September 13, 2022

"For those seeking insights about any remorse Ginsburg might have felt about not retiring while a Democrat was safely serving as president, Totenberg offers little..."

"... possibly because Ginsburg was not always forthcoming with her; of a meeting the justice had with Barack Obama at which the president gently tried to raise the question of her retirement, Totenberg says, 'She never told me about it.' Nor does she report how Ginsburg responded to the news of Donald Trump’s election. But she does seem to speak with authority when she explains that Ginsburg had been eager to give 'the first female president the power to nominate her successor.' And at the time of the election, Totenberg points out, Ginsburg was not in a health crisis. 'It was a gamble, and she lost,' she writes. Rather than defending Ginsburg’s choice to remain in office, she emphasizes how valiantly Ginsburg fought to stay alive and keep working once Trump was elected....  In one indelible image, Totenberg knocks on the door of a hotel room to find Ginsburg, hair down, desperate for Totenberg to leave so she can continue her frantic search for a medicine to ease her stomach troubles...."

We could have lived without that "indelible image," but books must be written. 

IN THE COMMENTS: Some people are saying it's unethical for journalists to be friends with the subjects of their writing. But I said, "Read 'The Journalist and the Murderer,' about the journalist’s method of fake-befriending the subject. Isn’t that what we’re seeing here?"

Here's an excerpt from Janet Malcolm's "The Journalist and the Murderer," the best book I ever read about journalism:
Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction writing learns—when the article or book appears—his hard lesson. ...

The catastrophe suffered by the subject is no simple matter of an unflattering likeness or a misrepresentation of his views; what pains him, what rankles and sometimes drives him to extremes of vengefulness, is the deception that has been practiced on him. On reading the article or book in question, he has to face the fact that the journalist—who seemed so friendly and sympathetic, so keen to understand him fully, so remarkably attuned to his vision of things—never had the slightest intention of collaborating with him on his story but always intended to write a story of his own. The disparity between what seems to be the intention of an interview as it is taking place and what it actually turns out to have been in aid of always comes as a shock to the subject.
Well, it's not "always" a shock. If the subject has died, she is beyond shock, beyond outrage at the most atrocious betrayals. Just as Ruth Bader Ginsburg never knew that Trump would become President and Roe overruled, she did not know that the journalist who befriended her would hawk a book containing a first-person account of her with her hair down and frantically rooting around for drugs in a hotel room. 

66 comments:

Joe Smith said...

This is the big fucking elephant in the room:

Journalists should not be 'friends' with the subjects of their writing.

RBG fucked up. Delicious...

Sebastian said...

Glad G lost her gamble on getting Hill to name her replacement. But it is nonetheless striking that so much depends on the whims of the elite.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Sounds like if Ruth had been left alone to treat her upset stomach she might have lived through Trump’s term. Nina is the culprit. That’s my takeaway.

Amadeus 48 said...

"Desperate for Totenberg to leave"... I know just how she felt.

Have you ever considered that Totenberg roughly translated from German means "death mountain"?
Imagine having Madam Death Mountain hanging around when you aren't feeling well.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

She was waiting for the other clinton to replace her.

BTW - we should never elect former presidents spouses.

Buckwheathikes said...

Completely unethical for an alleged journalist to have this friendship with the source of her journalism.

Shame on Nina Totenberg. She brings ill-repute on unbiased journalism and should be barred from covering the Supreme Court.

Totenberg has been covering for Ginsberg since the day Ginsberg announced "we don't want too many black people."

Buckwheathikes said...

Completely unethical for an alleged journalist to have this friendship with the source of her journalism.

Shame on Nina Totenberg. She brings ill-repute on unbiased journalism and should be barred from covering the Supreme Court.

Totenberg has been covering for Ginsberg since the day Ginsberg announced "we don't want too many black people."

Yancey Ward said...

This entire piece, of course, demonstrates beyond all doubt that the justices of the Supreme Court are entirely political, partisan animals. Right, Chief Justice Roberts?

Mary Beth said...

Perhaps the media did her a disservice by being so confident of a Clinton win.

Mike Sylwester said...

Ginsburg's foolish certainty that Clinton would defeat Trump was only one part of the fortunate sequence of events.

Don't forget that Senator Reid ended the filibuster for judge nominations!

The filibuster for Supreme Court justices remained, but then the Democrats filibustered the Gorsuch nomination.

Therefore, the Republicans ended also the filibuster for Supreme Court justices.

From then on, the Senate Republicans could approve every Trump nomination with a mere majority.

Wonderful !

Wonderful !!

Wonderful !!!

That is how Roe v Wade eventually was reversed.

Readering said...

Image that repels AA so much that she draws attention to it after it draws in the reviewer.

rcocean said...

Amazing how people who are really creeps are made into heroes by the MSM. Ginsberg was a Leftwing, results driven, idealogue. I don't she ever broke ranks and gave the Conservatives a win on anything.

She egotistically hung on to power, despite being sick and very old. 20 years on the SCOTUS wasn't enough, she had to die in office.

And thank God for that.

Grandma O'Connor had the deceny to retire at respectable age. Supposedly, she regretted it. Too many brightline, conservative decisions! If only she could have stayed on to give the liberals more Wins, or to muddy the waters with her ambigious "a little bit of this, a little bit of that" opinions. sads.

chickelit said...

"In her memoir, 'Dinners With Ruth,' the NPR journalist writes about their parallel ascents in fields that were not friendly to women"
This sounds as if Ginsberg was some kind of first when in fact Sandra Day O'Connor was. Dems/libs never count members of the opposing parties as firsts.

Tina Trent said...

Totenberg's daughter Amy has ruined the 11th circuit by shamelessly politicizing it.

She regularly appears at partisan events and is a disgrace to her profession but gets away with it because leftism and mommy.

This isn't subtle behavior. But it is carefully not reported.

Christopher B said...

Worth noting again that since the Republican dominance between Grant and Garfield, there's only been one period where *two or more* people from the same Party controlled the White House for more than eight years without the VP ascending the Presidency due to death - Reagan and GHWB between 1980 and 1992.

Tina Trent said...

Sandra Day O'Connor resigned to be with her husband to share the last moments of his awareness as he succumbed to Alzheimer's.

That's a human. RBG represented the inhumane and arrogant scorched earth politics of the left, and that is how she disgracefully died in office.

At war with decent Americans. Her actual legacy. There were scores of other leftist thugs to replace her, but no. She wanted to wallow with her bobble heads, fawning documentaries, Broadway accolades, and other disgraceful behavior.

She should have been severely censured for her low-rent fame-seeking.

Readering said...

Chickelit, there is more to life than one's final job. Both SDO and RBG were trailblazers.

rehajm said...

One wonders…I wonder why were they were so certain? I don’t know if Ginsburg was innumerate or ever set foot in a statistics class but there should be some flicker of the recognition of the difference between confidence and certainty…

…and I concur with the deliciousness of the flailing of the anti abortion feministas. Your sads are a dopamine party for the rest of us…

rehajm said...

The decision isn’t going away with November and probably not in your lifetimes. To paraphrase what was said here about stuff you don’t like- it’s time to move on…

Jersey Fled said...

I believe Totenberg's recounting of her conversations with RBG with the same mistrust as I do everything else I read in the NYT.

Wilbur said...

Hmmm, hearing that RBG was friends with that incompetent Leftist hack Totenberg drops her a few rungs on my Ladder of Regard.

Next I'm gonna learn she had sleepovers with Linda Greenhouse.

Howard said...

They were her independent choices to make. For many women on the left Ruth was simultaneously the GOAT and a goat. Such is life.

MadisonMan said...

to find Ginsburg, hair down, desperate for Totenberg to leave
Does Totenberg explain just why she didn't immediately say "I see this is a bad time -- I'll come back later"?

Curious George said...

"Journalists should not be 'friends' with the subjects of their writing."

"Completely unethical for an alleged journalist to have this friendship with the source of her journalism."

Of all the things "journalists" are guilty of in being in 100% lockstep with the Democratic Party, friends is where you draw the line?

Readering said...

SDO regretted retiring in part because she was deceived by Rehnquist. He encouraged her to retire to create some space before he did. But he was sicker than he let on and died very soon after she retired. (Bumping up Roberts nomination from associate to chief.) Rehnquist started the trend that included the 2 opera buffs on the Court.

William said...

"The Power of Friendship": the bonds are substantially stronger among friends with power. I suppose it was a symbiotic relationship. It may not have been the cause of their initial friendship, but they were of use to each other and it was a subtext of their relationship....Someone should write a book about the many Supreme Court Justices who stayed on too long. I think William O. Douglas holds the record. He refused to step down, even after a debilitating stroke, because a Republican was in office and would replace him.....Douglas had a good press while he lived. As time went on, lots of unsavory facts came out. His law clerks referred to him by the affectionate nickname "shithead". I suspect that as time goes by Ginsburg's reputation will be revised.

Michael K said...

Dems/libs never count members of the opposing parties as firsts.

Of course not. That black woman who can't define "woman" was the first black on the supreme court. Brandon told us so.

hombre said...

Why would anyone assume the authenticity of material presented by the legal correspondent for NPR, AKA, CNN Jr?

Remember her furious defense of her SCOTUS mask exposé based on second hand information? Remember her network's refusal to cover Hunter's laptop?

If these journalists are not fabulists, they are delusional.

gilbar said...

in fields that were not friendly to women"

wow! how things have changed.. Look at all the women on the court now!
Sonia Sotomayor
Elena Kagan
John Roberts
Amy Coney Barrett
Ketanji Brown Jackson

Butkus51 said...

this is why i gave up fiction long ago. Heresay.

Carol said...

I envy the enduring "non-transactional" friendship between professional women. How rare.

Paid off, too!

tim maguire said...

I wonder if Kagan was thinking about Ginsberg when she wrote, "I think judges create legitimacy problems for themselves — undermine their legitimacy...when they instead stray into places where it looks like they are an extension of the political process or where they are imposing their own personal preferences."

RBG was, without a doubt, the worst, most irresponsible, unjudicial justice of the post-Roe era. What a pathetic state of affairs when the best whitewash they can do of her selfish decision to hold her seat long after her age and health would have led a better person to step aside was a desire to cling to influence by having her replacement named by the president of her choosing.

What a wonderful irony that she was replaced by someone she would loath.

chuck said...

Ginsburg did us all a favor. Am I wrong?

Ann Althouse said...

Read “The Journalist and the Murderer,” about the journalist’s method of fake -befriending the subject. Isn’t that what we’re seeing here?

JAORE said...

We could have lived without that "indelible image," but books must be written.

No, books must be sold.

TrespassersW said...

...Ginsburg had been eager to give 'the first female president the power to nominate her successor.'

Assuming that Totenberg's take is accurate (which I don't), the conclusion is that RBG refused to retire over a bit of ultimately empty symbolism.

Drago said...

Totenberg Offers Little.

An evergreen headline.

Jason said...

Man, proggies are a bunch of fecking ghouls, aren't they?

Narr said...

The Journalist and the Murderer? I always think of Firesign's "Leather Thighs" riff on Capote ("Oh, you brutal killer without a conscience!").

So if Totenberg is (close enough to) German for Death Mount or Hill, what is Ginsburg German for?

The string 'gins' does not appear in my German word hoard. A sliding vowel that began as Gans (goose) or Gunst (favor, goodwill)? Yiddish?

Anyway as is often said, Sisterhood is Powerful.

madAsHell said...

about their parallel ascents in fields that were not friendly to women

Oh, my! Spare me. Can it be journalism when the writer becomes part of the story?

This must be some corollary to:
Kill it,
Skin it,
Wear the hide as a mantle, and demand respect.

Every time I see Nina Tottenberg I think "the little girl from dead mountain".

madAsHell said...

Look at all the women on the court now!

Sneaky!!.....and hilarious.

Lance said...

"fake -befriending the subject. Isn’t that what we’re seeing here?"

I don't read the NYT, but going only by the quoted snippets, it sounds like Totenberg tried that, but Ginsburg didn't trust her.

Jim said...

The Malcolm excerpt reminds me of a famous Joan Didion quote: "That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.” Writers don't have friends, they have sources of material.

iowan2 said...

This reads like Ginsberg was unaware, just how close of friends she was with Totenberg.

gspencer said...

"It was a gamble, and she lost," the frumpy, overweight Totenberg writes of the old hag Ginsberg.

And we're all better off when the cast die landed as it did.

M Jordan said...

I think Ginsburg sabotaged Obama and the left intentionally. Look, she actually liked Antoni Scalia.

We all know that, deep down, all liberals are just conservatives too scared or invested to admit the truth.

Yeah Right Sure said...

I'm not sure why everyone is so exercised about a journalist befriending her mark. Totenberg isn't one. She's Democratic publicist and n advocate for progressive causes.

Chris N said...

Nina Totenberg: Somewhere between a lackey, a fangirl, a moralist and a journalist.

May you one day be consumed by the radical forces you've channeled for activist change, and ignored by those in the institutions you've helped undermine.

Reality bites.

n.n said...

Roe's regrets. Ruth's remorse, no? She may have had an epiphany. The wicked solution is neither a good nor exclusive choice. That said, we are now operating under a state of tolerance a la slavery and diversity, with a gleam of humanity as in the old times.

The Twilight Amendment is no longer viable, maybe, hopefully, as a legal, social, and religious ("ethical") precedent for diverse acts of mischief that violate human and civil rights.

n.n said...

Roe's regrets. Ruth's remorse, no? She may have had an epiphany. The wicked solution is neither a good nor exclusive choice. That said, we are now operating under a state of tolerance a la slavery and diversity, inequity, and exclusion, with a gleam of humanity as in the old times.

The Twilight Amendment is no longer viable, maybe, hopefully, as a legal, social, and religious (e.g. "ethical") precedent for diverse acts of mischief that violate human and civil rights.

Jamie said...

frantically rooting around for drugs

in aid of the digestive issues that come with chemotherapy

in a hotel room.

Poor Ginsburg - poor everyone who suffers through cancer and its treatment. It seems that cancer not only makes you experience great pain and fear, but also attempts to strip you of dignity.

I hope that she's beyond caring that her erstwhile friend chose to share that image. And I'm also flummoxed that Totenburg didn't immediately leave.

Howard said...

Obama sabotaged a democrat judiciary by not playing hardball. Then they nominate Hillary.

100% Self inflicted. And they still don't get it. More Lincoln Project and Kamala to hold up Joe is a heck of a strategy. That's why they need the justice department to do it's job.

Readering said...

I don't think there is much comparison to the journalist and the murderer. When NT first got to know RBG, Nixon was looking for a qualified woman to nominate to the USSC and could not find one. The 2 women knew each other more than 2 decades before Clinton plucked RBG from the relative obscurity of the DC circuit, leapfrogging her over Breyer on the strength of a WH interview. I accept that over 5 decades the 2 women and their husbands became real friends, and the book should be read in that light.

Tina Trent said...

Remember that Totenberg works for an ersatz branch of government: NPR.

I can't imagine the journalist in this case being intelligent or canny enough to pull one over on Ginsberg, who was very intelligent, unless the latter was in a state of increasing incapacity, which she was.

What both of them were was insiders. Judges are far, far less detached from the company of politicians and activists and especially academicians than they pretend to be. Look at all their speaking engagements and how they spend their summers as special lecturers or visitors at elite domestic and foreign law schools, attendees at NGO conferences, etc. One might say they're more figureheads than the leaders of any other branch of government.

Perhaps of we made them do more of their own work and forbade them from skipping from reception to reception, they would retire in a timely fashion.

Ginsburg, for example, was very smart, as I said, but her powers were so greatly diminished that the risk she took didn't even factor in the likely role of Congress in picking her replacement.

But the bigger issue is the echo chamber in which both women lived and breathed. Judge, journalist -- it doesn't matter. They are or were Washington elitist leftists. Who played whom is less relevant than their seamlessly shared fealty to that bleating circus.

gpm said...

>>I don’t know if Ginsburg was innumerate or ever set foot in a statistics class

FWIW, her husband Marty was a well-known, well-positioned (well-regarded?) tax lawyer.

--gpm

pious agnostic said...

WRT Althouse's addendum regarding the The Journalist and the Murderer, consider how Governor DeSantis treats journalists as bad actors, and it makes sense.

See also: President Donald Trump

Christopher said...

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

I was a journalist for over two decades, at an influential publication, and with all due respect to our host the book is garbage.

Malcolm reminds me of cheaters who are positive that everyone cheats because they do.

Successful journalists don't have to be monsters, ask me how I know.

Totenberg was an activist more than anything else, and on the decreasing occasions over time that I listened to her, it was merely an efficient way to keep up with Progressive talking points.

effinayright said...

A good start to writing a really scary Gothic novel would be to title it:

"Night on Dead Mountain".

The horror! THE HORROR!

BUMBLE BEE said...

But... But... Little Baby Jesus needed Ruth to be up there with Him. You know that!

Kansas City said...

Unusual mix of comments. I agree Ginsburg was very overrated, as are most liberals in high office. I can't think of a single significant opinion written by her. She was just a solid vote for liberals on any issue of significance to their side. It was appropriate that her vanity and lust to keep power cost her liberal friends a seat on SCOTUS and produced the reversal of Roe/Webster.

If there is a God judging folks after death, maybe she'll get some credit for helping to reverse Roe/Webster. More likely she'll be held to account for the millions of babies killed before her own death.

Jamie said...

I accept that over 5 decades the 2 women and their husbands became real friends, and the book should be read in that light.

I'm also willing to accept that.

Christopher's comment about journalism struck me. I read the "murderer" excerpt credulously, having no knowledge of what it's like to be a journalist, so I'm happy to hear a journalist weigh in. (Assuming that we're all being honest here about what we do... It is the internet, after all.)

Mikey NTH said...

Narr: If I got this right "burg" refers to a fortified town, like Augsburg. Though if Ginsburg was an actual town name or some other word before town I don't know.

Lurker21 said...

This is why it's good when journalists don't like politicians and politicians don't trust journalists. I wrack my brain trying to figure out if it's worse for a journalist to pretend to be somebody's friend to get a story, or to betray a real friend by revealing their friend's secrets. Probably the later, but neither is good behavior.

I can sort of understand Ruth's hanging on. First, it was a way of hanging on to life and hope. Secondly, it was conforming to the noble myth that judges are more than just partisans and ideologues, but decide cases on their merits. Third, the temptation to disappoint shallow, adulating fangirls and fanboys who buy cheap merchandise with your picture on it can sometimes be too great to resist. Of course, if I were one of her fans or an ideologue or partisan for her side I would not see things that way.

Balfegor said...

But she does seem to speak with authority when she explains that Ginsburg had been eager to give 'the first female president the power to nominate her successor.' And at the time of the election, Totenberg points out, Ginsburg was not in a health crisis. 'It was a gamble, and she lost,' she writes.

I'm a bit reluctant to accept this characterization of Ginsburg's thoughts. I'm sure she thought "it would be nice and symbolic if the first female president nominated my successor," but less sure that she actively gamed it out. Thinking it would be nice if xyz lined up is different from making a political decision to time her retirement. Some justices do. But I haven't seen clear evidence that Ginsburg tried to. Same with Clarence Thomas where, if he were actively gaming it out, he'd probably have retired in 2020. Not retiring doesn't mean he's necessarily betting on a Republican president and senate in 2024 or 2028 or whenever. It's just the default, neutral choice when you hold an office for life.

It may look different in Ginsburg's case where the whole Democratic political establishment thought Clinton II was a lock for the presidency and that Republicans were so certain to lose the Senate that Democrats were prematurely gloating about how they were going to abolish the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments. But that's what was in the heads of Democrat partisans, likely including Totenberg. Not necessarily what was in Ginsburg's head.

Narr said...

Thanks, MikeyNTH. Berg is hill or mountain, burg is a town. I should do the obvious and see if Ginsburg is a place to hail from.

On the actual personal and journalistic issues raised, I have no opinion.

Narr said...

Guenzburg, Bavaria, Germany. Could easily turn into Ginsburg before or after jumping the Atlantic.

I'm surprised I didn't think of it immediately. I've been in the vicinity a few times. (Legoland Germany is there. Hurrah for Google Maps!)