Ruth Bader Ginsburg Will Dance On All Our Graves

'A senator said I was almost dead. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.'

In an NPR interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg that aired this morning, the 86-year-old Supreme Court justice said she takes care of herself, doesn't worry overly much about her health, and neither should you. In fact, says Nina Totenberg, Ginsburg "is not oblivious to health concerns, but she waves away worries about her future." Like this, for instance:

"There was a senator, I think it was after my pancreatic cancer, who announced with great glee that I was going to be dead within six months," she recalled. "That senator, whose name I have forgotten, is now himself dead, and I," she added with a smile, "am very much alive."

That would have been Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky), who in 2009 said Ginsburg had "bad cancer. The kind that you don't get better from," and that "Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live." Bunning later followed up with the classy "if I offended" notpology. Or maybe to some other person whose name was spelled differently; he issued a statement saying "I apologize if my comments offended Justice Ginsberg [...] That certainly was not my intent."

Bunning himself left the Senate not very long after, pushed into retirement by Mitch McConnell, and died in 2017 at the age of 85. He had reportedly suffered a stroke, but we won't rule out the possibility that Ginsburg, in a ninja outfit, ate his face right off. You saw the grin in that video.

Ginsburg also told Totenburg that, after three bouts with cancer, she has

followed the advice of the opera singer Marilyn Horne, who was asked about her pancreatic cancer diagnosis in 2005.

"And she said, 'I will live,' not that 'I hope I live,' or 'I want to live,' but 'I will live.' "

But fighting cancer is wearing and hard. How does she manage her work?

"The work is really what saved me," she said, "because I had to concentrate on reading the briefs, doing a draft of an opinion, and I knew it had to get done. So I had to get past whatever my aches and pains were just to do the job."

That, and dancing on the bones of her enemies, of course. Here's the full interview, in which Ginsburg also says she's not too hot on the idea of changing the number or terms of members of the Supreme Court.

Ginsburg also mentions what she told the late Justice John Paul Stevens, just two weeks ago, at a conference in Portugal:

"I said that my dream is that I will stay at the court as long as he did," she said. "And his immediate response was, 'Stay longer!'"

Yr Wonkette wholeheartedly concurs with Justice Stevens's opinion. And now it is your OPEN THREAD.

[ NPR / Cleveland.com / Photo:  US Department of State ]

Yr Wonkette is entirely supported by reader donations. Please send us money to keep the servers humming, the writers writing, and the Novenas for Ruth Bader Ginsburg's health coming.