February 29, 2016 Issue

Jeffrey Toobin’s Talk piece, "Looking Back," in this week’s issue, perfectly expresses my view of Antonin Scalia:

Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor.

I’ve read several comments on Scalia’s death, e.g., Lawrence H. Tribe’s "The Scalia Myth" (NYR Daily, February 27, 2016), David Cole’s "Scalia: The Constitution in Politics" (NYR Daily, February 15, 2016), Dahlia Lithwick’s "Why Liberals Loved to Hate Antonin Scalia" (Slate, February 14, 2016). Toobin’s piece strikes me as the only one that's adequately damning.   

Postscript: One of the best sentences in this week’s issue is Peter Schjeldahl’s “Take Rat and Bear, their costumed roles as fame-hungry artists turned murder detectives in the very funny Super-8 film 'The Least Resistance' (1980-81), which they made in L.A. on a budget not far north of nothing, despite a triumphant finale involving a helicopter” ("Light Heavyweights") – where “best” means surprising, delightful, specific, textured, variegated, surreal.