Home » Latest » TRENDING NOW » Meanwhile… Ruth-less Bader Ginsburg

Meanwhile… Ruth-less Bader Ginsburg

7

InfoSearched 27 0 TRENDING NOW

9.7

SaveSavedRemoved 4

Stephen Colbert spent his nightly news roundup marveling that an 86-year-old Supreme Court justice had somehow become the most quotable person in America.

On the July 25 episode of “The Late Show,” Colbert’s recurring “Meanwhile…” desk segment took its usual detour through the day’s odder headlines before landing on its real subject: Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s continued reign as a pop-culture fixture nobody saw coming when she joined the Supreme Court in 1993. The bit leaned into Ginsburg’s reputation for delivering blistering dissents and off-the-cuff lines with the timing of a stand-up, framing her as the rare sitting justice who trends online for reasons that have nothing to do with case law.

• The segment is part of Colbert’s regular “Meanwhile…” news-digest bit, a nightly grab-bag of quirky stories capped by a punchline-heavy centerpiece.
• Colbert built the bit around Ginsburg’s habit of delivering sharp, “savage” remarks that have made her a viral fixture despite sitting on the nation’s highest court.
• The rapport referenced dates back to 2018, when Ginsburg and Colbert taped a widely shared workout sketch together at her Washington, D.C. gym.

Supreme Court Justice Becomes Comedy Subject

Ginsburg’s path to internet-icon status didn’t start with a punchline — it started with the “Notorious R.B.G.” nickname a law student coined for her in 2013 after her dissent in Shelby County v. Holder, a play on the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. that stuck because it fit. By the time Colbert put her in his rundown, that nickname had outgrown Tumblr and law-school circles entirely, showing up on T-shirts, in a biopic (“On the Basis of Sex”), a documentary (“RBG”), and recurring “Saturday Night Live” impressions by Kate McKinnon.

What Colbert’s segment tapped into wasn’t new — it was the running joke that a diminutive octogenarian in a lace collar had become more culturally magnetic than most people decades younger. Her dissents, often read from the bench in a flat, unhurried voice, routinely got quoted the next morning the way people quote a killer comeback, which is exactly the material Colbert mines for “Meanwhile…” segments generally reserved for offbeat local news and viral clips.

The Gym Video That Started It

The Colbert-Ginsburg rapport didn’t begin with this desk bit. In 2018, Colbert filmed a sketch with Ginsburg at her actual Washington gym, where she famously works out with a trainer to a routine that includes push-ups most people half her age couldn’t manage. The clip went viral for the same reason the “Meanwhile…” segment worked a year later: the gap between the buttoned-up gravity of the Supreme Court and Ginsburg’s willingness to be in on the joke.

That earlier appearance gave Colbert a shorthand he could return to — he didn’t need to introduce Ginsburg as a punchline, he just needed to cue the audience that she was back, which the July 2019 segment did by leaning straight into her reputation rather than explaining it.

Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

Comedic Bit Resonates With Audience

Late-night hosts have long turned political figures into recurring characters — Colbert’s own show regularly mines Washington for material, the way “SNL” cold opens have for years. What set the Ginsburg bit apart is that it required no exaggeration; Colbert wasn’t inventing a caricature so much as reading off her actual public record of pointed dissents and pop-culture cameos. That’s a different kind of comedy than the impersonations and cold opens built around politicians who never asked for the spotlight — Ginsburg had already leaned into hers, gym sketch included.

It’s the same dynamic that’s made plenty of political figures unwitting recurring characters on late night, whether they wanted the billing or not.

An Icon Still on the Bench

By mid-2019, Ginsburg was in her 26th year on the Supreme Court, having survived two prior cancer diagnoses and a broken rib from a 2018 fall without missing oral arguments. That resilience is part of why Colbert’s bit worked as celebration rather than mockery — the “savage” dissents he highlighted came from a justice still actively hearing cases, still setting the workout routine other 80-somethings get compared to, and still very much the one delivering the lines rather than having them written for her.

Colbert’s “Meanwhile…” segment ran once, got clipped and shared the next morning the way most late-night bits do, and moved on to the next day’s rundown of oddball news. Ginsburg, for her part, kept doing what got her the nickname in the first place — showing up to work.