RBG

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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Given the current political climate, politicians are now center stage and part of our pop culture. This extends to Supreme Court judges and no one is more recognizable than Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West interviewed Ginsburg for twenty hours and their film about the esteemed judge is entitled “RBG,” a title that makes light fun of the Notorious B.I.G., the musician, precisely because like B.I.G, Ginsburg is honest to a fault and does not take to flattery or foolishness.

Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn in 1933. She credits her mother for giving her a strict moral code: act like a lady, don’t give into anger and be independent. She lost her mother at age 12, but the words remain.

She married a lawyer, Marty, that she met on a blind date and they were inseparable until his death in 2010. As a young woman, Ginsburg helmed many trial cases — notably Frontiero v. Richardson, involving female housing allowances, and Weinberger v. Wiesenfield, which gave benefits to a single parent father in the 1970s, a time when such verdicts were unthinkable.

Ginsburg was appointed on the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993. In 1996, she struck down the all male admission policy at Virginia Military Institute. Through these cases, Ginsburg became a household name.

This film is endearing, personal and pointed. The Justice is no distant figure. Here she is up close, up front and irrepressibly human. Much is made of her love of humor and opera. Nothing gets to her as much as her late husband’s jokes and the energy of opera, specifically the drama of the human voice. Wonderful it is to see Ginsburg in stitches as she watches Kate McKinnon impersonate her on “Saturday Night Live.” Laughter moves through her like an electric current.

Ginsburg was criticized in the Summer of 2016, for calling out Donald Trump as a faker and he promptly said she should resign. No apologies, no regrets. At 85, she goes to the gym and still resides on the Supreme Court bench with no sign of stopping.

As a champion for women and by extension all of humanity, Ginsburg is a superhero and a very tangible Marvel Avenger in the best sense. Rather than any dogma, Ginsburg employs a rule of Constitutional Law to guide her.

After all, impartial Justice is a woman.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com