Wait, this award was supposed to be serious? Given the honorees I thought it was an ig nobel or Darwin award sort of thing, possibly run by the onion.
“This year we selected leaders in different fields. We honored men for the first time. We thought RBG’s teachings regarding equality should be practiced. We did not consider politics,” Julie Opperman, the chairperson of the org, said in a statement. “Instead, we focused on leaders, who, in their own way, have made significant contributions to society.”
I actually don’t think that the issue was that it was being given to men. I think the issue was that if you think Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch (!) are the people that Ruth Bader Ginsberg would have wanted to honor, someone needs to maroon you on an island somewhere all alone where you can’t infect the others.
It’s not that it was given to men, it’s that it was given to dicks.
Yeah, the problem is that if they asked me to make a list of the top 10 people who definitely should not get this award, there’s a good chance I would have put these two dudes on that list. They might as well nominate Donald Trump at this point.
Koch brothers top of the list for next year’s award.
Fortunately, one will have to receive his posthumously.
To be fair, the criteria didn’t say positive contributions to society. It just says significant contributions.
In 2019, Ginsburg helped establish the award with the Opperman Foundation to celebrate “women who exemplify human qualities of empathy and humility.” The organization later opened the award to men, renaming the trophy as the Leadership Award while claiming to aim for gender equality.
Ah yes, because when I think of empathy and humility I definitely think of Musk and Murdock.
I was only talking about the quoted passage because I think it’s funny in a sad way that the foundation deliberately left out the original criteria in their statement and that they don’t seem to care whether the contributions to society created a positive impact.
Let me be clear. The only award those two deserve is the “Fuck you, Shitbag” award. If I had to guess, I’d bet they were chosen for the award by making significant contributions to someone’s pocket book.
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. That year, she also donated $2,700, the legal maximum, directly to the Trump campaign. In 2020 Opperman contributed $200,000 to Republican campaigns and PACs, including a $100,000 donation to the Take Back The House 2020 PAC and $92,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Ok. Makes sense now. She’s just trying to shit all over RBG’s name. So, she gave the awards to a racist, anti-LGBTQ+ billionaire, the piece of trash that has been driving GOP propaganda since Nixon, a Wall Street fraudster, and a scab who crossed the picket line during the SAG strike.
Don’t buy the claims of ignorance. This was intentional.
This needs to be the top comment. This is such an obvious ploy by a right wing extremist.
So why is the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation handing out awards in the name of RBG?
Can just anyone do that?
She established the award with them, while she was still alive.
[Edit: they’ve since changed the criteria for the award.]
I see - thanks for the info…
It was in the article. If you have a question like that, it’s a good idea to read the article.
Bah! Pros just fire off half-baked knee-jerk comments based on misunderstanding bad headlines! That’s where the money is! Ain’t nobody got time to rEaD tEh aRtIcUls!!!
