'Women Of Distinction' Award Named For Ruth Bader Ginsburg Going To Very Terrible Men

Da fuq?

Mar 16, 2024

What in the name of all the Earth and its domains and the heavens above is this asshattery?

The family of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is very much up in arms at something called the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation over its decision to give a leadership award named after the former Supreme Court justice to *drumroll* … Elon Musk.

Y’all remember Elon Musk. Weird face, billions of dollars, currently spending most of his time on the Social Media App Formerly Known as Twitter spreading deranged racist conspiracy theories and complaining that AI is being programmed to be too woke? Yeah, that guy. No wonder the Ginsburg family is pissed. The only reason for Ginsburg’s name to be in the same sentence with that of Elon Musk is if the sentence is, “The ghost of Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared in Elon Musk’s house last night, where she spit in his face before giving him an atomic wedgie and hanging him by his underwear from the nosecone of one of his stupid rockets.”

[T]he family called the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation’s plans to give its “Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award” to conservative billionaires Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch, among others, “an affront to the memory of our mother and grandmother.”

Oh yeah, Rupert Murdoch is also getting this year’s Leadership Award, along with Martha Stewart (weird but whatever), Michael Milken (what?), and Sylvester Stallone (no, seriously, fucking what?).

A press release from the foundation says Musk is being recognized for entrepreneurship, which is a funny word for “spent the last year and a half turning the world’s most widely used social media platform into a Nazi bar.” Murdoch is being recognized for “media mogul,” which is to say he’s being recognized for being Rupert Murdoch.

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We're Just Really, Really Going To Miss Ruth Bader Ginsburg

JLC

September 19, 2020

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Stewart is being recognized for “industry leadership,” Milken for philanthropy, and Stallone for being a “cultural icon.” Which he is! In 1987.

The award is all of four years old, and has previously gone to “individual women of prominence.” Did we run out of those or something?

“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,” the Ginsburg family statement said. “She was a singularly powerful voice for the equality and empowerment of women, including their ability to control their own bodies.”

Well, when you think of women’s equality and empowerment, why wouldn’t you think of a wizened goblin of a media mogul about to embark on his fifth marriage, or the “Junk Bond King” of the 1980s who once spent a couple of years in prison for securities fraud? Who, as a final insult, was eventually pardoned by Donald Trump?

“[T]he foundation this week vaguely explained its decision to honor men as a way to “embrace the fullness of Justice Ginsburg’s legacy.”

This is the “we had to burn down the village in order to save it” of gala awards explanations.

Anyone with a tangential relationship to the award is now getting as much distance from it as possible. The Ginsburg family noted that they have nothing to do with selecting the award’s winners. The Library of Congress, which was set to host the awards ceremony, released a statement saying that it was only serving as a “venue” for the event and otherwise had no affiliation with the Opperman Foundation. (Aside from receiving just over a million dollars in gifts from the foundation over the last four years, of course.)

You probably are also wondering the same thing we were — well, one of several things — which is how in the hell Sylvester Stallone got on this list. Is the next Rambo movie going to nod to modernity by rebooting the franchise with a bloodthirsty female Green Beret? Does he have a heretofore-unknown-to-us reputation as being a feminist filmmaker?