Glorious, Adorious* RBG
Adorious* RBG:
Need I say more? I mean, look at that picture.But I'll say more.I'm sure you've heard of the Internet sensation, "Notorious RBG"--the meme that started as a Tumblr that turned into a book by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik.So, say you're a fan of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or interested in knowing more about her. Say you want to introduce her to a young person in your life. One month from today, on September 20, 2016, I can help you with that. That's the publication date for my picture book, I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark, illustrated by the excellent Elizabeth Baddeley.And before then? I'll be sharing some good stuff about RBG here on this blog. I asked myself, what shall I title this series of posts? "Notorious" is taken. And more to the point, "Notorious" doesn't seem quite on point when your audience includes children. Yet I can't deny that Notorious RBG has a nice ring.
But . . . so does Glorious RBG! And there are many other fine adjectives that describe Ruth Bader Ginsburg--all with that same pleasing ring.
So we start with this: Adorious* RBG. Because she is. And was. The photographic evidence speaks for itself. And now a few words to demonstrate that this adorious quality is not merely skin-deep:A. She can tell a joke:“What is the difference between a bookkeeper in New York’s garment district and a U.S. Supreme Court justice?One generation.” **Ba-da-bing. Adorious, no?B. She can make legal history fun. When she was teaching at Rutgers Law School, she heard of complaints from female schoolteachers who had been forced out of their jobs once their pregnancies began to show. “After all,” Adorious RBG said years later when reflecting on that time, “the children must be spared the thought that their teacher had swallowed a watermelon.” ***C. She has a perfectly charming signature phrase: “ever so much.” As in, the written brief in a case “is ever so much more important” than the oral argument. As in, “the response that I got from the judges before whom I argued when I talked about sex discrimination was ‘What are you talking about? Women are treated ever so much better than men.'” As in, “It is ever so much easier to have a conversation” about a judicial opinion among three judges than among twelve justices. As in, when she went to Cornell, which had four men to every woman, “the women in my class were ever so much smarter than the men.”****Finally, my favorite, from RBG’s acceptance remarks when President Bill Clinton announced her nomination to the Supreme Court in 1993: “I have been aided by . . . a daughter and son with the taste to appreciate that Daddy cooks ever so much better than Mommy and so phased me out of the kitchen at a relatively early age.”Glorious, Adorious RBG. Next up: Not-Furious RBG.Feel free to subscribe to this blog--don't miss a single glorious post!--by filling in the form below, "Signup for email notifications." I'll be posting Glorious RBG items about twice a week leading up to publication day for I Dissent.* Watchful readers will observe that adorious is not, yet, a word. And I say I'm pitching this as something to be shared with impressionable young minds? Yes! A teachable moment: see neologism.** From an interview in "The Jewish Americans," PBS Series.*** From an interview transcribed in the Ohio State Law Journal (2009).**** I could footnote these RBG quotations as well; I'm a lawyer and that's what lawyers do. But enough. Send me an email if you want the sources!(Photo of Justice Ginsburg is by Sebastian King for TIME; photos of younger RBG are from the Supreme Court of the United States collection.)