by Matt Barr

The media's war on Wile E. Coyote

While I was on vacation Mr. Justice Scalia fielded a question from a Boston Herald reporter:

Minutes after receiving the Eucharist at a special Mass for lawyers and politicians at Cathedral of the Holy Cross, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had a special blessing of his own for those who question his impartiality when it comes to matters of church and state.

"You know what I say to those people?" Scalia, 70, replied, making an obscene gesture, flicking his hand under his chin when asked by a Herald reporter if he fends off a lot of flak for publicly celebrating his conservative Roman Catholic beliefs.

"That's Sicilian," the Italian jurist said, interpreting for the "Sopranos" challenged.

Gesture captured pictorially here. Mr. Justice Scalia insists the gesture is not "obscene."

I responded, jocularly, with a gesture that consisted of fanning the fingers of my right hand under my chin. Seeing that she did not understand, I said "That's Sicilian," and explained its meaning -- which was that I could not care less.

I'm not Italian, and I know few Italians, but I'm familiar with the gesture and have never regarded it as "obscene." Those with more lifelong exposure to the gesture seem to agree. But the Herald is intractable:

"It's inaccurate and deceptive of him to say there was no vulgarity in the moment," said Peter Smith, the Boston University assistant photojournalism professor who made the shot.

Despite Scalia's insistence that the Sicilian gesture was not offensive and had been incorrectly characterized by the Herald as obscene, the photographer said the newspaper "got the story right."

The Herald goes so far as to interview minor supporting character actors from the Sopranos to see what they think. (Because if I want to settle a matter of authentic Italian culture, that's my play.)

So we're watching The Bugs Bunny & Road Runner Movie on HBO Family tonight. It ends (you may recall) with a good, solid 15 minutes or so of classic Coyote-Roadrunner misadventures. We laughed and laughed.

At one point, Wile E. manages to miraculously stave off the doom (and boom) that awaits him every 45 seconds or so. He confidently (and dismissively, as I'll explain) struts away in the other direction -- and falls off a cliff.

As he's walking away he gives the hand-under-chin gesture Mr. Justice Scalia did, in the general direction of the boulders over which he's just asserted his superiority.

If you have the video, go watch. Start with about 10 minutes to go in the movie. I have it queued up to TiVo when it's next on, on Tuesday. I will capture it and upload it then.

Wile E. Coyote is going around making obscene gestures in The Bugs Bunny & Road Runner Movie? Or is the Boston Herald just Road Runner challenged?

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