The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

As most of the world has heard by now, former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was pronounced dead yesterday at 79-years-old. He was seen by many Republicans as the bedrock of the Supreme Court and of conservatism. Democrats, meanwhile, tended to see him as the largest obstacle in their fight for progression. While it was inevitable, especially in an election year, that Scalia's departure from SCOTUS would be talked about ad nauseam shortly after his death (and for days, weeks, and months to come), I was highly disappointed, to the point of embarrassment, by some fellow progressives' comments regarding the matter. Some were celebrating, exerting jubilation about the news, saying, "Today's a great day!" Look, I know many of us despised Justice Scalia with just about every fiber of our being, but even so, this was a human being, a person who had friends and family he left behind, and we should be much classier than to celebrate this tragic news.

Former Chicago Bears head coach, current ESPN NFL analyst, and favorite to be the lead actor in the film Grumpiest Old Men - Mike Ditka - decided to take his grumpiness to the Chicago Sun Times , where he wrote a bit concerning the St. Louis Rams players' pre-game protest this past Sunday. His piece went as follows: "It's a shame this thing has come to this. The shame of it is, I'm not sure they care about Michael Brown or anything else. This was a reason to protest and to go out and loot. Is this the way to celebrate the memory of Michael Brown? Is this an excuse to be lawless? Somebody has to tell me that. I don't understand it. I understand what the Rams' take on this was. I'm embarrassed for the players more than anything. They want to take a political stand on this? Well, there are a lot of other things that have happened in our society that people have not stood up and disagreed about. I wasn't in Ferguson. I don't know exactly what happen...