Liberals licking their wounds after Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump are turning to their heroine Ruth Bader Ginsburg for a cheer-me-up. The opera-loving Supreme Court justice appeared at the Washington National Opera’s performance of The Daughter of the Regiment.
Mike Silverman at the Associated Press gushed “her presence added a unique luster to a performance that would have been memorable even without her.” The Washington Post gossips oozed on Monday morning: “A standing ovation for merely appearing on stage? Just another Saturday night for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
In a review on the front of the Style section headlined (all capitals) “A DEBUT FOR JUSTICE,” Post opera critic Anne Midgette treated Ginsburg as liberal royalty, without using any L-words. The review’s headline inside was “Ginsburg steals the show in her debut.”
In a fraught postelection week, the mere sight of Ginsburg was enough to spark a prolonged ovation. But Ginsburg’s dialogue — read in English, into a body mic — was also retooled to fit the speaker and this historic moment, even if that moment might not have been quite what WNO expected when the lines were written. Talking about the illustrious past of the House of Krakenthorp (a word she delivered with a little sarcastic twist that got funnier each time she said it), she said its best members had been “persons with open but not empty minds,” and added, “Is it any wonder that its most valorous leaders have been women?”
The house roared. It roared at that line; it roared when she said she needed to see the birth certificate of the heroine, Marie, before she could approve her; it roared when she turned, at Marie’s joyful embrace of her future husband Tonio, and said, “Quel scandale!” with relish; and it roared with love at the curtain call, which she took after all the other performers — dropping, as she did so, a most elegant little curtsy.
It’s painfully obvious that the roaring house is a nest of left-wing elitists (despite the presence of Newt and Callista Gingrich), but the Post never really acknowledges when an audience is as diverse as the Post newsroom.
The Post’s commuter tabloid Express carried the puff piece from Silverman of the Associated Press:
Cheers and prolonged applause rang out from the crowd at the Kennedy Center on Saturday night even before Ginsburg, a life-long opera lover who was making her official operatic debut, opened her mouth to speak as the imperious Duchess of Krakenthorp....
Looking frail but determined and wearing an elegant acid green silk dress, the 83-year-old justice read from a crib sheet a series of qualifications that sounded very much like requirements for high political or judicial office. Her deadpan delivery was boosted by a microphone, though laughter from the audience occasionally drowned her out...
Her biggest laugh came when — in apparent reference to the bogus "birther" campaign against President Obama — she asked whether Marie could produce a birth certificate and added: "We must take precautions against fraudulent pretenders."
Sullivan concluded:
After Ginsburg's first scene she was escorted off stage, while many in the house gave her a standing ovation....And she would appear one final time, led on during the curtain calls...Then, leaning on him for a bit of support, one of the most influential and revered women in American life smiled and curtsied three times to the audience.
"Revered" equals "liberal." Thanks, AP.
