"These people have elevated audacity to symphonic and operatic levels. The Florida Supreme Court relied on new law to resolve the election dispute down there"
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Bugliosi opens by treating brazenness as an art form, not a lapse. “Elevated audacity to symphonic and operatic levels” is barbed praise: he’s not merely accusing “these people” of overreach, he’s mocking the grandeur with which they perform it. The phrasing drags political maneuvering into the world of high culture, implying something rehearsed, staged, and self-congratulating. Audacity isn’t incidental here; it’s orchestrated.
The second sentence snaps from metaphor to indictment. “The Florida Supreme Court relied on new law” is a quiet explosion, because courts aren’t supposed to reach for “new law” to settle a live election dispute. Bugliosi’s intent is to frame the decision as retrofitted legitimacy - law made or freshly interpreted to justify an outcome already desired. The phrase “down there” adds a note of regional contempt and distance, as if Florida is a theater where constitutional seriousness goes to get mugged.
Context matters: Bugliosi is speaking in the long shadow of the 2000 election, when Florida’s recount fight turned procedure into spectacle and judges into protagonists. His subtext is that the real scandal isn’t partisan heat; it’s institutional improvisation dressed up as solemn jurisprudence. By pairing operatic excess with legal technicality, he suggests the performance is the point: grandeur in tone, opportunism in method. The cynicism lands because he writes like a prosecutor - vivid rhetoric, then a precise factual allegation - daring the audience to treat it as anything but deliberate.
The second sentence snaps from metaphor to indictment. “The Florida Supreme Court relied on new law” is a quiet explosion, because courts aren’t supposed to reach for “new law” to settle a live election dispute. Bugliosi’s intent is to frame the decision as retrofitted legitimacy - law made or freshly interpreted to justify an outcome already desired. The phrase “down there” adds a note of regional contempt and distance, as if Florida is a theater where constitutional seriousness goes to get mugged.
Context matters: Bugliosi is speaking in the long shadow of the 2000 election, when Florida’s recount fight turned procedure into spectacle and judges into protagonists. His subtext is that the real scandal isn’t partisan heat; it’s institutional improvisation dressed up as solemn jurisprudence. By pairing operatic excess with legal technicality, he suggests the performance is the point: grandeur in tone, opportunism in method. The cynicism lands because he writes like a prosecutor - vivid rhetoric, then a precise factual allegation - daring the audience to treat it as anything but deliberate.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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