Justice Antonin "Nino" Scalia Is Dead

When I heard the news that Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died at Cibolo Creek Ranch in west Texas, my reaction was something short of decorous and restrained. My husband was shocked and told me that my joyful response was “bad karma.”

So in penance, I’m going to remember Justice Scalia for the moment in time when I genuinely liked and appreciated him. That moment was when, in 2006, Stephen Colbert hosted the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner roast of the current administration, which was then George W. Bush’s. Bush tried to take Colbert’s humorous but cutting insults in good part, but the tongue-in-cheek thrashing was hard to take, especially the jovial comments about Bush’s 32% approval rating.

In contrast, “Nino” Scalia laughed heartily when Colbert addressed him and seemed to be trying not to laugh harder as Colbert praised him verbally while insulting him with fast-paced, numerous obscene Sicilian gestures that I only understood because I had a Sicilian-American boyfriend from New York City as an undergraduate. You can bet that Scalia understood them.

Wait. There’s another thing I liked about Scalia. He was great friends with a notable liberal, a fellow justice on the court, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She wrote a memorial explaining why they were such great friends. Can you imagine Clarence Thomas pulling that off? I can’t. He’s too rigid. You can count the number of times Justice Thomas has said a word while seated on the court on the fingers of one hand.

There’s one more thing I liked about Nino. Scalia loved language. If he didn’t use the phrase “nabobs of nincompoopery,” color me surprised. When he was most enraged, his use of language flourished into entertaining excesses of colorful prose.

Now to explain my joyful response to the passing of a 79-year-old right-wing jurist:

The Citizens United decision

The EPA suppression decision (very recent)

The denial of women as a class to file a class action lawsuit against Walmart

And perhaps more than anything else, Scalia’s refusal to recuse himself after he went duck hunting in 2004 with then Vice President Dick Cheney in a case involving Dick Cheney as a litigant. Was that ethical?

The answer, of course, is hell no.