Notorious RBG
Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
By: Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik
[Fulfilling “A book about someone with different beliefs than you” as part of the 2021 Fall Reading Challenge.]
“On or off the bench, she has always been steadfast, and when the work is justice, she has every intention to see it to the end.”
“A woman who beat the odds to make her mark.”
The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg and I disagreed about some fundamental things— namely same-sex marriage or abortion (what she termed “reproductive rights”)— and I knew that going into this book. I read it specifically for that reason as it fulfilled the above item on my reading challenge.
My low view of this book is not based on my differing viewpoint.
I desired to read this book because whether or not you agree with someone, they are still a human being. ‘Dissenters’ of our personally held views often get painted as opponents in our culture, and, especially when they are in the public eye and there is no interpersonal relationship, one’s humanity is lost in the ‘fight.’
I wanted to put some humanity on RBG.
All I know about RBG is the outcome of some of her Supreme Court cases, but more so, Kate McKinnon’s RBG character on SNL dishing out ‘Gins-burns’ left and right.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to this book.
Sure, it has a clever title— based on the viral site who coined ‘Notorious RBG’ after Notorious B.I.G. (which I know nothing about.)
And they hired a graffiti artist to design the chapter titles which was creative.
And it was interesting to see old pictures of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a young woman on the bar and with her family when I only know the image of her from the last several years.
Poor Writing
But frankly, the book was boring and poorly compiled.
It was disjointed. I think the authors thought they were grouping things together that made sense but one minute you’re detailing RBG’s fashion and then talking about the paintings in her office. Many times the things just didn’t flow together.
Plus it was not chronological, so, having not been familiar with RBG before this, I was often confused how different pieces fit together.
There was a timeline chapter with significant events but many of them just listed the name of case as if I was supposed to know the significance of the case and what it was for—which I didn’t.
They included more about her legal cases than her personal life, detailing large chunks of her dissents and offering marginal notes to explain different parts.
I was frustrated with the writing style. There were bits that I assume were sarcasm or jokes but to me it was often unclear. I didn’t know which quotes were serious and which ones were tongue-in-cheek. They explained in too much detail some legal anecdotes and not enough in others.
In one explanation of a case the writers comment about the lawyer providing an appendix listing “all the laws and regulations that treated men and women differently,” but then they don’t tell us what any of them were! This was a major bent of RBG’s law career, so tell us some more of ALL those laws that have unfair treatment.
The book starts off talking about her dissenting opinion on the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act but I still have no idea which parts they were all fighting about. I know it had something to do with states having to have federal courts okay any voting rules changes they made, but that’s it. I’m sure there is more to be said about it than that.
Another reviewer commented about this and I agree— she spent time in Sweden that they said was a major influence on her life. But they don’t talk about Sweden hardly at all!
There were so many avenues they could have traveled down to flesh out the person of RBG and what made her who she was— her childhood, her motherhood, her travels. But they spent their pages in a very boring and unhelpful way.
Skewed Writing
There was entire two-page spread in table format of major dissents RBG wrote but it was so simplistic, I’m not sure what the point was. It stated the case name, dumbed the entire case down to a carefully worded question, provided a comment of the majority (conservative) opinion and then gave RBG’s ‘mic-drop’ comments.
Here’s two examples:
Kentucky vs King: | What are the rights of a man whose apartment was searched for drugs? | Result: The police won 8-1, in an opinion by Alito. | RBG says: “The Court today arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases.”
Walmart vs Dukes: | Can 1.5 million female Walmart workers sue for sex discrimination as a class? | Result: Nope, in an opinion by Scalia. | RBG says: “The plaintiff’s evidence, including class members’ tales of their own experiences, suggests that gender bias suffused Wal-Mart’s company culture.”
I don’t know… maybe I would agree with RBG but this doesn’t tell me anything about the cases. It is a table meant to paint RBG as the ‘Queen’ of dissents in which she takes all those conservative idiots to task on their antiquated ways of viewing the world.
This was a common theme throughout the book— to paint the conservative justices as idiots and total bros.
There was never a question about how the authors felt about conservative judges, lawyers, justices, policies, etc.
One quotes says this, “Two Bush appointees to the court gave a narrow majority to a conservative agenda of undermining remedies for racial justice, reproductive rights, access to healthcare, and protection for workers while giving corporations ever more rights and political influence.”
This is a very opinionated rather than a reportive statement. The conservative agenda is hardly an attempt to undermine a remedy for racial justice or access to healthcare. Plus they assume that what the conservatives are doing for corporations is inherently bad.
I think it’s fair to say that both political parties are both proponents of justice, fairness, equality, and the country’s economic success. They just have different ideas of what policies will accomplish that!
The authors are not taking RBG’s apparent advice to paint your opponents’ views in the most charitable light.
I’m not saying every conservative person, policy or opinion on a case is correct, but to any reader reading this book, they will only be spoon-fed the beliefs of the authors which is a dismissal of anything conservative, a clear vibe that it is all basically evil.
If RBG’s opinions are so righteous then presenting a complete picture of the case would not threaten the reception of her dissents. Their skewed writing indicates they maybe don’t trust RBG’s opinions to stand on their own without presenting her opponents in a selective and careful way.
Admiration
RBG did do a lot for women’s rights. I may disagree with her on abortion and same-sex marriage, but I can admire her tenacity to fight for her right to attend law school, to practice law, and to not be discriminated against for being a woman, a pregnant woman, or a mother!
She did have to overcome a lot to get to the place of prestige that she did! Her work ethic is unmatched by many!
I am glad she fought for women to be required to serve on juries because this creates a fairer jury pool for defendants.
I admire that even under the immense pressure to resign before she is replaced by a conservative justice, she stood her ground as she always did, not allowing her future to be dictated by others. It takes a lot of courage to stand against that.
I admire that even though she and Scalia landed on opposite sides of numerous cases, she still maintained a friendship with him. As members of the highest court handling polarizing and controversial cases they are the ultimate representation of us vs them when the opinions are read and it is a powerful image if the justices can show us humanity and relationships amidst dissenting views.
I can admire that she was not just fighting for equality for women, but also for men. She had several cases defending men who stayed home with the kids who were not given the same rights as women were doing the same thing.
RBG says, “That’s my dream for the world, for every child to have two loving parents who share in raising the child.”
It’s a valid dream— one we disagreed in some ways as to the means to achieve that, but a good dream nonetheless.
I admire that she accomplished all that she did while still having a family she was devoted to. Her relationship with her husband was pretty special and lasted for many years.
Indeed, as a woman I can thank RBG for many things.
The Clash
I had not originally planned to address our differing viewpoints because I wanted to just interact with the story of RBG and who she was as a person.
But since the writers decided to spend more time on her legal cases and specifically on her fight for ‘reproductive rights,’ to engage with the content of the book would be to address this issue— which I will try to do briefly.
RBG says, “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-bring and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”
It was interesting to read that RBG was unhappy with the result of the Roe v Wade decision because it placed ‘reproductive rights’ as a matter of privacy rather than equality and thus, apparently easier to overturn. (No discussion is made that Roe v Wade occurred before the ultrasound machine where we now have better technology to see the life being formed from conception.)
All of her steps toward equality for women were meant take women off the ‘pedestal’ (read: cage) that men placed them on as creatures too fragile or incapable of certain work or decisions.
The argument that abortion should be illegal because women regret the decision after it’s over is particularly insulting to RBG because it perpetuates the social stereotypes that women’s choices are inadequate and we must protect them from themselves.
I don’t disagree with her that women are just as capable of men at working and decision-making.
And to some degree, women should have the choice as to whether or not they have babies— contrary to the media’s strongly held and voiced perception, the conservative belief is not a promotion of The Handmaid’s Tale.
Women can choose whether or not they have sex or unprotected sex since that’s what leads to a pregnancy. The conversation then becomes about sexual ‘freedom',’and access to contraceptives— not abortion. (Abortions due to rape are a very small percentage.)
I’d like to see RBG’s dream of children raised by both parents come to fruition. But then we need to incentivize and reward marriage. We should promote a nuclear family where a pregnant woman doesn’t have to worry about taking care of the baby and providing for it financially by herself. Men should be held equally responsible for babies they help to create.
And people wonder at God’s design for sex within marriage? God’s design is for equality for both men and women and a space where children grow up with both parents involved in raising them!
Because that’s not happening in the world today, RBG’s promoted solution is to allow women to kill the ‘inconvenient,’ ‘burdensome,’ and/or ‘unwanted’ baby.
But RBG doesn’t consider that far more female fetuses are aborted than male. Especially in China and India. This leads to a shortage of women to marry which creates an industry of human-trafficking of women and young girls.
This hardly sounds beneficial for women. Especially non-white females if we’re going to go there.
Then you consider the abortions of babies with disabilities or Down Syndrome. It’s estimated that about 67% of pregnancies of known Down Syndrome in the US are aborted. In Europe approximately 90%.
Is abortion not, then, a form of gender discrimination and ableism?
To term abortion as a ‘reproductive right’ is a political move. No one wants to infringe on someone’s right to reproduce or not. But it leaves out the second body with distinctive DNA that is inside that woman. A ‘reproductive right’ removes the fetus’ right to life.
RBG also says, “We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion. An abortion ban only hurts women who lack the means to go someplace else.”
What noble logic.
Really the only conversation that matters with abortion is whether or not the fetus is a life and abortion is murder. The answer to those questions dictate everything else. Equal access only matters if the thing being accessed is good. You don’t just legalize something because people are going to do it anyway.
Clearly murder in all forms would then be legal.
But we know that’s not right because…. it’s murder. And we protect life. Life is life whether it is wanted or not.
And so that is the fundamental clash between RBG’s beliefs and mine.
Conclusion
I fully acknowledge RBG’s impact on the world for women and thank her for fighting for those rights.
Unfortunately, this book was not written in a way that helped me see more of RBG’s humanity or understand more the legal battles she won.
(I will own that its probably due in part to my lack of knowledge and ability to understand legal stuff, aka, I’m not smart enough… but it can’t only be that. The burden is on the author in a book like this to make the material accessible. With the title paralleling a rapper, it’s not exactly packaged for the masses outside the imagery contained within.)
I did learn a few interesting things, and a few facts about RBG like: she’s a bad cook, she loves opera, her childhood nickname was Kiki, and she had a daughter and a son.
But I’m sure there are better books out there than this.
And again: My low rating of the book is due to poor writing style and compilation, and lack of clarity and charity, not because of differing viewpoints or because of any opinion of RBG I personally hold.
Further Reading:
Radical Womanhood by Carolyn McCulley
a(Typical) Woman by Abigail Dodds
Eve in Exile by Rebekah Merkle
Share this book review to your social media!