I don’t know anyone who would seriously challenge the idea that America has become a far cruder society over the last 10, 20, or 30 years. There’s probably more sex, violence, and salty language in the opening credits of Keeping Up with the Kardashians than there was on all of prime-time TV when Scalia joined the Supreme Court in 1986.

But really, who gives an…F-word? We may well be an increasingly ill-mannered society, one that’s soaking in violent video games, instantly available online porn, and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo like our mothers used to soak in Palmolive liquid. But we’re also one in which youth violence, sex, and drug use are all trending down. If that means putting up with, you know, ladies cursing and other examples of unambiguously crass behavior, it seems a terrifically small price to pay.

Which isn’t to scant the vast cultural distance we’ve traveled since 1986. Back then, the hypersexualized chanteuse of the moment was Madonna, who had followed up 1984’s scandalous hit “Like a Virgin” with the relatively chaste “Papa Don’t Preach,” a paen to unplanned pregnancy widely interpreted as an anti-abortion statement. Today, we’re struggling to make sense of Miley Cyrus’s relentless display of skankitude, from her tongue-wagging, foam-finger-fondling twerking at MTV’s Video Music Awards to her scantily clad hosting of Saturday Night Live to her unapologetically frank (if misinformed) discussion of elder sex with Today’s Matt Lauer.

So Scalia is right that we’re coarser, but he’s wrong to suggest that if “you portray [bad behavior] a lot, the society’s going to become that way.”