An April 13 event honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been canceled after the late Supreme Court justice’s family raised objections to the gathering’s slate of award recipients, which included Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch.
The Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award was established in 2019, shortly before the trailblazing 87-year-old jurist died. Past recipients include superstar Barbra Streisand, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg and Queen Elizabeth II.
The Dwight D. Opperman Foundation planned to honor several men with the award for the first time this year until Ginsburg’s family distanced itself from the non-profit organization with a statement to media outlets claiming those in charge had “strayed far from the original mission of the award and from what Justice Ginsburg stood for.”
Actor Sylvester Stallone along with junk bond king-turned-philanthropist Michael Milken and entrepreneur Martha Stewart — both of whom served prison time — were also to have been recognized.
“We did not consider politics,” Dwight D. Opperman Foundation chairman Julie Opperman said in a statement nixing next month’s event. “Instead, we focused on leaders, who, in their own way, have made significant contributions to society.”
Opperman’s statement said the foundation had no interest in stirring controversy or disrespecting Ginsburg’s family or legacy.
“Over the next several months the Foundation will reconsider its mission and make a judgment about how or whether to proceed in the future,” Opperman wrote.
While Ginsburg’s family didn’t single out anyone by name, Fox News founder Murdoch and X owner Musk, whose media companies traffic in right-wing messaging and conspiracy theories, would seem most antithetical to the justice’s sensibilities.
Streisand, writing on Musk’s X platform, agreed that Ginsburg wouldn’t have approved of the foundation’s 2024 honorees.
“I had the privilege of meeting Justice Ginsburg on several occasions, and I strongly doubt she would approve of these awardees,” the award’s 2023 recipient claimed.
