Musk, Murdoch, 2 Convicts, 1 Actor Winners Of RBG Leadership Award

Yes, you did just read that and no, I didn’t drop acid a few hours ago. Although maybe I should. Whatever I hallucinate has got to be less weird than what shows up in my news feed on any given day. I’m sure that in my wildest nightmare visions I could never cobble together an orange-tinted white collar criminal who claims to have the physique of Rock Hudson (check it out: Hudson was 6’4″ 220, Trump says he’s 6’3″ 215) when he’s really an obese slob, and who is selling out this country to foreign interests, with the acquiescence of the GOP. But, once you acknowledge that that is real, anything else strange pales by comparison. On to the Ruth Bader Ginsburg award. Mother Jones:

On Wednesday, the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation announced the 2024 recipients of the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award. The winners: businessman Elon Musk, right-wing media kingpin Rupert Murdoch, lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, felonious Wall Streeter turned philanthropist Mike Milken, and actor Sylvester Stallone. The Foundation hailed these “iconic individuals” for their “extraordinary achievements.”

Veteran corporate lawyer Brendan Sullivan, who was Oliver North’s attorney during the Iran-contra scandal and who now chairs the RBG Award, noted, “The honorees reflect the integrity and achievement that defined Justice Ginsburg’s career and legend.” And the chair of the foundation, Julie Opperman, a big Republican donor and the widow of publishing titan Dwight Opperman, who once was CEO of Thomson Reuters, remarked that the award embraces “the fullness of Justice Ginsburg’s legacy.”

Attaching Ginsburg’s name to Musk, who has amplified racist and antisemitic posts and ideas on X, and Murdoch, whose Fox News purposefully spread Trump’s disinformation about the 2020 election and has repeatedly deployed falsehoods to challenge and undermine the values that Ginsburg fought for her entire life, seemed an odd and inappropriate choice. That’s what Ginsburg’s family believes.

It has released a statement denouncing the awards:

The decision of the Opperman Foundation to bestow the RBG Women’s Leadership Award on this year’s slate of awardees is an affront to the memory of our mother and grandmother, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her legacy is one of deep commitment to justice and to the proposition that all persons deserve what she called “equal citizenship stature” under the Constitution. She was a singularly powerful voice for the equality and empowerment of women, including their ability to control their own bodies. As it was originally conceived and named, the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award honored that legacy by recognizing “an extraordinary woman who has exercised a positive and notable influence on society and served as an exemplary role model in both principles and practice.” This year, the Opperman Foundation has strayed far from the original mission of the award and from what Justice Ginsburg stood for.

The Justice’s family wish to make clear that they do not support using their mother’s name to celebrate this year’s slate of awardees, and that the Justice’s family has no affiliation with and does not endorse this award.

And it won’t surprise you that Justice Bader’s children have requested that, “unless the original award criteria, as accepted by Justice Ginsburg, are restored, they very much want their mother’s name to be removed from the award.” He added, “Each of this year’s awardees has achieved notable success in their careers, and each may well deserve accolades of one form or another. But the decision to bestow upon them the particular honor of the RBG Award is a striking betrayal of the Justice’s legacy.”

There is no way any of these recipients would be someone that Ruth Bader Ginsburg would want to receive the award. Above all else, Ginsburg stood for the proposition that all persons deserve what she called “equal citizenship stature” under the Constitution. Sylvester Stallone, for example, does not believe in that. Stallone was renowned for abusing his household staff. They were required to “back out of a room and vanish immediately” never to make eye contact with him, and never to speak to his mother upon pain of immediate dismissal.

Such are the claims made by a group of ex-employees who are taking the actor and his ex-model wife, Jennifer Flavin, to court in Miami for unfair dismissal. They were fired six days after being hired, apparently for breaking one of the draconian house rules.

The picture they have painted is a familiar one. The celebrity couple – demented by dizzy earnings, the unquestioning worship of the fans and the rootlessness of their profession – create a household from hell for their hapless minions. […]

According to the Miami lawsuit, new staff at the Stallone mansion were briefed on their first day by Flavin, who passed on what they came to call “the Emperor’s Ten Commandments”. As well as the ban on eye contact and the requirement to evaporate at the sound of Stallone’s approaching footsteps, employees were not permitted to eat or drink anything from the house, and would be subject to daily searches to ensure they had not stuffed anything in their pockets. Furthermore, maids had to inspect the luggage of departing guests “to see if they took towels or silverware”.

Justice Ginsburg would never have endorsed this. As to ex-convicts Mike Milken and Martha Stewart, I don’t think much elaboration is needed. And Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch are beyond the pale. There is no way Her Honor would have approved of any of this.

Just one more thing in our world, like the Medal of Freedom, that has been debased. The highest civilian honor a president can bestow meant so much until Melania hung it around Rush Limbaugh’s neck. Then it became a Cracker Jack prize. I hope that the Ginsburg family prevails and keeps the honor of the RBG Award intact.