All those names ending in vowels — it’s confusing!

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Tony Soprano, who tended to take great offense at any slight toward people whose names end in vowels, would not be pleased:

Lindsey Graham mixes up Samuel Alito with Antonin Scalia

… Sen. Lindsey Graham mixed up Supreme Court justices during the confirmation hearing for nominee Neil Gorsuch on Tuesday. The gaffe happened while Graham discussed nominations made during an election year.

“Justice Alito passed away in February,” the South Carolina Republican said.

Except that Justice Samuel Alito is actually alive. It was the death of another conservative judge, Antonin Scalia, that left the vacant seat on the court….

My first thought was, “Yeah, I’ve done that, too.” Even though I know Scalia is the dead one, and the one considered such a boogeyman byΒ the left, and Alito is the low-profile, live one, I’ve been guilty of hearing the name of one of the only two Italian-Americans ever to serve on the court, and thinking of the other one.

Does this make me a bad person? I didn’t mean anything by it, T…

7 thoughts on “All those names ending in vowels — it’s confusing!

  1. Harry Harris

    Well, you couldn’t have mixed up the names of protestant judges. There haven’y been any for a while.

    1. Brad Warthen Post author

      He was the last one.

      Yeah, I’m kind of worried about Gorsuch. He was RAISED right, but I hear he’s been going to church with his Anglican wife.

      Do we really want to give those Prods a foothold back on OUR Court?

      1. Brad Warthen Post author

        πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

        I have to add those, because I’ve actually had nice Protestants get offended when I kid around like that….

        Hey, my PARENTS are Protestant. So is my brother. I mean, you know, there ARE some good ones…

        πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

          1. Brad Warthen Post author

            I’ve always kidded around with my Anglican relatives — such as my cousin the Episcopal priest — about how they’d still be a respectable church and all if not for King Henry…

            But then I learned to my shock several months ago that I was related to Anne Boleyn (2nd cousin 15 times removed), which made me feel sort of complicit in their efforts to separate Henry from his true wife, Catherine of Aragon.

            Worse, I then discovered that Henry himself was, through another line, my 2nd cousin 14 times removed.

            But while he’s family, I still take a dim view of Henry. He only executed two of his six wives, and BOTH of them were family — not to him, but to me. Catherine Howard was my 3rd cousin 15 times removed. (Although she was Anne’s first cousin, I’m actually related to both of them separately.)

            The bigger my tree grows (3,455 people at last count), the harder it is to criticize anyone from history without offending family.

            Most people of English descent are probably as closely related to these folks as I am. Trouble is, now I KNOW it…

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