The world noticed a slumping Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the State of the Union speech this year and assumed she’d been lulled to sleep by President Barack Obama’s speech.
Not true, it turns out. There was another culprit — alcohol. Justice Ginsburg was not “100% sober.”
While the President’s speech didn’t help, Justice Ginsburg wasn’t falling asleep…she was passing out.
According to the 81-year-old justice, “The audience — for the most part — is awake because they’re bobbing up and down all the time and we sit there stone-faced, sober judges. At least I wasn’t 100 percent sober because before we went to the State of the Union we had dinner.”
How was it that a Supreme Court Justice managed to attend the State of the Union drunk? As is always the case, it’s the company you keep.
Justice Anthony Kennedy brought wine to dinner.
“Justice Kennedy brought in … it was an Opus something or other, very fine California wine that Justice Kennedy brought,” Ginsburg said, “and I vowed this year just sparkling water, stay away from the wine. But in the end, the dinner was so delicious, it needed wine to accompany it.”
She didn’t realize the optics of her appearance at the speech until she got home and heard from her granddaughter. “Bubbe, you were sleeping at the State of the Union,” she was told.
No, she was just drunk. Probably the best way to watch that speech.