamppost, I think we’re stuck.
RSA
I suppose I can forgive a 77-year-old for not being up with modern technology (though not the rest of his views). What he meant to say was, “I got some round shiny flat things that I push into the magic box…”
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
Can’t we speed it up somehow?
Gex
@Cacti: But he’s got that awesome gold-plated government provided health care. Much like with Social Security and Medicare, we are paying to keep a lot of people alive so they can tell the rest of us to FOAD.
Bill E Pilgrim
Who’s that goat-legged fellow with Alito? I like the cut of his jib.
Prince of Darkness, Justice Scalia. He’s your eleven o’clock.
Punchy
He talks about the devil, Seinfeld comes up, and he fawns over the Soup Nazi episode instead of the one where Putty puts on the NJ Devils facepaint and scares the shit out of the visiting priest, looking like the Devil himself?
Fat Tony is losing his touch.
jibeaux
@jon: It’s kind of even worse than that. He suggested that a finding of actual innocence wasn’t even enough to merit you a new trial. So, yeah, if there is a Devil, what he’s up to is finding powerful people and convincing them of evil things.
Botsplainer
Jesus. The man is an insipid, gibbering fool.
shortstop
@jibeaux: Can’t tell without knowing more about the makeup of your district. Feel comfortable telling us which one it is?
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
@Cacti:
Unfortunately, the Devil keeps these guys alive well past their expiration dates.
Roger Moore
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Who do you think introduced Alito to Mr. Goatlegs?
PurpleGirl
@Roger Moore: Replace his blood pressure pills with placebos?
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin:
If SCOTUS could compel them to act, SCOTUS would not. Because the “conservative” majority is as batshit insane as the tea party.
jibeaux
@shortstop: District 13 of NC. When you see pictures of George Holding — minorly famous for sleeping during a hearing he was himself presiding over — say to yourself “this man is five years younger than Johnny Depp” and see if it doesn’t rattle you a bit.
Alex S.
Apparently he used to be sane…I even wonder if there’s a brain tumor involved.
Gex
Justice Scalia, if you can’t tell who it is that is possessed by the devil, odds are it is you.
Steeplejack
@jibeaux:
Well, for starters, it might be helpful to know, uh, the name of the rep you’re talking about. Unless that would reveal too much to the NSA about your location?
shortstop
@maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor: If he goes down soon, my money’s on it being a rage-induced massive MI. The weight and the smoking are only contributing factors — unchecked anger at the Great Unwashed’s refusal to honor his authority will be the direct push to the death button.
One of my husband’s coworkers dropped dead while screaming at the top of his lungs (as he often did) at a colleague. That colleague had the grace not to say “I win” and walk away.
White Trash Liberal
Isn’t it really fucking absurd in the first place to have a debt limit vote? What kind of bizarre country do we inhabit where we have this Doomsday Button at all… A formerly ceremonial vote on obligations already budgeted.
Just fucking ridiculous to have such a thing exist in the first place.
jibeaux
@Steeplejack: It ain’t like that, I guess I was just wondering if there was some shorthand way of calculating what spread made you untouchable. 56% seemed to me to be very strong, but not insurmountable.
uila
One thing I will say for Scalia, when Colbert roasted the WHCD, he was damn near the only one in the crowd who was laughing. I get the sense he sleeps well, the fucker.
Villago Delenda Est
@White Trash Liberal:
We wouldn’t be needing to mess with the debt limit if the deserting fucking coward, hero to teatard fucktwits everywhere, hadn’t exploded the deficit with tax cuts for the 1% and two wars of choice, precipitated by his own fucking incompetence.
Jay C
When I saw the NY Mag title “The Devil and Antonin Scalia”, I had two thoughts: first: “what’s the difference“, and then: “Oh, so they ARE related.….”
TriassicSands
What a dilemma. I know I shouldn’t comment on the Scalia interview until after I’ve read it, but I also know I’ll be too sick after reading it to be able to comment.
@Mark S.:
I’m pretty sure I already know how crazy Tony Calzone is. And I’ve been hoping for the second sentence of your comment for decades. Wishing and hoping simply don’t work.
@Cacti:
The thing is life and genetics are not fair. Lots of people with Scalia’s lifestyle never make it anywhere near 77, while lots of extremely bad people, including Tony, smoke and are overweight and live well into their eighties. If life were fair, Tony never would have made it out of the crib, I’m pretty sure that by the time little Tony six was months old, it was already obvious that he was going to be a selfish, arrogant prick.
Alex S.
@Botsplainer:
It’s like he gets off on being withholding.
shortstop
@jibeaux: Well, Cook’s has it as a R+8 after the redistricting, but I know Cook’s ain’t what it used to be. I don’t know much about that area, but looking at the county 2012 election results and comparing them to the district map (nice cutout of Raleigh, jackasses), it looks like Durham, Wake and Chatham counties went solidly for Obama. Without knowing anything about the candidates or the strength of the local party machines, I wouldn’t say it looks unreachable.
Ben Cisco
@White Trash Liberal:
Yes, it’s a completely manufactured construct, especially since we’re discussing paying bills ALREADY INCURRED AND VOTED ON BY THE CONGRESS.
The NeoConfederates want to welsh on existing debts – something they’d excoriate the average Joe for doing.
Comrade Dread
Once he convinced mankind that all it took to be right with God was to say a magic prayer and believe all the right things regardless of whether we actually did love our neighbor as ourself, he took a holiday.
shortstop
Do people really call him Tony? I thought he went by “Nino,” which is too fucking precious for words.
PaulW
Liking Seinfeld?
THAT’S AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE!
Citizen_X
Yeah, the Devil used to be all over the place. What happened? Also, we used to have a lot of problems with witches. Good thing they’re not coming back. Also with Jews poisoning wells. Not so much lately, thank goodness.
For that matter, how come you don’t see Zeus around much these days? Or Quetzlcoatl. Or Loki. They used to drop by this plane of existence once in a while. Don’t they like us anymore?
jibeaux
@shortstop: That’s good info, thanks. What do you think would be the most relevant group to reach out to to get involved with — county party, state party? I’ve done doorknocking etc. but only through OFA. I need to get more regularly involved with a local machine.
Jay C
@Citizen_X:
Retired. Probably in Florida…..
scav
So the Fat Boy was reading from a different New Testament than everyone else. “Just who IS this commie guy who even speaks in red?! Where’s my Devil! He was all OVER in here a minute ago!”
Sloegin
Vinegar, bile, and the desire to do evil every day are the fundamental elements of a long healthy life.
If Scalia were to suddenly start doing good, he’d be dead in weeks.
gnomedad
@joel hanes:
Isn’t he friends with Ginsburg? Does she slap him on the back when they meet?
Ben Franklin
@Sloegin:
If Scalia were to suddenly start doing good, he’d be dead in weeks.
I once made the mistake of steam-cleaining the engine on my 55 pontiac.
It seems the dirt and old grease/oil was the only shit holding the shit engine together.
gnomedad
Well, he got Cheney a new heart.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sloegin:
/lesigh
No chance of that happening.
Snarki, child of Loki
@shortstop:
Or to unzip and take a nice, long piss…”Have a great day, buddy”
Want to make Scalia pop a gasket? Use a recess appointment to put Bill Clinton on the Supreme Court.
TG Chicago
I’d just like to point that this “Seinfeld” show that he’s just catching up on has been off the air for over FIFTEEN years.
blueskies
@Villago Delenda Est: Oddly all that’s gone down the memory hole. In addition to all this angst over Fat Tony, what we should really be STILL angry about is that ALL of this is fall-out from C- Augustus’ reign.
Citizen_X
@shortstop:
Yeah, but you know he was standing there going “Don’t smile don’t smile don’t smile.”
And on the drive home he was singing “WHOOP! Fuuuuuuck YOU ha ha ha!”
dedc79
Scalia and Ginsburg are quite friendly outside of work, as strange as that might seem. Maybe the Ginsburgs introduced the Scalias to Seinfeld.
Villago Delenda Est
@blueskies:
The deserting coward, you see, was never President at all. Bill Clinton was busy diddling Monica in the Oval Office when the planes smashed into the World Trade Center, and at the end of his third term, Obama took over and fucked up Katrina response and blew up the economy in order to set up his reelection in 2008.
KG
If you have been told all your life that this book is the truth, and you never are given reason to question it, and you accept that it is true because your parents believed it (and their parents before them, and their parents’ parents, ad nauseam), then you believe in things like the devil.
It’s superstitious bullshit, but it’s superstitious bullshit that has been with us for thousands of years as a way of explaining the unexplainable.
vagabundoloco
The fact that a supreme court judge, a guy who spends all of his career listening to arguments, analysing arguments, and creating arguments, would take C.S. Lewis’ utterly specious and silly argument about the devil at face value is mind blowing.
vagabundoloco
The fact that a supreme court judge, a guy who spends all of his career listening to arguments, analysing arguments, and creating arguments, would take C.S. Lewis’ utterly specious and silly argument about the devil at face value is mind blowing.
scav
@KG:
Give me that Old Time Percolator!
Give me that Old Time Teletype!
Give me that Old Time Kerosene!
It’s good enough for me!
Howlin Wolfe
@White Trash Liberal: Agreed.
RobNYNY1957
A formerly Catholic friend of mine describes it something like this:
1. God created billions of galaxies and trillions of stars, all for the benefit of Catholics on Earth.
2. God knows everything that has happened, and everything that will happen, but if enough Catholics wish hard enough, he will change his mind.
3. God, the omnipotent master of the universe, needs 10% of my salary.
Seanly
Here’s the part I find the scariest:
Ummm, alrightythen. This Archie Bunker is A) one of the conservative movement’s leading minds & 2) sits on the Supreme Court? He just seems like an out-of-touch old man.
And where’s all these TV shows with nudity & F-bombs galore? Not on any channels I get…
LanceThruster
@PurpleGirl:
While this is true I think that the element of ‘loneliness’ is a bit of a misery loves company scenario. Scalia is not comfortable with a society where others aren’t obliged or compelled to follow his worldview.
Puritan : Someone who is afraid that, somewhere, someone else is having a good time. – H. L. Mencken.
Nothing offends a person more than to reject their deeply held belief. ~ LanceThruster
Howlin Wolfe
@PaulW: Pray tell, why?
Mnemosyne
@RobNYNY1957:
Uh, looking at your #3 there, I don’t think your friend was a Catholic, or else he was in a really oddball parish. The RCC has never gone in for tithing the way Protestants (especially Mormons) have and there’s no 10% requirement anywhere in doctrine or dogma.
Your friend also seems to have left the whole concept of “free will” out of his #2.
Bill Arnold
@White Trash Liberal:
Pretty much. If there is a “deal” on the debt ceiling, it has to include complete repeal of the debt ceiling law, IMO.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I have to take issue with your characterization of Mormons as Protestants.
Nora
Get a load of his parochialism: most of mankind for all of history has believed in the devil? That’s vastly overstating it, even if you just look at European history (and of course, most of the world isn’t Europe). He’s acting as if a specific belief of a specific group of Christians is in fact universal.
WereBear
Ladies and gentlemen, one of the intellectual lights of Conservatism! One of their finest legal minds! A visionary leader!
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m not sure what else to call them. They have a lot more similarities with Protestant churches than they do with Catholic or Orthodox churches, and they’re definitely derivative of Christianity.
Villago Delenda Est
@Nora:
Well, those other people aren’t really people. That’s why it’s no big deal to put them on trains for “resettlement” in the east.
scav
@Bill Arnold: Catholicism syncretized with Native religions elsewhere to produce Santaria, Candomblé and Vodon. The local variant just worships at the altars of Cash and Fetus instead of Ogun and Damballah.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I’d just call them Mormons. The whole Book of Mormon thing takes them out of standard Christan taxonomy.
RobNYNY1957
Yes, it seems to me that free will is used to attempt to explain away a lot of God’s deficiencies. I’ve heard Christians say that evil exists because humans have free will (a non-squitur in itself), and somehow there is a connection between adults sinning and babies dying of cancer. If all God needs to do is switch over from free will to predestination, we couldn’t tell the difference anyway, and evil would go away.
pat
@Citizen_X:
Heh.
OldBean
@Seanly:
Holy hemorrhaging fuck…. you know, there’s seven billion people in the world right now, and that’s still not enough faces or palms to put them into.
Just One More Canuck
@shortstop: @Citizen_X: My (now thankfully former) next door neighbour was a guy like that – just boiling with rage at everything and everybody. I used to be able to hear him screaming at his wife from forty feet away through two glass doors. One afternoon about a year ago he banged on my door to complain about some perceived slight. I listened for a minute, said yeah, whatever, then went back to what I was doing and forgot about it. Late that night, there was an abulance next door, and we found out the next day he had died of a massve heart attack. The interesting part was that his wife didn’t call the ambulance for about 4 hours after it happened. Guess she wanted to make sure.
Avery Greynold
I’ll indulge most christians the yin/yang balance of a supreme evil to a supreme good. But demonic possession? What balances that, angelic possession? We have no free will?
In their very scary world, Scalia thinks that anyone disagreeing with him is working for Satan.
Howard Beale IV
I would have loved to seen Hitchens duel with Scalia. Nino would have been shred into little tiny SCOTUSburgers.
Minor Heretic
@Jay C:
Montreal, actually. Read “The Sandals of Desiree.”
Tehanu
@cvstoner:
Took the words right out of my mouth.
@Citizen_X:
Ask Neil Gaiman.