Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, known to her younger fans as the Notorious RBG, has weighed in on the Colin Kaepernick controversy, shocking her votaries on the new Left. In an interview with Yahoo’s Katie Couric, Ginsburg bluntly called the benched football player’s protest “dumb.”
“I think it’s really dumb of them,” she replied when asked what she thought about the San Francisco 49ers quarterback and his fellow players kneeling during the national anthem.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg bashes Colin Kaepernick’s “dumb” protest in @katiecouric interview https://t.co/HOgeo8SlQo pic.twitter.com/gzbPLe3ni5
— Colin Campbell (@colincampbell) October 10, 2016
Ginsburg continued:
Would I arrest them for doing it? No. I think it’s dumb and disrespectful. I would have the same answer if you asked me about flag burning. I think it’s a terrible thing to do, but I wouldn’t lock a person up for doing it. I would point out how ridiculous it seems to me to do such an act.
She qualified her remarks by suggesting that even “stupid” and “arrogant” people like Kaepernick have the right to exercise their free speech and make fools of themselves in the process.
“If they want to be stupid, there’s no law that should be preventive. If they want to be arrogant, there’s no law that prevents them from that,” saidGinsburg. “What I would do is strongly take issue with the point of view that they are expressing when they do that.”
The 83-year-old judge is something of a cultural icon in left-wing millennial circles. A strong defender of abortion rights, Ginsburg has found a burgeoning fan base among self-identified (third-wave) feminists and student activists from Berkeley to Sarah Lawrence. Her likeness is stenciled on clothing and other consumer-friendly paraphernalia sold at “trendy” chain stores, and her quotable dissenting opinions are routinely plastered on Tumblr posts. To baby boomers on the Left, she’s known as the little woman nominated by Bill Clinton to maintain a vocal liberal wing in the Supreme Court. Writing some of the most influential dissenting opinions in the last two decades, Ginsburg has never been questioned about her liberal bonafides. Until now.
Her latest comments about Kaepernick runs contrary to the modern-day political Left’s hero-worship of the athlete. The same man Ginsburg has called “stupid” is the new face of Black Lives Matter and its affiliates. The same protest tactics ridiculed by Ginsburg as juvenile and “disrespectful” are being celebrated by the new Left’s grievance-obsessed gatekeepers.
As Social Justice Warriors and other members of the aggrievement coalition catch wind of Ginsburg’s blasphemy, they may very well turn on her. After all, the revolution always eats its own.
