Watch Justice Scalia's angry ObamaCare, gay marriage dissents performed as an acoustic ballad
If all you know about Justice Antonin Scalia's blistering dissents last week is his whimsical use of "jiggery-pokery" and "pure applesauce" (ObamaCare) and his accusation that he and his colleagues are a "threat to American democracy" (same-sex marriage), you want to know more, but you don't like reading long legal documents, the band Coheed and Cambria is at your service.
In the song below, posted to Funny or Die, the band takes some of the more poetic parts of Scalia's dissents on gay marriage and the Affordable Care Act and spin them into a ballad for two acoustic guitars, an acoustic bass, a shaker, and two singers. Never has so much disappointed anger sounded so lovely.
If listening to nearly four minutes of prog balladry is too much, Daniela Lapidous at McSweeney's has distilled Scalia's gay marriage dissent into a haiku:
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She created remarkably evocative haikus of the other three dissents and Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion, too, and you can read them all at McSweeney's.
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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