If you want to attack a person based on his professional life, you are free to do that. But I don't think that's appropriate here. Maybe take it to Reddit or Facebook or Twitter or something?
I'm not demanding that people shut up for all eternity and never criticize the opinions Scalia wrote. In this context, I think the Greenwald quote is a strawman. I've already made it clear that I disagreed with Scalia on many points.
But attacking a person on the day that he died is tasteless no matter what you think of him or her.
And I don't think there's really much to attack Justice Scalia on in terms of his personal life anyway. He was a close personal friend of the Notorious RBG, a devoted husband to one wife, Maureen, and father of 9 children.
Is that propagandistic whitewashing? No. It is not. Some people value it when politicians and judges live the life they assert publicly is the best possible life.
I don't want that life and don't agree that it's the best. But the man put his life where his mouth was.
The idea that a judge, or any Justice is just the sum of their soundbites regarding only the most highly media-ized opinions is truly preposterous.
Yes, I think Scalia came down on the wrong side of Citizens United, and also Obergefell. And there are others that I could cite where I disagree with him.
But there are many I could agree with, like Smith, where he strongly opined that the law needed a clearer use of plain language, and in fact, Scalia was one of the first on the Court to advocate plain English in legislation, contracts, and Court briefs.
I've edited hundreds of hours of video interviews with the Court on the topic of plain English in the realms, and it is clear to me that Scalia was the driving force that literally changed the Court's opinions on acceptable prose.
His influence on the language of the Court alone should win him a medal of some sort. Because this is good for everyone, not just partisans who happened to appeal to his politics.
Legal scholars and attorneys all over the country will be parsing and analyzing his jurisprudence for decades to come. There is no danger that people are going to stop thinking about the ways in which he was right or wrong.
Suggesting that people who ask to give it a day, or parse the decisions instead of the man is not misguided or dangerous. Greenwald is way off base here.
What I'm suggesting is that, like many of us, Justice Scalia was a man acting in good faith, serving his country at one of the highest levels. Regardless of how much you agree or disagree with his decisions, he was a human being and deserves a little respect.
And this is coming from someone who disagreed with him often.
The man was a human being. Perhaps wrong sometimes. Perhaps right sometimes. He does not deserve personal vitriol on the day of his death. Unless he turns out to be Hitler in disguise, I'm not sure he deserves personal attacks at all.
I'm not demanding that people shut up for all eternity and never criticize the opinions Scalia wrote. In this context, I think the Greenwald quote is a strawman. I've already made it clear that I disagreed with Scalia on many points.
But attacking a person on the day that he died is tasteless no matter what you think of him or her.
And I don't think there's really much to attack Justice Scalia on in terms of his personal life anyway. He was a close personal friend of the Notorious RBG, a devoted husband to one wife, Maureen, and father of 9 children.
Is that propagandistic whitewashing? No. It is not. Some people value it when politicians and judges live the life they assert publicly is the best possible life.
I don't want that life and don't agree that it's the best. But the man put his life where his mouth was.
The idea that a judge, or any Justice is just the sum of their soundbites regarding only the most highly media-ized opinions is truly preposterous.
Yes, I think Scalia came down on the wrong side of Citizens United, and also Obergefell. And there are others that I could cite where I disagree with him.
But there are many I could agree with, like Smith, where he strongly opined that the law needed a clearer use of plain language, and in fact, Scalia was one of the first on the Court to advocate plain English in legislation, contracts, and Court briefs.
I've edited hundreds of hours of video interviews with the Court on the topic of plain English in the realms, and it is clear to me that Scalia was the driving force that literally changed the Court's opinions on acceptable prose.
His influence on the language of the Court alone should win him a medal of some sort. Because this is good for everyone, not just partisans who happened to appeal to his politics.
Legal scholars and attorneys all over the country will be parsing and analyzing his jurisprudence for decades to come. There is no danger that people are going to stop thinking about the ways in which he was right or wrong.
Suggesting that people who ask to give it a day, or parse the decisions instead of the man is not misguided or dangerous. Greenwald is way off base here.
What I'm suggesting is that, like many of us, Justice Scalia was a man acting in good faith, serving his country at one of the highest levels. Regardless of how much you agree or disagree with his decisions, he was a human being and deserves a little respect.
And this is coming from someone who disagreed with him often.
The man was a human being. Perhaps wrong sometimes. Perhaps right sometimes. He does not deserve personal vitriol on the day of his death. Unless he turns out to be Hitler in disguise, I'm not sure he deserves personal attacks at all.