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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Hey California, Justice Scalia discovers the 10th ring of hell, and we are it" Steve Lopez, LATimes
Enjoy!
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-scalia-wrath-california-and-hippies-20150626-htmlstory.html
As the United States of America evolves, slowly becoming a more tolerant and inclusive nation, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is getting left behind, and now hes taking out his wrath on California and hippies. Its not hard to understand why Scalia has worked himself into a lather. This has been a horrible week for him, as he voted with the losers on two landmark court rulings: Obamacare and gay marriage.
He began with a somewhat rational dissent on Obamacare >snip<
But then he went from hand-wringing to knuckle-dragging on the gay marriage decision, arguing that the court was patrician, pretentious, egotistical and out of touch with America because its justices are successful lawyers (would we want otherwise?) who went to elite schools and grew up in either the elitist East or the wifty West but not the heartland or the South. Not a single Southwesterner or even, Scalia wrote, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner. (California does not count.)
Do you hear that, Californians? We are so peculiar that Scalia put us in parentheses, like we had to be quarantined. (Is there any coincidence that the swing vote came from a California native, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy?) We are west of the West, chiseled off the map and sent floating out to sea in our flip-flops and board shorts, an island of the lost and irrelevant.
Im not sure how the vast millions who live in the solidly conservative inland and valley empires of California feel about being told they are not true Westerners, here in the state that gave the nation Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. But apparently in Scalias world, they are off the scales like the rest of us. That might not seem entirely rational, but were talking about Justice Scalia, after all, who still seems to be twitching over the hippie movement a half-century after it happened. In mocking a majority opinion reference to intimacy and spirituality, Scalia wrote:
Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie. I dont know what hippies have to do with it, but weve got plenty of them in California, and no shortage of carnal malefactors of all sexual persuasions.
Justice Scalia has discovered a 10th ring of hell, and we are it.
Theres only one thing to do, California.
I say we tear our clothes off, fill the streets and party like hell.
randys1
(16,286 posts)is a joke
shenmue
(38,506 posts)"The wifty West"? Huh?
Hekate
(90,837 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)One simply can't tell anymore.
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)Justice Scalia doesn't seem to like us very much. And as an aging California hippie myself, I'll try not to lose too much sleep over that.
hvn_nbr_2
(6,490 posts)It used to be commonly used but I haven't heard it in awhile. Perhaps Scalia is showing his age, or his age regression. Since another aging Californian (like me) downthread doesn't know the word either, maybe it was a regional thing--I used to live back East.
Thanks.
hvn_nbr_2
(6,490 posts)shenmue
(38,506 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)with those nice young men in their clean white coats and take a ride to the place where the nuts hunt the squirrels.
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)Iliyah
(25,111 posts)be true.
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)sheshe2
(83,933 posts)Scalia acts like a petulant child, scares the hell of me that he is SCOTUS.
Thanks Hekate.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)And I do like that my delightfully brown California self keeps him up at night, but what the hell does this mean?
Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality were freedoms?
Isn't this the guy who cheered on the Hobby Lobby religious freedom bullshit? Does he think spirituality isn't the same as religion? WTF?
Oh and and rainbows in that bigot's face!
hunter
(38,328 posts)I live in a California city where roads have family names, not my direct ancestors, but first cousins of my ancestors.
I confess, my San Francisco relatives were racists. My grandma and her sister could say in utter cluelessness, and without a trace of hate, the most outrageous things. My grandma truly loved the Irish housekeepers, the Chinese laundrymen, and the "colored" laborers of her youth. She thought Native American and Latino men were hot, and she partied with homosexuals. Her best childhood friend forever was (gasp!) Jewish.
A "progressive" of her time, but still hopelessly privileged and white, landing with her, um, adventurous sister in Hollywood, behind the scenes. My grandma did her best for me and my siblings, but autistic spectrum Hunter flunked out of kindergarten Hollywood. I had a tendency to stare at odd people who were asking me to do stuff as if they were interesting insects.
Two of my siblings have adult screen credits, but they tired of that game in favor of more predictable income. "Bad biker bar guy, cowboy" or tough "Cheerleader, or California Surfer girl, or Biker Chick, or mean girl," those roles don't reliably pay the rent. My brother builds motorcycles now, my sister is a firefighter paramedic.
My wife is far more a "genuine Westerner" than I am, having many ancestors who were here before Scalia's people "discovered" America, and a few more who skipped out to Canada and Mexico when their Catholic or Native American dissident pasts caught up with them and they were marked as undesirables.
Scalia is a disgusting pig, a fossil from an uglier time in these United States. If he wasn't in such a position of power I might feel sorry for him.