Justice Antonin Scalia is upset that one Boston newspaper erroneously reported that he made an obscene gesture during a visit to a cathedral this week.* E&P reports:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has accused staffers at The Boston Herald of watching “too many episodes of the Sopranos.” A reporter for the paper on Monday interpreted a hand gesture he made at a cathedral as “obscene.”
In a strongly-worded letter to the editor of the paper, Scalia said the gesture was merely “dismissive.”
The Herald reported the justice made “an obscene gesture, flicking his hand under his chin” in response to a question about whether lawyers might question his impartiality in matters of church and state. The incident occurred after he attended Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. It said Scalia had also asked a photographer not to publish a picture.
The account was cited by many publications and Web sites, including E&P. A Reuters account initially described the justice as giving the “finger.”
Scalia said he had explained the gesture’s meaning to no avail to the reporter, whom he referred to as “an up-and-coming ‘gotcha’ star.” In his letter he quoted from Luigi Barzini’s book, “The Italians,” in which he observed: “The extended fingers of one hand moving slowly back and forth under the raised chin means ‘I couldn’t care less. It’s no business of mine. Count me out.”’
Scalia said the reporter leapt to conclusions because the justice initially explained his gesture as something Sicilian.
“From watching too many episodes of the Sopranos, your staff seems to have acquired the belief that any Sicilian gesture is obscene — especially when made by an ‘Italian jurist.’ (I am, by the way, an American jurist.),” he wrote.

You can read the letter here.

* CORRECTION: I originally wrote that Scalia made the gesture during a speech. A reader informed me that:

It was it was actually made during a visit with his daughter, who attends college in MA, after he had attended mass with her. The reporter asked the question as he was leaving.

So Scalia was accused of making an obscene gesture in a church. All the more reason for the Herald to set the record straight.