Updated: 14 Mar 2024, 5:23 pm 10:30 am | 8:25 am Pacific
It was a startling tweet: an award in the name of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG, 1923-2020) is being presented to Elon Musk, Martha Stewart, Michael Milken, Robert Murdoch and Sylvester Stallone.
An award to “honor brave, strong and resilient women who have dedicated their lives to create positive change in society” is being presented to four men. And a woman who is a felon.
The sponsoring organization? The Dwight D. Opperman Foundation, which seems to exist in name only, despite annual awards and “galas.”
Brendan V. Sullivan, Jr. is the award chair. Sullivan, 82, may be best known for defending U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North during the Iran-Contra scandal.
Chairing the event: Amy Baier, 46, is married to Bret Baier, Fox News chief political anchor. The Foundation president is attorney Matthew Umhofer, 50 (?), Los Angeles.
RBG made the inaugural presentation in October 2020. It was then called the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award (emphasis added). According to Opperman’s widow, Julie Opperman, 42:
She was very keen to establish the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award, her legacy award that would honor brave, strong and resilient women who have dedicated their lives to create positive change in society. She entrusted me, through my late husband’s foundation, to do it. I wasn’t sure I heard her right, so I asked her to please repeat herself, which caused the biggest laugh I heard out of her in the 14 years I’ve known her (emphasis added).
That first award went to civic leader and philanthropist Agnes Gund.
- 2021, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second.
- 2022, Diane von Furstenberg
- 2023, Barbra Streisand
And now this:
This is the 2024 slate – not just one person and only one woman:
- Elon Musk, racist and antisemite
- Martha Stewart, a felon
- Michael Milken, a felon
- Robert Murdoch, owner of the leading source of political disinformation in the United States
- Sylvester Stallone, repeatedly accused of sexual assault
Just the people to be receive an award named for the Notorious RBG. Well, they got the notorious right.
Perhaps just as startling:
1. The Dwight D. Opperman Foundation filed its last IRS 990 form in 2020. Assets: $0. According to the Library of Congress, the Foundation donated $1,000,000 that year.
To answer the question in the headline … who the hell knows?
How could it hire The Brand Guild to be its “agency of record” for the 2022 event? And Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis for the 2023 event? Ditto.
2. Someone registered the domain name for the Foundation in 2012. It is currently active, but the website has been “under construction” since 2021.
3. Surprise! Martha Stewart was a member of the 2023 awards committee! So was Stallone’s wife (h/t abtnatural.bsky.social).
4. Stallone was a featured guest at the 2022 event.
5. The 2020 PR Newswire entry (and only the 2020 entry) referencing the inaugural award went “blank” between my screen capture of RBG (below) and archive.today completing an archive. It is available at the Internet Archive (1:01 am, Pacific).
Backstory
In December 2019, Julie Opperman stated that “Ginsburg [had entrusted] the foundation with creating and presenting an award in her name.” The six person awards committee was to be composed of “leading American philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and legal experts.”
Neither Google nor the Internet Archive can unearth news releases for the 2022 and 2023 events. They happened face-to-face, however.
The inaugual award ceremony took place on Valentine’s Day, 2020. David Rubenstein was chair of the award committee; civic leader and philanthropist Agnes Gund received the inaugural honor.
According to the Washingtonian:
Julie Opperman and Ginsburg first met during a Washington legal dinner, when they were the only two women in attendance (Ginsburg moved Julie’s seat next to hers), and they quickly became fast friends. The most prestigious award in the legal community today, the Devitt Award, was founded in 1982 also by the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation. And as a ardent advocate of the award, Ginsburg chaired it twice and was in attendance almost every year she sat on the Supreme Court bench.
Initially, Robert R. Newlen, a former deputy at the Library of Congress and currently interim director of the Congressional Research Service, served as executive director of the Foundation. Dwight D. Opperman (1923-2013) was CEO and chair of West Publishing Company, which provided electronic records through its product, WestLaw (now part of Thomson Reuters).
I keep hoping someone will admit that they used ChatGPT to write this and spoofed the organization’s name. Hope does spring eternal.
Mainstream and conservative news
- ABC13 (Sinclair) and The National Desk embellished the bios.
- The Hill barely rewrote the news release.
- The Washington Post published an unusually straight news story: And the RBG Award goes to … Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch?
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Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com