Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s sockpuppet Justice Clarence Thomas, who rarely speaks up or says anything of any intelligence during case arguments, spewed forth a testy snit during Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s first opinion delivery today.
While Thomas apparently concurred with the court’s majority opinion, it looked like he just had to get his two cents in about a phrase that Sotomayor used in the opinion reading. Sotomayor used the phrase “undocumented immigrant” for the first time in the Court’s history, rather than “illegal immigrant”. Thomas’ whine?
“with a sweep of the court’s pen, [Sotomayor] substituted ‘value judgments” and ‘what the court thinks is a good idea’ [for the text of a law]“
Thomas was a legal nitwit prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court, and he continues that sterling record of nitwittery today. I would love to see for myself if he actually puts much effort into the work he does for the Supreme Court.
Sorry to barge in, but I really think you should define the term sockpuppet as used in this context. I had to look them up to be sure, but I think this is what you mean: (This is from wikipedia btw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet) )
Sockpuppet:
A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception within an online community. In its earliest usage, a sockpuppet was a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks with or about himself or herself, pretending to be a different person,[1] like a ventriloquist manipulating a hand puppet.
In current usage, the perception of the term has been extended beyond second identities of people who already post in a forum to include other uses of misleading online identities. For example, a NY Times article claims that “sock-puppeting” is defined as “the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company.”
Meatpuppet:
The term meatpuppet or “meat puppet” is used as a pejorative description for a number of quite different online behaviors. An early recorded use is in cyberpunk novelist William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984).[16] The term had a long history before the internet, including the alternative rock band Meat Puppets, and a TV series broadcast in 1980 and featuring Wil Wheaton.
Editors of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia use “meat puppet” to deprecate contributions from a new community member if the new member was (apparently) recruited by an existing member only to back up the recruiting member’s position.[17] The person is implied to be analogous to a sockpuppet in function and goals, but a real separate person (i.e. “meat”) rather than fictitious. Wired columnist Lore Sjöberg puts “meat puppet” first on a satirical list of “common terms used at Wikipedia,” giving its supposed Wikipedia meaning as “someone you disagree with”.
So much easier to think of him as of average intelligence when he doesn’t talk. I hope he will now STFU.
writerdood: “hoisted upon your own petard” used to have a very specific meaning, but evolved over time, as language often does, to a more general (and generally accepted) definition.
The word “sockpuppet” conjures the image of shoving a hand up a sock (or other things) to make it say the things you wish it to say. This is the situation with Scalia and Thomas, and has been noted by Supreme Court watchers for years. I thought it appropriate and funny, and used it as such.
Yes, well, I was just thinking that he was acting more like a meat puppet than a sock puppet. That’s all. But since this article is about real life happenings and not online, sock puppet will work just fine. We shouldn’t confuse real life with online life, even when we write about real life in an online environment to discuss online the things that have happened in real life. But that’s where the appropriate use of the correct term comes in. I don’t think you’ve used it incorrectly here, because you’re talking about real life events.