Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

This blog will pay for itself.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

I really should read my own blog.

In my day, never was longer.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Let there be snark.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

You are here: Home / Absent Friends / Justice Ginsburg Will Be Very Difficult to Replace

Justice Ginsburg Will Be Very Difficult to Replace

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To repeat:


… In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg measured Roberts for a feckless child who understands less about this country and its history than he knows about Sumerian calligraphy. She told him in no uncertain terms what his fanciful decision would mean in the real world.

Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness. The same cannot be said of the Court’s opinion today. The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled. … One would expect more from an opinion striking at the heart of the Nation’s signal piece of civil-rights legislation…Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.

It was more than a clever metaphor, although clever it was. It was a statement of remarkable prescience, a statement from someone who knew that the dark elements in American history never die, but only sleep until the opportunity to wreak the old vengeances reveals itself again, as it almost always does. Justice Ginsburg fought those forces in the days when nobody even acknowledged their existence. Her career runs parallel to that of Justice Thurgood Marshall—two champions of freedom and equality who won great victories in front of a Court that they eventually were asked to join. It is a very small club. To join you need a will of iron, an unshakable granite commitment to principle, and a good measure of controlled, implacable ferocity. It is the ferocity that is the most important thing…

So I choose to honor the memory of Justice Ginsburg by honoring the controlled ferocity that burned in her small, wiry frame. I remember the first time I sat in on oral arguments in the Supreme Court. She looked as though her chair would swallow her up. But, when it became her turn to question the litigants, I swear to god it looked as though she grew as I was watching. The force and precision of the intellect she brought to bear gave her size and heft that made her look like a giant. She literally was bigger than life, right there before your eyes. It was an honor to watch her work. Now, the umbrella is gone and, Christamighty, is it ever raining.

… One reason Ginsburg might have been reluctant to retire is that like many women of her generation, it took so long for her to get a chance, and even longer for her to become the person she was supposed to be. She did not even begin to be a “flaming feminist litigator,” as she would later describe herself, until she was 37 years old. That year, 1970, she taught Rutgers’s first class on women and the law at the prodding of insurgent female law students, and took on the cases of women whose letters piled up at the local ACLU affiliate.

It was a neat intergenerational relay. If younger women pushed her to take less shit, the work of the women who came before her provided a blueprint. In a mere month of reading everything on women and the law at the library, she discovered that the law had for a century enshrined discrimination by treating it as a favor, the same thing she’d been told her whole life. In the next decade, she would co-found the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and embark on an audacious legal strategy to transform the constitutional understanding of gender.

Two visionary lawyers, the leftist feminist Dorothy Kenyon and the queer Black theorist Pauli Murray, had long argued that gender discrimination violated the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause, which had previously applied only to race. The Supreme Court had never agreed. It hadn’t budged much from its ruling a century earlier barring a woman from practicing law because, per one justice, “The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.” In her second brief to the Supreme Court, 1973’s Frontiero v. Richardson, Ginsburg would coolly observe that “the method of communication between the Creator and the jurist is never disclosed.”

Her very first brief, two years earlier in Reed v. Reed, hadn’t just cited Kenyon and Murray; Ginsburg listed them as co-authors. When fellow ACLU lawyer Burt Neuborne objected that that just wasn’t done, Ginsburg said she didn’t care. “Women generations before said the same things my generation was saying, but they did so at a time when no one, or precious few, were prepared to listen,” she later explained. Though often treated as singular, Ginsburg never stopped calling herself lucky. “I had great good fortune in my life to be alive and have the skills of a lawyer when the women’s movement was revived in the United States,” she told me…

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  2. 2.

    Omnes Omnibus

    RBG was more than just a “liberal vote” on the Court.  This is one of the main reasons that the people who argue that she should have retired in 2010 or so are simply wrong.

  5. 5.

    Mousebumples

    I’m wearing my RBG shirt today,and these threads are making me teary eyed.

    May her memory be a blessing. ?

  6. 6.

    Almost Retired

    She was an absolute inspiration to everyone, and probably the primary reason the reputation of the Supreme Court hasn’t fallen into total partisan disrepute.  Alas, history is about to repeat itself.  Just as the inspirational Thurgood Marshall was “replaced” by the execrable Clarence Thomas, so shall RBG be succeeded by whatever mouth-breathing madwoman the Federalist Society barfs up for Trumpet the Puppet to rubberstamp.  I am not looking forward to the next few years….

  7. 7.

    dr. bloor

    She can’t be replaced, but that’s not necessary.  Her seat needs to be filled by a competent jurist with a consensually-validated understanding of the Constitution rather than a Federalist minion.  That’s it.

  8. 8.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    This is the best response yet to everyone who calls her selfish and worse for not retiring when they wanted her to:

    … One reason Ginsburg might have been reluctant to retire is that like many women of her generation, it took so long for her to get a chance, and even longer for her to become the person she was supposed to be.

  9. 9.

    Mathguy

    It’s heartening to see the huge crowds paying last respects to RBG. I suspect that the Republican dirtbags that make of the majority of the court won’t be seeing the same thing. More likely is a periodic urine shower on their graves.

  10. 10.

    donnah

    In times past, replacing her would have been difficult. We may have found a good judge, maybe a great one, but she was unique and special.

    But now, as we preview the next choice, it’s unbearable to think that her legacy is handed off to someone who would undo so many of her accomplishments, and decisions for the betterment of so many lives.

    We can’t let her down. We just have to keep fighting and voting for what’s right.

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    Anne Laurie: thank you for all the wonderful article links and twitter threads.  Especially liking the kilgore trout and Nell Scovell tweets, but they are all good.  (The daycare story!)

    Bookmarking them all, and will enjoy reading them.  And yes to the John Lewis and RBG stamps.  Pronto.

  12. 12.

    geg6

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I so, so, so agree.  Which is why Erik Loomis is dead to me.  He’s been dancing on her grave for years now.  He should be shunned for the asshole he is.

    RBG really meant something to people.  I remember my parents doing the same sort of mourning I have been doing when Thurgood Marshall went.  My 19 yo niece is just devastated by her passing.  We’ll never see her like again.  And anyone who wants to criticize her around me better be ready for a fist in the face.

  14. 14.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @donnah:

    I dreamt last night that you hooked a rug with RBG’s iconic portrait and presented it to the Supreme Court where it hangs in perpetuity! True fact.

  15. 15.

    Elizabelle

    @Mathguy:   Some of my friends from NoVA headed to the Supreme Court on Saturday morning to pay their respects.  They said the sidewalk in front was covered in flowers, cards, and other tributes.  One friend described it as a “Princess Di” scene.

    Meanwhile, behold the outpouring for Scalia. Don’t blink!  NPR:
    At The Steps Of The Supreme Court, A Small Memorial For Justice Scalia.

    I was thinking while I was at RBG’s vigil on Wednesday night:  this is a turnout that surpasses anything that will occur for what sits in the White House now, for our hypocritical and deplorable Majority Leader … there is a lot to be said for being respected and loved. Courageous, and a pathbreaker.

  16. 16.

    Mary G

    I posted this last night in the music thread, but it deserves to be repeated here. I have never been a big fan of Amy K., not disliking her, but just no feeling of who she really is besides someone who wins elections in a state possibly going red. This has changed my mind. She is in a committee meeting where Ted Cruz has opened his yap and spewed whatever it is he spewed (he’s not in the video), and she lets him and Twitler have it with both barrels:

    “The people of this country are fighting back because they know what’s on the line.”Watch the whole thing. @amyklobuchar did NOT come to play today. pic.twitter.com/1Rc1NlHciO— Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) September 24, 2020

    Honestly, watch her go off if you have time. It’s a thing of beauty. She barely holds it in, going from rage to sorrow. So heartfelt.

    “People are voting now in droves.”

  18. 18.

    Kent

    @SiubhanDuinne:… One reason Ginsburg might have been reluctant to retire is that like many women of her generation, it took so long for her to get a chance, and even longer for her to become the person she was supposed to be.

    She didn’t fail us.  We failed her.

  19. 19.

    WaterGirl

    @SiubhanDuinne:  What a lovely thought.

    When donnah said last week that she was working on a new project, I immediately thought of RBG and hoped that is what it will be.

    Alas, it was not, but maybe the next one will be!  It would certainly be worthy of that placement.  Or a gift in her honor, to RBG’s family, and they could present it to the SC.

  20. 20.

    There go two miscreants

    I have to disagree with Charlie Pierce: the dark forces in America never sleep. Those who are pursuing their rights are generally satisfied to exercise those rights once they have them, but the opposition looking to abridge or remove those rights never ceases trying to find the cracks in the structure.

  21. 21.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    Part of me wants to listen to Kilgore Trout’s tweets, and not think of doom.

    Part of me wants to say “you don’t understand, friend; the civil war has already started. The Republicans think the law applies *only* to their opponents; and they forswear accountability for oathbreaking, law breaking, naked corruption, and spitting on the Constitution (a proper loogie, not just saliva, mind you), SO LONG AS IT DOESN’T HURT THEIR POLL NUMBERS. They’ve already started using the machinery of the law to attack their enemies where reasonably possible (read as: where Trump’s lickspittle, Barr, doesn’t think he’ll end up with the nickname prepending “ol’ dis-” to his surname). If this is correct – and it’s at least partially correct, and I assure you, “hyperbole” is *not* what’s wrong with it! – all the good feelings and happy horsecrap in the world won’t change until people realize this, and start to choose, America, or anti-democratic forces.”

    There are too many people who have become too blinded to what’s actually happening, to the point that a complete imbecile can get in front of a crowd, call the opposition party traitors, terrible, horrible people, and say he did a *GREAT* job in making sure *only* a couple hundred thousand of our most vulnerable died during a pandemic that he knew was deadly, and approaching, but didn’t say anything because he didn’t want a panic in the stock market, er, among the American people; where a person can do all that, and… maintain 40% approval (though please note he *does* remain net underwater, as always).

    Don’t think of people who support him as stupid – there certainly *are* stupid followers – “duh, let me go to an area where there are CROWDS, and bring a gun known for extremely high velocity rounds, where I might feel tempted to fire it to protect PROPERTY, with NO BACKSTOP” – and don’t think of them as holding hateful ideas – though, again, many do, including those who want a shooting civil war; think of what kind of bullshit has to be fed to those people, day in, and day out, for the light to fail to dawn on them.

    Trump isn’t the problem; we were all told our institutions would protect us, and we’ve found that they most certainly will not, not when the party in (sufficient) power signals that they bloody well better not, if they know what’s good for them. Everyone who had a responsibility to safeguard those institutions bears blame for this. Yeah, that includes you evil people at Fox News. Yeah, *EVIL*. When you praise evil, and help it continue, when you notice the stench of evil is all around, remember the old adage: the one who smelt it, dealt it, and that most emphatically includes journalists who know damn well the story (and actions) stink, but pretend otherwise.

    Um.

    For the record, I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, so I feel a bit more helpless than many. Still, to avoid making my message a total downer, let’s remember Ginsberg knew exactly how rotten the system was, because she *was* right in the middle, and she didn’t give up either. So, yeah. Don’t give up because she’s gone. But NEVER FORGET, either.

  23. 23.

    Kent

    @There go two miscreants:I have to disagree with Charlie Pierce: the dark forces in America never sleep. Those who are pursuing their rights are generally satisfied to exercise those rights once they have them, but the opposition looking to abridge or remove those rights never ceases trying to find the cracks in the structure.

    The orcs are ALWAYS at the door.  And the velociraptors are ALWAYS seeking the weak link in the fence.

    They are predators.  It has ALWAYS been so and ALWAYS will be.  If something like gay marriage or women’s rights becomes consensus law they just move on to new fresh prey.

  25. 25.

    Ruckus

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    A lifetime appointment. And she did exactly that, gave it her life.

    Every last bit of it.

    We should all be so lucky to be able to give a millionth of what she did for all of us.

  27. 27.

    Kent

    @germy:

    They see us as the dark forces, and they think we never sleep.

    Unfortunately, sometimes we do.

    But not now.

    I lurk and sometimes post on some conservative Christian forums where I know I have relatives who hang out.  Mostly to get a sense of their thought process.

    Right now they have absolutely CONVINCED themselves that Covid pandemic restrictions are the camel’s nose under the tent to outlaw religion in this country.  You would not believe the quantity of words used to express the notion that Liberals really want to outlaw church and that common sense restrictions and social distancing requirements that make it difficult/impossible for 2000 people to gather in a Baptist megachurch are really a stealth attempt to outlaw church itself.

    They will pose pictures of BLM protests of people gathered together against pictures of empty churches and convince themselves that this is the actual deliberate liberal agenda.  That is how you get these preachers who defy Covid pandemic orders to hold church services without social distancing.  They aren’t really in denial about Covid.  They see themselves as the 2020 counterpart to 1950s Black civil rights protestors.  Or Christian martyrs from the 2nd Century Rome, or something like that.

  28. 28.

    zhena gogolia

    RBG didn’t let anyone down by not retiring while Pres. Obama was in office. It was everyone who voted for Jill Stein who let her down. It was @Comey w/his devastating and pointless letter. It was @BernieSanders and Russian hackers who screwed things up but attacking HRC.
    Nell Scovell
    @NellSco
    If anything, RBG should be angry that she didn’t get to retire a year ago with @HillaryClinton as President. RBG could have enjoyed her final year listening to opera and spending time with her family. Instead, she had to sit on the same bench as Brett “I like beer!” Kavanaugh.

    Very good point. Thank you.

  29. 29.

    Ruckus

    @Mary G:

    That is one righteously pissed off person. I don’t think I’d want to be Ted in the cloak room with her. She sounds like she could tear his limbs out with her bare hands and use them to beat him senseless if he wasn’t already.

  30. 30.

    RaflW

    Relatedly, the Republican effort to reach out to (and rudely slap) American Jewish voters continues at a brisk pace.

    @ChrisJansing
    GOP leaders McConnell and McCarthy will not be at the Capitol ceremony honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg today. As @Kasie reports, it’s remarkable for a ceremony of this magnitude to be missing two top congressional leaders.

  31. 31.

    guachi

    @geg6: RBG didn’t have to be a Supreme Court Justice until her death to mean something to people.

    Do people stop looking to President Obama just because he isn’t President? Is Jimmy Carter persona non grata?

    Do people stop appreciating the accomplishments of athletes when they retire?

  32. 32.

    A Ghost to Most

    @germy:

    They see us as the dark forces, and they think we never sleep.

    Good. I do sleep, but I get up real early. I’ve been fantasizing about spray painting “SRSLY?” on the street in front of my neighbors’ house with the Trump and Gardner signs.

  34. 34.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @zhena gogolia: RBG didn’t let anyone down by not retiring while Pres. Obama was in office. It was everyone who voted for Jill Stein who let her down. It was @Comey w/his devastating and pointless letter. It was @BernieSanders and Russian hackers who screwed things up but attacking HRC.
    Nell Scovell

    Hear, hear.

  36. 36.

    donnah

    @SiubhanDuinne: That’s so funny, because I’ve been scouting photos of her for my next project. Since I’m currently hooking one about Susan B Anthony and the 19th Amendment, it only makes sense that RBG would follow!

    Also, how sweet of you to think of my work!

  37. 37.

    narya

    This reminds me of two things: the women’s march in 2017, and the blue wave in 2018. There is a LONG way to go–we’re still pandemic-ing, the forces of evil will not let go easily, all people do not stay engaged forever (I mean, some of us do, but it can be a heavy lift)–but! Both of the things I just mentioned have also swelled the ranks of folks waiting in long lines to vote, and to file past RBG’s casket, and to donate to Democratic candidates. People discover that they’re not alone, and that helps people not be or feel alone in their opposition. And I still say the Democratic convention did a great job of saying: THIS picture, this multicolored, multiethnic, multireligious, mutt of a party, welcomes everyone. We will work together. We will sometimes disagree–sometimes vehemently–but we will strive together to create space for all of us. On top of that, it has clearly been the Democrats who have been trying to help everyday folks survive.

    Sorry; getting off my soapbox now.

  40. 40.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @donnah:

    Well, you can credit my subconscious for the thought! It really was a brief episode in an otherwise complicated and unrelated dream-plot. But I have a misty sense (the way one does when trying to recall dreams) that you posted a whole series of photos of the RBG rug on BJ, showing every step of the progress — much as you did with Christopher Robin and Pooh.

  43. 43.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    Not only is RBG impossible to replace but adding insult to injury, the person who chooses her successor is more ignorant of American jurisprudence than any other living American politician.

    Rest in Peace and Power RBG!

    Fuck Trump!

  45. 45.

    dr. bloor

    @geg6: Add me as well.  There are plenty of thoughts on both sides of the debate without one side necessarily being dismissed as assholes.

  46. 46.

    VeniceRiley

    @narya:

    This reminds me of two things: the women’s march in 2017, and the blue wave in 2018. There is a LONG way to go–we’re still pandemic-ing, the forces of evil will not let go easily, all people do not stay engaged forever (I mean, some of us do, but it can be a heavy lift)–but! Both of the things I just mentioned have also swelled the ranks of folks waiting in long lines to vote, and to file past RBG’s casket, and to donate to Democratic candidates. People discover that they’re not alone, and that helps people not be or feel alone in their opposition. And I still say the Democratic convention did a great job of saying: THIS picture, this multicolored, multiethnic, multireligious, mutt of a party, welcomes everyone. We will work together. We will sometimes disagree–sometimes vehemently–but we will strive together to create space for all of us. On top of that, it has clearly been the Democrats who have been trying to help everyday folks survive.

    @narya:

     
    I’m so stealing this!

  47. 47.

    oatler.

    Watching “The View” on Trump’s getting booed at RBG service with the added attraction of no Meghan McCain. ABC execs won’t take a hint. “But both sides…”

  48. 48.

    Mary G

    WaPo:

    Few GOP lawmakers attended the welcome ceremony in the Capitol building for Ginsburg, who will lie in state there; those who did not attend included Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.).

    The most senior Republican in Statuary Hall was Minority Whip Steve Scalise (La.), seated next to Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.).

    McConnell’s spokesman declined to comment on his whereabouts or schedule. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s spokesman said McConnell and McCarthy were invited.

    Bold mine, underbussing by Nancy SMASH’s office. Such bad people.

  49. 49.

    mad citizen

    @Mary G: I watched it last night thanks to you and am playing it now again.  This is excellent.  The other night I was thinking about there should be longform political commercials of the excellent speeches of our people: AOC taking down the congressman recently; John Lewis, Elijah Cummings.  I loved the one a couple years ago from Senator Bennett of Colorado on the floor–which to tie it all up with Amy K, was also directed at something Ted Cruz had said

     

    She is so right.  Trump politicizes EVERY THING.  He politicized a health crisis, wearing masks.  w t f ?

  50. 50.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I will point out that the Soviet Union looked it’s biggest, most relentless and scariest right before it collapsed.  Sort like how a small frogs when faced by a predator will puff themselves up to look like a bigger frog. There has been a lot of huffing and puffing from the Right lately.

  51. 51.

    germy

    @oatler.: 
    And then they had the whistleblower on, the woman who was on the covid task force.

    At the beginning of the interview, she said she was nervous to be on live TV, and one of the hosts assured her she was among friends.

    Meghan McCain is off today, otherwise she would have peppered her with a bunch of republican talking point gotcha questions provided by her husband Ben.

    (Meghan takes a lot of time off. She really has that republican work ethic.)

  52. 52.

    Yutsano

    @germy: Looks like we need a new thermometer! Let’s add Galvin in there just for spite. Although Young’s Native connections might just push him over. But we’ll see.

  56. 56.

    Elizabelle

    Another excellent column by Jennifer Rubin, WaPost. Justice Ginsburg leaves us our marching orders

    …. Ginsburg was arguably the most influential Jew in U.S. history (perhaps tied with Sandy Koufax for the most loved). Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt’s remarks at the ceremony centered on “tzedek, tzedek tirdof” — the phrase from Deuteronomy 16:20 meaning “justice, justice you shall pursue,” featured in an inscription on a piece of art in Ginsburg’s office. There are many rabbinical discussions on why the word “justice” is repeated, but my favorite — one certainly applicable to Ginsburg — is that you must pursue justice in a just way. Justice is not merely the result that matters, but the means by which you seek it. Ginsburg exemplified this idea by pursuing justice for all Americans, case by case, through the steady progress of the law. Might does not make right. It is through rational and creative thinking that justice is advanced. Justice does not come as a bolt from the blue, but as the result of tenacious, fierce, careful and inspired work.

    If we are looking for a deus ex machina to relieve us from the scourge of President Trump and from the repeated denial of justice — for example, to African Americans such as Breonna Taylor — then we are missing the importance of Ginsburg’s legacy. Justice comes over years and decades, through voting, through the courts and through direct and peaceful action. What will save us from Trump is not a flash of conscience in the hearts of Republican senators, but the determination of tens of millions to pursue and defend the rule of law and the dignity of all Americans.

    Holtzblatt also sang a passage from Psalm 118 … Roughly translated, it says, “Out of the straits I called to God. He answered me in a large place.” In other words, out of the straits — a narrowness or a constricted existence — we seek a larger place, or an open and freer space. This was of course how Ginsburg approached the Constitution. … In her lifetime, “We the people” came to embrace not only women but Americans with disabilities and the LGBTQ community.

    For her, the 14th Amendment and the promise of equal justice had to be liberated from the narrow interpretation of the 19th century. She was not “making up” law, but rather taking it quite literally.

    …. The outpouring of love and grief and loss we have seen over this week for a Supreme Court justice is as unique in history as Ginsburg was. … Now she rests, the rabbi noted, and we take up her struggle. We will need to be as determined, methodical and persistent as she was.

  57. 57.

    Soprano2

    @Kent:  Right now they have absolutely CONVINCED themselves that Covid pandemic restrictions are the camel’s nose under the tent to outlaw religion in this country. You would not believe the quantity of words used to express the notion that Liberals really want to outlaw church and that common sense restrictions and social distancing requirements that make it difficult/impossible for 2000 people to gather in a Baptist megachurch are really a stealth attempt to outlaw church itself.

    I have a mostly sensible friend who posted a story on FB about some people in Idaho who gathered in the parking lot outside a government building and sang Christian hymns without masks or social distancing, all to get themselves arrested for violating a masking ordinance. She said “I don’t want any covid or political comments, this is just stupid”. She didn’t like that I pointed out that they were arrested for breaking the law, and could have done what they did while obeying the ordinance and they would be just fine. She said “singing hymns is different”. It’s the “as long as we say ‘religion’ we can do anything we want” school of thought. Someone else poked at her by saying “posted a thread about covid – said no comments about covid – got mad when someone posted about covid”. ETA I think more than anything they’re really butthurt about the protests happening, and think no one cared that they might be spreading COVID. Well, those people were wearing masks and trying to stay apart, and lots of people worried about them spreading COVID!

  58. 58.

    debbie

    @geg6:

    She meant a lot to one of my nieces. Her father is a Trump supporter,  but there she was the other night, tweeting that her seat should not be filled until after the election.

  61. 61.

    geg6

    @dr. bloor:

    Fine.  Get in the fucking asshole box.

    Love all these men telling me how selfish and stupid RBG was.  Just love it.  And I bet you all call yourselves liberals and think we’re on the same side.  Nope, you are not.

  63. 63.

    Soprano2

    I listened to “Fresh Air” yesterday, where she interviewed conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin about the Verdi “Requiem” and the performance of it that he conducted. Man, he takes those tempos fast! I love that piece; it’s one of my favorite large choral pieces, and probably my favorite requiem. It’s the closest you’ll get as a choir singer to singing opera. It made me want to listen to it today, so I’m doing that now, which I think is appropriate seeing as how RBG loved opera so much. Part of it was performed at Princess Di’s funeral.

  64. 64.

    Kent

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:I will point out that the Soviet Union looked it’s biggest, most relentless and scariest right before it collapsed.  Sort like how a small frogs when faced by a predator will puff themselves up to look like a bigger frog. There has been a lot of huffing and puffing from the Right lately.

    Personally I think it looked more relentless and scary under Stalin than Gorbachev.  But I take your point.

  65. 65.

    Betty Cracker

    @geg6: RBG’s importance is dismissed by some in a manner that reminds me of the way certain obtuse male literary critics secretly consider Jane Austen novels as “chick lit” — something that appeals primarily to women and is therefore by definition inferior.

    Omnes is right at #2, and unlike him, I’m not a lawyer. But I interpreted his remark to encompass not only what RBG meant to millions of women but also her legal work over the past decade. Dissent isn’t just shouting into the wind.

  67. 67.

    mad citizen

    “Ginsburg was arguably the most influential Jew in U.S. history”  Hard to argue with that so I’ll put in a vote for #2 for one Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing/Duluth Minnesota.  I think that guy might do some big things.

  69. 69.

    Almost Retired

    @geg6: Ever notice how no one ever suggests that Stephen Breyer should have stepped down during the Obama Administration.  True, he didn’t have the public health challenges that Justice Ginsburg did, but he’s in his eighties now.  And, to be brutally transactional here, he had nowhere near the influence and iconic status of RBG.  So he could have resigned in 2014 or 2015 to be replaced by a 45 year old who will be there for another couple generations.  Take one for the team?   Never comes up.  But the woman?  Lots of second-guessing and criticism.  Some things never change.

  71. 71.

    geg6

    @Betty Cracker:

    Oh, I didn’t mean to minimize that part of things.  When I was but a young undergrad still thinking I wanted to be a lawyer (thank dog, I changed my mind in the spring of my junior year), we always studied the dissents in SCOTUS cases very intensely.  And that is because, as in the case of RBG, the dissents are often cited as much as the actual decision and sometimes lead to a complete change in precedent.

  73. 73.

    Betty Cracker

    @geg6: Exactly! I knew you weren’t minimizing that, but lots of RGB’s critics talk as if her legal chops were as interchangeable as a goddamned light bulb.

    Funny that you also considered a legal career, thought better of it, and rejoice that you did so in retrospect. Same! :)

  75. 75.

    NotMax

    @Betty Cracker

    There was a non-family acquaintance who offered – repeatedly – to pay 100% of any and all costs if I’d attend law school, including providing a personal stipend.

    My response boiled down to “Not no way, not no how, not now, not in the future.”

  76. 76.

    Chyron HR

    @geg6:

    I wonder what the difference could be?

    The difference is that RBG had cancer TWICE and the third time just doomed the country.  And you fucking know it.

  77. 77.

    Elizabelle

    @Chyron HR:   Thank you.

    But you and I are fucking misogynists to have had those concerns.  Oh, and we are ageists, too.  Did you know that?

    The hive mind, at its finest.

  78. 78.

    Elizabelle

    You guys have turned what could be a celebration of RBG into something really repellent.  Our way or the highway.  Let’s find something to fight about!

    Be proud of yourselves.  Take a bow, please.

  79. 79.

    MagdaInBlack

    I fail to understand what all the “should haves” hope to accomplish at this point. This is where we are. Period.

  80. 80.

    Elizabelle

    @MagdaInBlack:

    It’s the not respecting that others’ concerns were valid. It’s using the death of a beloved jurist to divide people on this blog.

    Please add Barack Obama to your list of assholes who were concerned at one point. But, as you say, we are where we are.

    NY Times: When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined President Barack Obama for lunch in his private dining room in July 2013, the White House sought to keep the event quiet — the meeting called for discretion.

    Mr. Obama had asked his White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, to set up the lunch so he could build a closer rapport with the justice, according to two people briefed on the conversation. Treading cautiously, he did not directly bring up the subject of retirement to Justice Ginsburg, at 80 the Supreme Court’s oldest member and a two-time cancer patient.

    He did, however, raise the looming 2014 midterm elections and how Democrats might lose control of the Senate. Implicit in that conversation was the concern motivating his lunch invitation — the possibility that if the Senate flipped, he would lose a chance to appoint a younger, liberal judge who could hold on to the seat for decades.

    But the effort did not work, just as an earlier attempt by Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who was then Judiciary Committee chairman, had failed. Justice Ginsburg left Mr. Obama with the clear impression that she was committed to continuing her work on the court, according to those briefed.

    In an interview a year later, Justice Ginsburg deflected questions about the purpose of the lunch. Pressed on what Mr. Obama might think about her potential retirement, she said only, “I think he would agree with me that it’s a question for my own good judgment.”

    With Justice Ginsburg’s death last week, Democrats are in a major political battle, as Republicans race to fill her seat and cement the court’s conservative tilt.

    Mr. Obama clearly felt compelled to try to avoid just such a scenario, but the art of maneuvering justices off the court is politically delicate and psychologically complicated. They have lifetime appointments and enjoy tremendous power and status, which can be difficult to give up.

    From the July 2014 Reuters article:

    Asked what she believed Obama might think about her future, she said, “I think he would agree with me that it’s a question for my own good judgment.”

    Among those liberals who have called for Ginsburg to step down is Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine, law school. He had asserted that only if she resigned this summer, before the November elections, could she ensure that Obama would be able to choose a successor who shares her views.

    Ginsburg said on Thursday that even if she had retired, the president would have been more likely to have chosen a compromise candidate than a liberal.

    Some liberals are further concerned that if she does not retire during Obama’s presidency and a Republican is elected as his successor in 2016, Ginsburg would end up being replaced by a conservative justice, moving the court even more to the right.

    But Obama and Cherminsky and all those people. Just hacks, wankers, misogynists and people who do not respect the aged.

    None of this changes a damn thing. The fabulous and notorious RBG is as dead as the fictional Jacob Marley. And her passing is being used in this very post to settle scores with commenters who may not be in the majority here, and others.

    I am OK with that. Someone we are all rather fond of had some choice words about the value of dissent.

    It is the belittling that is coming through loud and clear.

  81. 81.

    Elizabelle

    And I realize a lot of this is grief and despair at the fates, and 40 some days out from the decisive election.

  82. 82.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    At funerals, I like to point out to the family all the things the deceased did to contribute to their own demise.

  83. 83.

    WaterGirl

    @Elizabelle: Are you talking about the folks who are doing the equivalent of saying “Al Franken touched several women inappropriately”, as if it’s a statement of fact?

    Or to the people who are responding in defense of Franken because nearly all of those photos and stories were bullshit, and they can’t just let that lie there?

    People just lost someone they loved, admired, respected.  It’s unreasonable to think they won’t defend that person when others want to second-guess decisions and blame the current clusterfuck on her.

    There’s a time for everything, and when someone has just lost every file they ever had is NOT the time to tell them “you should have done a backup”.

    Instead, the thing to do is to make sure they set up regular backups on their new computer.

    We cannot go back in time, and we can choose to not rub salt in an open wound.

  84. 84.

    WaterGirl

    I will add that saying “I told you so” has never – in the history of time since time began, and even before that – been a helpful thing to say.

  85. 85.

    Elizabelle

    Vox:  from October 2016:  the article by Sarah Kliff in full; it’s short:
    “It helps to sometimes be a little deaf”: a great piece of advice from Ruth Bader Ginsburg
    Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has an op-ed in the New York Times Sunday on her advice for living. And there is this one part that I just loved:

    Another often-asked question when I speak in public: “Do you have a some good advice you might share with us?” Yes, I do. It comes from my savvy mother-in-law, advice she gave me on my wedding day. “In every good marriage, it helps to be a little deaf.” I have followed that advice assiduously, and not only at home through 56 years of marital partnership. I have employed it as well in every workplace, including the Supreme Court. When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best to tune it out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.

    Ginsburg later returns to the same theme when describing her work on the Supreme Court:

    Despite our strong disagreements on cardinal issues — think, for example, of controls on political campaign spending, affirmative action, access to abortion — we genuinely respect one another, even enjoy one another’s company.
    Collegiality is crucial to the success of our mission. We could not do the job the Constitution assigns to us if we didn’t — to use one of Justice Antonin Scalia’s favorite expressions — “get over it!”

    Ginsburg’s advice feels especially meaningful as we enter the final weeks of campaign season [2016; oh for those happier days!] and there are many “thoughtless or unkind words” being spoken. In a moment when the easy option can be to react — on Facebook, on Twitter, on any platform where someone says something you don’t like — the Supreme Court justice’s words are a helpful reminder that there is always another option: Don’t say anything at all, and get on with your day.

    Here’s link to RBG’s October 1, 2016 NY Times op ed:
    Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Advice for Living

  87. 87.

    Jay Noble

    @Soprano2: I worked as a DJ at a small radio station back in the 90’s Oldies to the occasional new stuff format. I was given 3 rules: No country (KRVN owned that in our area), No Rap and no Screaming Guitars. About the time I had started building an audience, some wanna be be preacher evangelical convinced the owner that he could provide tapes of Christian music that would make her money in my 6-11pm slot. You guessed it Country, Rap and Screamming Guitars but With Jesus!

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