Obscene Reporting?
So, the Boston Herald's little run-in with Justice Antonin Scalia's "obscene," (well, maybe not so much) gesture seems to have reached an extreme in high comedy. The Herald has responded to Scalia's letter to the editor with this editorial, (do read the entire thing) which concludes:
So in a letter [Scalia] explained the origins of the gesture and insisted it wasn't obscene.The Herald further bolsters its, um, "case," in another article in today's paper, with explanations of the gesture's meaning from some "Sopranos" stars, who, as the Herald's headline explains, are "Divided On Bawdy Body Language."The "it's not something you'd do to your mother" defense might have been generated from one of the Herald's interviews with a "Sopranos" actor John Fiore, who offered his opinion on the gesture: "'It's not that bad, but I wouldn't do it to my mother. No way. Would I do it in church? These days, maybe. It depends if the priest was giving me the hairy eyeball,' said Stoneham native John Fiore, who played Sopranos capo Gigi Cestone."Maybe so, but it's still not something you'd do to your mother.
Who else is divided on the actual meaning of the gesture? Human gestures experts, according to another article on the matter in today's Herald (which includes an "exclusive" photo of the gesture):
"How could your reporter leap to the conclusion (contrary to my explanation) that the gesture was obscene?" Scalia wrote.So basically, the Herald's response is this: based on extensive reporting that reveals the meaning of Scalia's gesture is debatable (even among "Sopranos" stars!) -- reporting performed only after the Herald wrote that Scalia's was "an obscene gesture" -- the newspaper is warranted in terming it "obscene" because "it's still not something you'd do to your mother." Let's hope the Herald doesn't have any legal run ins with the Supreme Court anytime soon.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.