Photo fuels flap over Scalia's flip

BOSTON, March 30 (UPI) -- The Boston Herald reports a photograph of a gesture made by Antonin Scalia to one of the paper's reporters shows the Supreme Court Justice was being rude.

Peter Smith, a photography teacher who was freelancing for the Boston Archdiocese magazine, said he also heard Scalia mutter an Italian obscenity. Scalia's run-in with reporter Lauren Sweet occurred as he left the Red Mass, a special service for judges and lawyers at the cathedral in Boston.

"The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, 'To my critics, I say, 'Vaffanculo,' punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin," Smith told the Herald.

In an unapologetic letter to the Herald, Scalia claimed the gesture is non-verbal language for "I don't know." Other experts said it has to do with telling someone to perform an impossible act on one's own anatomy.

In the meantime, the online magazine Slate reports that the flap has become fodder for right-wing Web sites, where sympathetic bloggers say Scalia gave a justified retort to the liberal media whose reporters have been hounding him because of his religious faith.