http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=132848&format=text Home > News & Opinion > Local / Regional News > RSS Feed By Marie Szaniszlo Thursday, March 30, 2006 - Updated: 09:39 AM EST Amid a growing national controversy about the gesture U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made Sunday at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, the freelance photographer who captured the moment has come forward with the picture. “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.” Smith said the jurist “immediately knew he’d made a mistake, and said, ‘You’re not going to print that, are you?’ ” Scalia’s office yesterday referred questions regarding the flap to Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg, who said a letter Scalia sent Tuesday to the Herald defending his gesture at the cathedral “speaks for itself.” “He has no further comment,” Arberg said. Smith was working as a freelance photographer for the Boston archdiocese’s weekly newspaper at a special Mass for lawyers Sunday when a Herald reporter asked the justice how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality as a judge given his public worship. “The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, ‘To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’ ” punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said. The Italian phrase means “(expletive) you.” [*see my note below] Yesterday, Herald reporter Laurel J. Sweet agreed with Smith’s account, but said she did not hear Scalia utter the obscenity. In his letter, Scalia denied his gesture was obscene and claimed he explained its meaning to Sweet, a point both she and Smith dispute. Scalia went on to cite Luigi Barzini’s book, “The Italians,” which describes a seemingly different gesture - “the extended fingers of one hand moving slowly back and forth under the raised chin” - and its meaning - “ ‘I couldn’t care less. It’s no business of mine. Count me out.’ ” “How could your reporter leap to the conclusion (contrary to my explanation) that the gesture was obscene?” Scalia wrote. Quite easily, according to experts, even if the justice had offered more than a two-word explanation - “That’s Sicilian” - Sunday. “There is no answer to ‘what it really means,’ because those gestures have different meanings in different locations, even in neighbouring locations,” said Janet Bavelas, a University of Victoria, British Columbia, psychologist who has studied human gestures. The gesture typically means “I don’t know” in Portugal, “No!” in Naples, “You are lying” in Greece and “I don’t give a damn” in northern Italy, France and Tunisia, said David B. Givens of the Center for Nonverbal Studies in Spokane, Wash. I looked Vaffanculo up. Literally it translates to "go and take it in your ass". Classy.
This has been refuted, it's dismissive but not obscene. its being confused with another type of gesture used by different people.
"Va fa in cullo" mean go make it in your ass, or literally go **** yourself in the ass. like many italian gestures, they have different meanings in different circumstances. this one, which invloves flipping the back of your hand off your chin usually means "bug off", "piss off", "bugger off", or "get the **** out of my face" w/o having to actuall say it. using it in the united states, where the gesture isn't widely known, is much more benign than on the streets of palermo, where it's likely to get you shot.
Ya except Scalia lives here, did it here, and knew exactly what he was saying when he did it. You would think a guy that tells people to go and take it in the ass would have voted differently in Lawrence v. Texas.
Is it too much to ask that Supreme Court Justices refrain from cursing and making questionable gestures in a church? Imagine the maelstrom emanating from the Right Wing echo chamber if Ginsburg had done something similar IN A CHURCH! Everyone from Rushbo to the plasticized blondes on Fox would be all atwitter.
They must get great bud in the Supreme Court. Scalia looks like he just got back from a weekend bender in Amsterdam. Of course, if I had to defend the trashing of the US Constitution by this sorry-assed administration, I would be doing one hell of alot of self-medicating as well.
This is no BFD. I don't see any anger in his eyes. He actually looks like he is smiling and perhaps joking with the press.
yes it is. it is also too much to ask president cheney not to tell people to "go f*** themselves" on the senate floor. great christians, those neo-cons are.
telling someone to go **** themselves is anti-christian? seems like christ pretty much did the same thing to the money-lenders in the temple. albeit in hebrew.
What translation have you been reading? 12Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13"It is written," he said to them, " 'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a 'den of robbers.' "
And then lying about it. What is it about Republicans and lying, these past couple of weeks. You've got the guy in the Republican primary for Duke Cunningham's seat in California, posting a picture of a street in Turkey, that he claimed he took in Iraq, as evidence of how calm (really) things are in Baghdad. Then there's the rightwing blogger that the Post hired last week. He lasted a whole 3 days before he was exposed as serial plagiarist and he lied like a rug about the whole thing, every step of the way, until the National Review drove the last nail in his coffin after checking their archives and discovering multiple plagiarized pieces he had done for them. Now you've got Scalia lying through his teeth about making an obscene gesture in church. I would hope our Supreme Court jurists would be a little less dishonest and stupid.
