Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a rock star. The 85-year-old Supreme Court Justice has a tee shirt with her
image on it that says, Notorious RBG, has been parodied on Saturday Night Live, works out with a trainer in a sweatshirt that says Super Diva and has thousands of groupies that call her an icon.
This diminutive justice (she is 5’1”) is a soft-spoken, powerful dynamo that is lovingly featured in the biographical documentary film, RBG, directed by Betsy West, Julie Cohen.
Although I knew Ruth Bader Ginsberg was on the Supreme Court, I didn’t know much about her. For example, she went to Cornell University and was in the first class at Harvard Law School that admitted women. By the time she entered Harvard, she was married and a new mother. She transferred and finished up her degree at Columbia Law School and tied for first in her class. But with all her smarts and accolades, she couldn’t find a job because she was a woman.
(A young Ruth Bader Ginsburg)
What fascinated me about the film was listening to RBG speak. Said NPR’s Nina Totenberg, “She has this soft little tiny voice, and she can say really devastating things in that quiet voice.” She credits that calm quiet voice to advice her mother gave her. "My mother told me two things. "Be a lady and be independent," RBG comments in the film. She mentions that part of being a lady was don’t get angry because no one will listen to you.
She has used that quiet voice to stomp on the enemies of women’s rights and change the way the law now treats gender differences.
As much as this is a film about the seriousness of RBG’s ongoing career. (She was the second woman appointed to the Supreme Court and is now one of three females justices), it is also a love story. While RBG has been a serious workaholic her whole life, she married Marty Ginsberg, a funny, chatty man that adored his wife and believed that she should be anything she wanted to be. He was also one of the most successful tax lawyers in New York City.
In case you haven’t guessed, I liked this movie and recommend you go see who the notorious RBG is.
BTW: My favorite RBG quote is how she responds when asked when will there be enough women on the supreme court]? And she says ‘When there are nine. ’People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, so why not?"
PS – She gives her Notorious RBG tee shirts out as presents!