An award originally intended to honor women that have accomplish great things when it comes to human rights is going this year to Musk, Murdoch, Milken, Stallone and Martha Stewart. Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch among RBG Award winners : NPR
" Next month, the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation will present the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award to four men and Martha Stewart. Among the winners are two convicted felons, the founder of right-wing Fox News, and Elon Musk. Stewart, Musk, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken and Sylvester Stallone are the five “iconic” and “exceptional” recipients of the 2024 RBG Leadership Award, the organizing foundation said in a news release on Wednesday."
Believe it or not her family isn’t exactly pleased with these selections: “The Ginsburg family says it was not informed of the changes in name or criteria for the award. It is pressing Opperman to remove Justice Ginsburg’s name from the award “unless the original award criteria, as accepted by Justice Ginsburg, are restored,” as Trevor Morrison, Ginsburg’s former law clerk, wrote in a letter to the foundation’s chair that spoke on behalf of the Ginsburg family.”
Is this corruption of the original concept, or a natural extension? My vote is corruption, but what say you?
No surprise about the politics of the foundation’s director.
Julie Opperman according to Federal Election Commission filings, is a major Republican donor. In 2016, she donated $50,000 to Rebuilding America Now, a super PAC founded by Paul Manafort and Tom Barrack—two top Trump advisers—to support the Trump presidential campaign.Mother Jones
Foundations typically have a board of directors that include people close to or related to the founder. The director is merely the hired day to day leader. Sort of how a corporation’s BoD should hire and control the corporation’s president.
Makes me wonder who’s on the BoD and how they are selected. IOW, the director being Opperman is a symptom of something not a cause of it.
I believe Julie Opperman is the widow of the founder and the chair of the foundation (not the director) - which leads me to question why that foundation named an award after RBG to begin with.
They cancelled the gala, but I think the award recipients stand as-is. Here is the official statement from the foundation. The writing seems a little amateurish.
With Milken on the list it has to be trolling, but why start this year?
The recipients don’t seem to match the award’s previous description:
IANA expert, but people who are famous, or their estates, retain some control over the use of the famous name.
If the foundation refuses to operate in accordance with it’s namesake’s principles, perhaps Ginsburg’s family can withdraw their permission to use her name for their nonsense.
Better of course to fire all the trolls from the board or executive roles and return the foundation and its award to its stated purpose. But sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Maybe as simple as “oh never mind what we arranged before, we give the award, it’s ours to name and give as we damn please.”
With a strong foundation of “why do we have to honor an agreement with someone who’s dead?” because, you know, asses be asses.
From what I’ve read, RBG was lifelong friends with the foundation’s founder Dwight D. Opperman (creator of Westlaw), who passed away in 2013. She consented to the foundation creating the award in 2019 as a way to honor women in leadership. I have no idea what was actually signed that would govern the criteria and process for making the award.
If I had to guess, I’d say that Julie Opperman decided that champaign-and-prime-rib dinners handing out awards to Agnes Gund and Diane von Furstenberg weren’t drawing the DC power crowd she wanted, and a compliant board agreed to honor “sexier” awardees. It’s interesting to note that Dwight Opperman’s own children (by his first wife) have disparaged the announced winners and said they have no role in the organization.
Could be, but it seems like those choices are more confrontational than they needed to be. Why not just create another award and name it after the one of the recipients?
It’s such a departure. I didn’t find much about past winners, but it seemed like one a year. Maybe the plan was for Stewart this year and then they tacked on a bunch of extras at the last minute.
Tried to dig into this a bit. The Foundation website is down for revision.
Found a link to a donation to the Library of Congress that has the following description:
So his widow is the sole controller of the foundation. No governing board.
So this wasn’t something thought up by the foundation and named in Ginsburg’s honor, this was her request.
A statement by Julie Opperman:
Ok. Let’s look at the justifications for these awardees.
His philanthropy has been substantial donations for prostate cancer treatments. Sounds great, except he has prostate cancer himself, which lessens the philanthropy part.
In other words, Musk’s taking over twitter because it tried to limit false information and pernicious hate speech.
Wait so he’s being honored simply for being a successful media owner? No concern about the quality of his media empire? That he promotes disinformation? That he’s had several judgements against him for sexual descrimination in his media companies?
This award in Ginsburg’s name is supposed to be for women who show the quality and spirit of justice of Ginsburg’s legacy. Awarding Musk and especially Murdoch is a slap in the face to Ginsburg’s legacy.
Even the less controversial names on the list were corruptly chosen. Julie Opperman apparently has a long-standing association with Sylvester Stallone and his wife and Martha Stewart. All three have attended the awards in previous years.
Maybe, but there’s some justification for them. Ginsburg had a connection with Stallone, and Stewart was on her list of potential awardees.
Of course, Stallone is a man, and that violates one of the groundrules.
The point of the award was that Ginsburg faced and overcame challenges just for being a woman, pushing boundaries on what women could do. She wanted the award to celebrate other women who overcame the same kind of obstacles. She wanted to encourage women by celebrating success.
Opening the award to men is a direct conflict with Ginsburg’s intent.
Then you look at the ideology and politics. Julie Opperman claims that politics wasn’t considered, but that kinda misses the point that Ginsburg included that the recipients would display the “Qualities and Spirit of Justice” of her legacy. Measuring that is directly about politics and ideology.
I mean, by Julie Opperman’s criteria, she could award the RBG Award to Clarence Thomas.
I read somewhere that the purpose of these awards is to have an excuse to throw a big party and invite a bunch celebrities that you and your rich friends can get to hobnob with.