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Scalia on "60 Minutes": a brilliant portrait

By Mark Obbie

Lesley Stahl and her producer Ruth Streeter deliver a smart, entertaining portrait of Justice Antonin Scalia. I've been hard on "60 Minutes" for failing its storied history, including recently. But not this time. Scalia displays his feisty charm, and Stahl covers the substantive arguments while giving viewers a full-on view of the dynamism that is Scalia. One striking realization: Scalia is a closeted journalist! He makes an off-color joke, telling an Oxford audience that legislative compromise is "splitting the baby" -- in a discussion of abortion policy. And this: "The next appointee to the Court is going to be a female, Protestant, Hispanic. If you can find her out there, she's in." And this: He and his wife have nine children from "playing Vatican roulette". He defends colorful, provocative writing, which after all is the ostensible purpose of this PR blitz (good writing, he says, "makes the opinion interesting, which might induce someone to read it"). He's anti-authoritarian ("It may well be that I'm something of a shin-kicker. It may well be that I'm something of a contrarian."). Sounds like pure journo to me.Based on early reports, I assumed the piece would be a rehash. Not at all. The most dramatic moment: when Stahl hauls out old, private writings, including from Harry Blackmun's papers, where Scalia despaired over his lack of influence over the Court's majority. His facial expressions hide nothing as Stahl reads his words back to him. "I'm happier sometimes than at other times," Scalia allows, adding that his down times tend to come at a term's end, when the Court's output is "usually a disappointment." What I like most about this story was that it wasn't an ideological rant or rave. It didn't ask that we love or hate Scalia's jurisprudence and ideology. It simply asked that we learn more about -- and see -- the man. It's not nearly a substitute for what the Court should do. But what a gift to the public, to get to know an important public official in this way.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on April 27, 2008 (boomark / email).