Katie Couric (left) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Katie Couricis revealing a journalistic “conundrum” that caused her to lose “a lot of sleep,” she writes in an upcoming memoir.
Couric, 64, asked the justice, who died in 2020 at 87, about San Francisco 49ers quarterbackColin Kaepernickand other athletes kneeling during the national anthem before games as a form of protest against racial injustices in the U.S.
Though Couric’s piece contained a substantial portion of Ginsburg’s answer to the questioning, Couric edited out part of the response in her story, according to the passages in theMail.
Couric’s memoir will be published on Oct. 26. In an exclusive PEOPLE interview in this week’s cover story story, shereflects on her timewith disgraced anchor Matt Lauer — and how his behavior “shocked” her — as well as herstruggles with bulimiaand more.
Writing about the Ginsburg episode from 2016, Couric says that she “wanted to protect” the justice from her own words, according to theMailexcerpts.
That included Ginsburg’s assertion that such protests show a “contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life. Which they probably could not have lived, in the places they came from … As they become older they realize that this was a youthful folly. And that’s why education is important.”
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Although those sentences did not appear in the 2016 piece, Couric did share much of the justice’s opinion, including this line about the protests: “I think it’s really dumb of them.”
Couric writes that she felt that response was “unworthy of a crusader for equality,” but she nonetheless included it and more of Ginsburg’s quotes after consulting with other journalists, including David Brooks ofThe New York Timesand David Westin, the former head of ABC News.
Brooks said the justice probably didn’t understand the question, Couric writes, but Westin told her to keep the quotes in her story. “She’s on the Supreme Court,” he said, according to Couric. “People should hear what she thinks.”
Couric settled on including some but not all of what was said in the interview.
“Would I arrest them for doing it? No,” Ginsburg also said according to the published quotes. “I think it’s dumb and disrespectful. I would have the same answer if you asked me about flag burning. I think it’s a terrible thing to do, but I wouldn’t lock a person up for doing it. I would point out how ridiculous it seems to me to do such an act.”
Couric then pushed the justice for more during the interview, asking, “But when it comes to these football players, you may find their actions offensive, but what you’re saying is, it’s within their rights to exercise those actions?”
Ginsburg’s answer to that as well:
“Yes,” said Ginsburg. “If they want to be stupid, there’s no law that should be preventive. 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.”
Couric also writes that she’s “a big RBG fan” and that her views on the protests against racial injustices must have “been a blind spot” for the justice.
source: people.com
