The stopped clock gets the time right!
Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in a Yahoo interview the other day that football players who refuse to stand for the national anthem are "dumb and disrespectful."
Yes, it was that Ruth Bader Ginsburg. the notorious RBG, progressive pet.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the outspoken and famously liberal Supreme Court justice laid it on awfully thick–and awfully conservative-sounding–about the fad started by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick of conspicuously kneeling during the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner as a protest against racial injustice, police brutality, or something:
In a wide-ranging interview posted Monday on Yahoo, Ginsburg said she had the same opinion about flag burning.
"I think it's a terrible thing to do, but I wouldn't lock a person up for doing it," she said. "I would point out how ridiculous it seems to me to do such an act."…
"If they want to be stupid, there's no law that should be preventive," Ginsburg said. "If they want to be arrogant, there's no law that prevents them from that. What I would do is strongly take issue with the point of view that they are expressing when they do that."
And RBG is completely correct. The Constitution protects freedom of expression, which includes sitting out–or kneeling out–the Star-Spangled Banner if you feel like it. The right to free speech is worthless unless it protects speech that other people don't like.
So I'm waiting to hear from the progressives who have lionized Ginsburg. That means you, Lena Dunham–remember that Ginsburg toast you and your pals put together last year?
Oh, wait–here's Dunham earlier this year on Twitter comments that wound her feelings:
'I think it’s important to remember that threats are more than someone saying I’m going to come to your house and I’m going to hurt you,” she said. “Insulting someone’s appearance, insulting someone’s religion, or their race, you know, all of that to me constitutes a threat and I think we can make changes to how we control that dialogue on the internet without threatening our First Amendment rights."
Mmm, maybe you now don't think RBG is so charmingly "notorious" after all.