Watching ‘RBG’ offers viewers a welcome break
Need a relief from current headlines, including the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh? On Sunday, CNN will air the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary for a second time. In New Mexico, it will start at 6 p.m. and repeat at 8 p.m. Watching the brilliant jurist from Brooklyn grow from girl to the Notorious RBG pop icon is illuminating. We see Ginsburg as legal intellectual, indefatigable worker and half of a loving, enduring marriage with the late Martin Ginsburg, himself a pioneer in treating women as equals.
Nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1993, Ginsburg has been a pillar of the court for the past 25 years. At 85, she shows few signs of slowing down — she often reminds others that Justice John Paul Stevens served until age 90. With the documentary, RBG ,by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, we learn how she got that way.
It is a reminder, when the nation most needs one, of how hard work, intelligence and determination can take a person of humble background to the top. As she said at her confirmation hearing, “What has become of me could happen only in America. Like so many others, I owe so much to the entry this nation afforded to people yearning to breathe free.”
Ginsburg’s life of service to a cause — advancing equality for women — stands in contrast to recent Supreme Court appointees whose body of legal work has been more partisan in nature. She didn’t toil in the White House as a president’s lawyer before becoming a judge; she was working for women (and men) whose rights were being trampled, using the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to fight discrimination.
Her story reminds the country how far we have come in ensuring equal rights for men and women. If we don’t appreciate the journey, we stand to lose those hard-fought victories.
The documentary has special attractions for New Mexicans, with Santa Fe a favorite vacation destination for the justice. She visits during the summer months to attend the Santa Fe Opera, where audiences routinely give Ginsburg standing ovations. In 2017, film crews followed her around during her stay in Santa Fe — at the opera and visiting Museum Hill (local Laurel Seth can be spotted giving her a tour).
Seeing the glimpses of our town in the documentary is a treat. Filmmaker Cohen liked Santa Fe so much during the making of the documentary, she returned in July for a visit, taking in the sights and participating in a question-and-answer session at a screening of her film. Highly reviewed, the documentary had been in theaters and available for rental before CNN premiered it on television earlier this week; the broadcast Sunday is the encore.
Cohen and West have received deserved praise for this telling of Ginsburg’s life — showing a woman who refused to take a back seat because of her gender, juggling her legal career and time with her family (Martin did all the cooking, though), all while remaining a lady as her mother advised. As Ginsburg said of her husband during the confirmation hearing, “I have had the great good fortune to share life with a partner truly extraordinary for his generation, a man who believed at age 18 when we met, and who believes today, that a woman’s work, whether at home or on the job, is as important as a man’s.” Such support is rare even today.
Unlike many public figures, especially judges, Ginsburg retains an incredible capacity for plain speaking. It’s hard to imagine a Supreme Court nominee of recent years being this blunt during a confirmation hearing: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her wellbeing 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.”
Such plain speaking is but one legacy of Justice Ginsburg, a genius who used the law to ensure that women had the opportunity to be fully adult before the court and thus, in life. Her story is well worth watching.