Justice Scalia, I Dissent

I am not as smart as Justice Antonin Scalia. Just ask him. I’m sure he would confirm it. So maybe because I’m relatively dim witted, I just don’t understand what he’s saying.

The clip is an excerpt from his recent appearance on C-Span’s Q&A program, in which Justice Scalia argues against televising Supreme Court Oral arguments. As I understand his position, televising the proceedings gavel to gavel would “miseducate” (see, he is so smart he can invent words) the American people, because the media (he didn’t say the “elite lamestream” media, but I bet he was thinking it) will only show 15 or 30 second sound bites, which will distort the truth in some way. Of course, without live coverage, the American people have to rely on third party accounts in newspapers and TV, which are by necessity out of context excerpts. In addition, the Supreme Court releases audio of the oral arguments, which I assume are just as susceptible to sound bites. If you want to avoid miseducating people, it seems to me the best thing to do is to make the whole argument available, so people can check on whether the sound bite accurately reflects what happened. But perhaps Justice Scalia is right. I only watched about 3 minutes of his interview. Maybe if I’d watched the whole thing he wouldn’t seem so incredibly condescending.