Phone-a-friend: Irin Carmon on the Notorious RBG
11/6/15 - In a special phone-a-friend edition of Call Your Girlfriend, Aminatou talks with Irin Carmon, New York Times certified “whip-smart feminist” and co-author of The Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
TRANSCRIPT: PHONE-A-FRIEND: IRIN CARMON ON THE NOTORIOUS RBG
Ann: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Aminatou: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Ann: I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: And I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And this is a special little off-week episode. Maybe our first ever of two weeks in a row publishing a contest?
Aminatou: Yeah, no, big milestone.
Ann: We have a little goal to in some of our off weeks hit you with a mini episode or a phone-a-friend conversation with someone who we know who is doing something cool which is exactly what you did this week.
Aminatou: Yeah. So this week I talked to our core lady and really bad-ass feminist Irin Carmon about the new RBG book that she has out, Notorious RBG.
Ann: Ugh.
Aminatou: If you don't own it you should buy it. It's amazing.
Ann: The Life and Times or something like that. What is the subtitle? It's about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Aminatou: Yeah, it's like The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Ann: A huge icon for both of us.
Aminatou: Yeah, and I describe the book to everybody as a feminist mezuzah, Jewish reference for you people out there. Have one in your house. Make sure all of the people you love have one as well.
Ann: I definitely bought several copies for the feminist lawyers in my life and sent them along with love notes for using the power of the law to advance our feminist aims. I'm shedding a single tear right now because of how proud I am of them.
Aminatou: I know, I ordered so many of them that the post office lady made fun of me and I gave her a copy and she was very happy.
Ann: [Laughs] And you were like "Here, now you'll understand."
Aminatou: Like I'm swimming in RBG books.
Ann: Amazing. So yeah, so you talked to Irin?
Aminatou: Yeah, I talked to Irin and she made this really important point about dispelling the notion that just because young women care about something it has to be frivolous because so much of the press around this book is "Oh, wow, Tumblr turned into a book," or "Oh, wow, young women have turned a meme into . . ." A book that's probably, let's be honest, going to be on the bestseller list very soon, they're doing so well.
Ann: Right.
(2:00)
Aminatou: And so many of the older or more established journalists writing about this are just like always asking "Why do you think RBG's having a moment?" And it's like well, because RBG embodies everything that strong women love. Are you kidding me? It's so obvious to us.
Ann: Everything, like smart strategy, incredible brilliance, really strong signature style. Everything we care about. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Totally! You know, like she's a workhorse. And also RBG's just been talking about like really important, woke stuff that people are still arguing about on the cover of -- in the op-ed pages of the New York Times, RBG's been talking about that stuff since the '60s, '70s, and '80s.
Ann: Right, with this incredible, strategic long-view that I think is something that I really struggle with sometimes, like trying to think about what's happening now as a piece of a really, really long fight or arc or whatever you want to call it towards a world that we want to see. It's like she's living that.
Aminatou: Exactly. And, you know, just on a very selfish note it's so exciting to see Irin flex her muscle into other stuff. She just writes so wonderfully about so many things already and this book is really a labor of love and you can tell. Every page is so incredibly crafted and done and it's just a pleasure to read. So I'll let you listen to the interview but it's a pleasure, I promise!
Ann: Can't wait.
[Theme Song]
(3:55)
[Interview Starts]
Aminatou: Hi, Irin!
Irin: Hey, Amina!
Aminatou: I am so excited about your book tour because obviously I love the book and of course I love you. It's been getting glowing reviews everywhere. I especially love the one in the New York Times where Jenn Senior affirm something that all of us who know you very well know, that you're a whip-smart feminist.
Irin: [Laughs]
Aminatou: That made me really, really, really happy. So I guess the first thing I want to ask you is if you could talk a little bit about the book-writing process. Your coauthor is our mutual lady friend Shana Knizhnik. Shana passed the bar on the day that the book dropped, so congrats Shana. Can you tell us a little bit about what it's like to write a book with somebody else?
Irin: Yeah. And you know what? Both you and I have names that are constantly mispronounced so I feel okay correcting you that it's Shana Knizhnik.
Aminatou: I always call her Shay-na and she never corrects me.
Irin: I know. Well you know how it is.
Aminatou: She should have corrected me.
Irin: I just told one of the hosts at the network where I work that he's been mispronouncing my name for years and he got so mad, and then in the segment he said my name literally every second. He's like "Well, Irin. Well, Irin. Well, Irin."
Aminatou: Well you want to know the other funny part is that the person who introduced Shana and I also calls her Shay-na. LOLs.
Irin: Okay, well, Shana and I like to say that it was a [0:05:12], it was a match-make that became a very happy marriage, very equal marriage, egalitarian in the vein of RBG herself. Originally it was just going to be like Shana will deal with the images and you deal with the words, but there was so much reporting to do and there were so many documents to go through, all her legal writing, the briefs, the opinions, the dissents and so on, oral argument transcripts. And so we both ended up being really team members on the reporting which was to me one of the most important things because I knew people thought it would just be a kind of cashing in on the Tumblr have cute photos thing. But both of us felt very strongly that it needed to be more substantive than that to do her any justice. Yes, we did use that pun all the time.
(5:58)
You know, ultimately it made the most sense for me to write it because I am a writer primarily and I had to figure out how to craft the narrative and the arc of it. But we came up with the chapters together. We came up with all the -- you know, the fact that we have with permission Biggie lyrics as the names of all the chapters, which photos went where. Those are decisions that we made together. We both interviewed people. And I have to say I really recommend writing a book with someone as long as it's someone cool and brilliant the way Shana is because we were able to share with each other every cool discovery that we made. And so, you know, no matter how understanding your partner is, your partner doesn't actually give a shit.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Irin: You know, like your partner cares about you and what you're going through but ultimately they can't understand how good it feels when you're like "[Gasps] Oh my god, I found this document." And so to be able to text Shana and be like "Holy shit, you can't believe this." And vice-versa we worked on a shared Tumblr that we both had passwords to and so she let me know when she put up a new interview and then I got to see oh my god, you guys, you got the best story from that guy. That's incredible. That's totally going to be in the book.
Aminatou: do you remember the first time you encountered the Notorious RBG meme?
Irin: I'm trying to remember. I remember seeing -- the first RBG meme that I ever saw was actually before the amazing memes that you and Shana created in the summer of 2013 and that was the fall of 2012, it was election day, and there was a picture of RBG, actually the same one that you guys used, and "You can't spell truth without Ruth" which I think is from the D.C. circuit. And Simmie Knox is the name of the painter and I think she is a black artist who wasn't sort of part of the regular portrait scene and she saw his portraits and was like "I want that guy to paint me." They used that painting and it said something like "Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not have cancer twice and never miss a day on the bench so that you could stay home and watch Law and Order instead of voting."
(7:55)
Aminatou: [Laughs] That's so amazing. I didn't know that about that painting at all. That's great.
Irin: Yeah, so I saw that meme and I tweeted it. I think I saw it on Facebook and I put it on Twitter. Rob Delaney retweeted me and all of a sudden it had -- it was literally on election day and it had like a thousand tweets. And I just remember thinking oh, yeah, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that's cool. And then all of a sudden it was like poof, everywhere.
Aminatou: When I met the Notorious RBG, your eminence, I was kind of a blubbering mess because of how much she just went to me personally but I knew I had to hold it together because like most cool lady heroes she's actually not super warm and fuzzy but she's very firm and steely. What were you thinking the first time that you got to meet her? Because you did that amazing interview with her on MSNBC that is so great but I assume that you'd met her before.
Irin: I had seen her speak before and I'd been at dinners with her but I'd never really interacted with her until she walked into the room in the Supreme Court and there were four cameras and an entire tech crew and the Supreme Court public information officer. It was the biggest day of my career to date, so it was goddamn terrifying. It just felt like the most high-stakes 30 minutes of my life.
You know, it's interesting because every interaction that I've had with her, and I'm lucky that I've had a few since, she . . . you think oh, she's so reserved. I don't want to invade her space. Everybody wants a piece of this person. You know, that's how you kind of always feel with somebody who's famous, like when you're not working and you're just kind of hanging out or you just pass by them or something. I always think oh, everyone has asked for a piece of this person. I don't want to be another thing trying to take away from them right now.
Aminatou: Yeah, exactly.
Irin: So after the interview was over I thanked her and I said "You know, we're really looking forward -- we're doing this book and so on," and she obviously knew I was doing the book. But then she just wanted to keep chatting. And every interaction I've had with her I'm always surprised that I always think it's over because she's so reserved in her affect but then she'll keep asking questions or she'll keep being like "Oh, so where are your parents from?" or "I really like your necklace," or the last time I saw her she told me that she was going to the opera the next night because she knows I love opera. Or we were talking about how Natalie Portman is going to play her in a movie and she's like "Oh, she's like you. She was born in Israel."
(10:15)
Aminatou: Just the best. And I think that if she told me that she liked my necklace the earth would probably swallow me whole and that would be the last day of my life. RIP, Amina.
Irin: I know. Especially because she's the necklace queen. She's the neck accessory queen.
Aminatou: Exactly. Her neck-wear is untouchable.
Irin: And it was my grandmother's necklace and my grandmother is no longer living but was born within a year or two of RBG so it felt like I wore the necklace as a talisman and she noticed.
Aminatou: Well, you know, as somebody who has lived with you I will say this: your accessory game is also unparalleled. You have some sick necklaces.
Irin: Thank you.
Aminatou: So it's kind of perfect.
[Ads]
(12:18)
Aminatou: Do you know what her reaction to the book has been? I saw that she sent you guys corrections and I love that because I think that it's so in keeping of her spirit of integrity and being very rigorous.
Irin: Yes. Well I'm very happy that we're going to have a second edition that is going to be free of error. One of them was I described someone as her constitutional law professor but he was a constitutional law professor. She took a different class with him. So he wasn't her constitutional law professor. And I was like it kills me to have to run a correction for that but I understand she didn't get where she is by being sloppy or cutting corners. I think she's amused by it. I'm never really sure how much I'm supposed to share the interactions that are not official interactions but I would say we've been really happy with how she's reacted to it. And the best thing this week was seeing on two different occasions photos on social media of her signing the book, one of them a book belonging to Claire McCaskill which she then tweeted.
Aminatou: I know, that killed me. Claire McCaskill, first using on fleek . . .
Irin: Painful.
Aminatou: You know, I don't think it was painful. I thought it was really sweet because I think that it's in keeping with the youthfulness of the book but also I love that Claire McCaskill is freaking out at the fact that Notorious RBG is signing her book. I'm like yes, this is entirely justified.
Irin: Yeah, no, we were shrieking. We were super excited about it. I really like that our book spans the range between the Broad City girls doing a Notorious RBG kind of costume video, web video, and Claire McCaskill. You know, that's like the full range of -- or a broad range of ways to be a feminist in terms of like your language or your discourse.
(13:50)
Aminatou: That's so perfect. So on this podcast we talk a lot about friendships and understanding friendships. The one that I think baffles a lot of people is Justice Scalia. And I love that I'm just going to keep calling her Notorious RBG from now until the end of time, but you know, they go to the opera together. Their families spend holidays together. And a lot of people are really baffled by that, right? Because they have this ideological opposite on the court. But I think that you have shown through your work and through your reporting that actually that's really in keeping with the kind of person that she is and the spirit that she has so I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit?
Irin: Yeah, I always think that she did not get to where she is by only being friends with people who agree with her because she was often the only one. She was one of only nine women in her Harvard Law School class. She was a feminist who was pushing the ACLU to start paying attention to women and create their own women's rights division. So she always wanted to kind of branch out into areas where there weren't other people like her and that means building alliances.
The other thing I think that is a paradox with her is she is so reserved and seems so serious but she really values a sense of humor. And say what you will about Scalia, he can turn a good line. He's a witty guy and he's quick on his feet. I mean, you know, he's an old-fashioned sexist in a lot of ways but he cracks her up and that's the highest possible compliment from her.
Aminatou: Yeah. When she invited us to come visit her at the Supreme Court we got to sit in on one of the cases. [Laughs] It was so boring. It was about tort reform. The whole time I was like I cannot believe this is some people's jobs. It's so awful and it was so early in the morning. I'm pretty sure a guard told me twice to look awake and alive.
Irin: [Laughs]
Aminatou: But I was -- yeah, it's like sleeping in the Supreme Court, highly frowned upon if you are in the public. That was the thing that I was really struck by is even though this thing was really boring, it was 8:00 in the morning, Justice Scalia's a really funny dude. And I was like well, you know, if you weren't so busy upholding laws against my body I think we would also be friends probably. [Laughs]
(16:00)
Irin: Yeah, I mean people compartmentalize. The funny thing is that among Supreme Court nerds the friendship has become a sort of article of fascination. In particular the fact that they have this New Years dinner. But Shana interviewed RBG's grandson Paul who is an actor in France and he was like "Ugh, these dinners are so boring. All of these old people dressed up for no reason and Scalia's 11 kids or whatever."
Aminatou: That's so, so, so, so amazing. I support it. I support any friendship that means that you get to go to the opera together honestly.
Irin: Yes, for real.
Aminatou: You know, I also really liked your op-ed in the Times last week. You had such a good New York Times week last week. Let me just say that as a reader it was a delight to see you two days in a row.
Irin: Oh, thank you. Well we didn't even know when that review was coming out.
Aminatou: Ugh, so good. I'm sure that was nerve-wracking.
Irin: Yeah. Yeah.
Aminatou: But, you know, in the op-ed you made really good points and I think we've touched a lot on talking about the friendship but also how she talks so much about having this radical aim in making people work with you, like working on things that you care about but really making sure that it's in a way that it can connect and relate to a lot of people. And that is obviously the kernel of her success, right, is that she's able to do that.
Irin: Yeah, and I think that's very useful advice now of all times. I mean I certainly don't want to sit in judgment of the entire Internet because I'm a product of it, I'm part of it, and I've certainly been part of the outrage fest on the Internet. But I think while only the Internet could have given us turning RBG into an icon, only without permission from gatekeepers could this have happened, at the same time I constantly worry that there's this burnout effect that happens, that we all get really angry together and in the end nothing happens, or the fact that everything is pitched at such a high level of catharsis means that people are intimidated or afraid of saying the wrong thing, get exhausted, and walk away.
(18:02)
So one of the things that I really admire about RBG is how she always has a long game in mind. She would choose things that looked so obvious and so easy and so people would follow her that far because okay, there's so little at stake in this case. But all of a sudden the next step inevitably was leading them closer and closer to where she wanted them to go. And I hope that someday women won't have to even be using such strategic stealth mechanisms, and I think she doesn't think that everyone should do exactly the things that she did. But I do think having some of that long-term strategic thinking is something we can all consider.
Aminatou: Honestly that's what makes her a gangster so I think too that having the hindsight of this enormous body of work is really what draws a lot of especially younger women to her. She's been a gender avenger for years and she's been -- you know, all the stuff that she was doing in the '70s and '80s people are still arguing about today and she's been doing that work for a really long time.
Irin: Yeah, it's funny because sometimes people have been like "Why are young women so into her?" It's obviously the legitimate question to ask in this kind of project but Shana and I have really tried to think about how do we articulate it? Because it's so obvious to us, like duh. And the more you find out about her the more fascinating it is because I think it took her years to tell some of the stories of the things that she went through. Like we didn't know for example -- like we'd heard that story about how when she came to Harvard Law School she was asked to justify her presence but I didn't know that she was systematically discriminated against at Rutgers when she was pregnant and she had to hide her pregnancy under baggy clothing, or she was told "Oh, of course we have to pay you less because your husband has a good job," and she later filed a class-action lawsuit against them and won.
(19:55)
Aminatou: Ugh, the best. It makes sense to us, right? But people will always say like "Why do young women care about her? Why is she having a moment right now?"
Irin: And young women care about the fact -- so they may not know all those details of her life, and we hope that everyone wants to come find them out in our book, but I think they do know that she stands for something now that's really important and that she speaks out in cases like Hobby Lobby and the Voting Rights Act case, Shelby County v. Holder. I just feel like people don't give young women enough credit and I think that people think that because young women like something it must be frivolous.
Aminatou: The last thing I want to ask you about is the moment in your book that probably makes everybody cry. It's that letter from her husband Marty. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Irin: The entire time that we were writing this book all I could think about was how I wanted to get Marty's letter. Their marriage is so meaningful to understanding her as a person. One of the reasons she could be optimistic about remaking the world so that men and women could be free from gender stereotyping is because in her own marriage she lived it. She had an extraordinary husband but they also worked hard to make sure they had a real partnership and he was somebody who was the opposite of her in many ways. He was really gregarious. He was really a wise-cracker. He had a big personality and they loved each other madly from when they were in college and survived things like him having cancer when they were in law school and they were parents of a toddler. They survived him being sick for a long time.
He helped get her on the Supreme Court by lobbying all his friends. He was her champion. He wasn't threatened by her. She always said Marty was the first boy I ever met who cared that I had a brain. It's funny because the subtext of that is she was a really beautiful woman.
Aminatou: Yeah.
(21:50)
Irin: Lots of guys don't care if anyone has a brain, but especially surprise if it's found behind a pretty face. They had this happy marriage over 50 years and in 2010 he was dying and he wrote her a letter on a yellow pad.
[Clip Starts]
Male: My dearest Ruth, you are the only person I've loved in my life setting aside parents and kids and their kids, and I've admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell some 56 years ago. What a treat it has been to watch you progress to the very top of the legal world . . .
[Clip Ends]
Irin: And when I read this letter, just the text of it in the New Yorker, it made me cry. That was like maybe five years ago. And I just thought oh my god, we need this letter in his handwriting. We need the real letter. I asked and we didn't really hear anything and then I asked again and we didn't really hear anything and I talked to other people and I was like okay, I just have to give up and just think this is not going to happen. This is a really private thing and maybe she doesn't want it published so I should back off. And then right before the book went to press her son agreed to read it and find any kinds of mistakes we had made after the fact-checking process and he said "Why do you have the letter from my dad in this weird font? You should have the original."
Aminatou: Wow.
Irin: And I was like I would like the original. That's correct. We're literally about to go to press and on a very tight deadline risking the book not coming out on time and I got an email from RBG and it said "Dear Irin, my son thought you should have this. I hope you can use it. RBG."
Aminatou: Oh my god, I have full body chills.
Irin: And it was the scan of this letter in his handwriting.
Aminatou: That's amazing.
Irin: And I'm not going to say too much about what's in the letter because I think you should just read it but it's very simple and very beautiful and I cry every time I read it and we did manage to get it into the book in visual form and in text form and the funny, ridiculous, insane thing is that had we not gotten the original of the letter we would not have known that in the margins RBG corrects her husband in the dying letter.
Aminatou: [Laughs] You have to love a precise lady, man. I'm telling you.
(24:05)
Irin: Yeah, he literally says to her "I have loved you -- you are the only person I have loved for these 56 years," and she writes in the margin "Nearly 60."
Aminatou: [Laughs] That's so amazing. Well, on that note I will tell everyone if you don't go out and buy Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you're a fool. Buy a copy for yourself. Buy one for your best girlfriend. And Irin, thank you so much for joining us today.
Irin: Thank you, Amina. We consider you a part of our book family.
Aminatou: Ugh, I'm so honored.
[Interview Ends]
Ann: That was great. Thank you, Irin, and thanks Amina for calling her up so we could have that awesome interview. We'll be back next week with a full-length I don't want to call it a real episode because that was real . . .
Aminatou: A regular-ass episode.
Ann: Regular, boring-ass episode but until then we're on the Internet.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Oh yeah, you can find us many places on the Internet, callyourgirlfriend.com, on Twitter at @callyrgf, on iTunes feel free to leave us a review. I love that I'm sounding slightly drunk. It's not true; it's because I have Sun Chips in my mouth.
Ann: [Laughs] I put down a yogurt to record this. Just Google it.
Aminatou: Google us.
Ann: All right.
Aminatou: I'll see you on the Internet.
Ann: See you on the Internet.