Nina Totenberg's life-long seek for information started with fiction, and her admiration for an intrepid teenage novice detective: "I wished to be like Nancy Drew, and that meant I wished to be one thing of a sleuth," she stated.
Totenberg has been on the case ever since – first, as a print reporter, and now, for almost 50 years, as authorized affairs correspondent for Nationwide Public Radio, the place she's identified for her scoops.
It was her reporting that precipitated the 1987 Supreme Court docket nomination of Douglas Ginsburg to go up in smoke. "What I discovered was that he was an everyday smoker of marijuana," Totenberg informed CBS Information chief White Home correspondent Nancy Cordes. "He was sunk."
In her new memoir, "Dinners with Ruth" (printed September 13 by Simon & Schuster, a part of CBS' guardian firm, Paramount World), Totenberg writes that rising up within the Nineteen Fifties, this sort of sleuthing was not essentially within the playing cards: "I believe my mom thought that I might be somebody's administrative assistant like she had been, and that was one of the best I might have the ability to do."
Her father, the nice live performance violinist Roman Totenberg, thought otherwise. "As a result of he performed with ladies musicians, he by no means instructed to me, 'Oh, you may't try this since you're a lady,'" she stated.
She discovered she was the one lady in most newsrooms, till she arrived at NPR in 1975. "Ladies have been all over the place at NPR, doing every kind of issues, and even in administrative positions, as a result of we paid so little; no man would take the job!"
She turned quick associates with program host Susan Stamberg and reporters Linda Wertheimer and Cokie Roberts. At the moment, they're referred to as NPR's "Founding Moms." However again then, their cluster of cubicles was dubbed "the Fallopian Jungle."
Totenberg stated, "I took it with a grain of salt, and type of a praise, as a result of the jungle, you would not dare go in there, proper?"
"Proper, I might be afraid!" laughed Cordes.
"Yeah, so it is effective. Do not screw with me!"
One in every of her largest scoops got here in 1991, when she uncovered one thing explosive throughout affirmation hearings for Supreme Court docket nominee Clarence Thomas. "I discovered there was a lady named Anita Hill who had accused then-Decide Thomas of sexual harassment when she labored for him."
Hill agreed to talk to Totenberg, after which, to talk to Congress. Republicans have been livid – and took purpose at Totenberg.
Throughout an look on ABC's "Nightline," Republican Senator Alan Simpson, stated to Totenberg, "You've got been beating the drum on this one nearly day-after-day because it began."
She retorted, "I don't respect being blamed simply because I do my job and report the information."
Listeners acquired to know her voice, and her face, which ended up plastered everywhere in the final NPR standing image: The tote bag, dubbed the "Nina Totin' Bag." "I used to be initially very suspicious about it, however I like this! Makes me look nice!"
Totenberg additionally had a knack for befriending Supreme Court docket Justices lengthy earlier than they have been named to the court docket. She stated, "I first knew Scalia when he was within the Nixon administration. And the identical was true for Chief Justice Rehnquist."
Her most well-known friendship, with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, started 21 years earlier than Ginsburg was nominated, when she was nonetheless a legislation professor at Rutgers College. "I used to be studying a short of hers. There's a complete bunch within the transient that I did not perceive. Her phone quantity was there, and I known as her up. And I acquired an hour-long lecture."
That led to extra calls, and dinners, the place they talked about music and theater and trend. They gossiped. They usually leaned on one another as they each cared for dying husbands. Ruth was married to Marty Ginsburg for 56 years; Nina, to Senator Floyd Haskell for 19 years.
Cordes requested, "She knew you were not taking a look at her as a supply. She knew you have been taking a look at her as a good friend?"
"If in case you have a Supreme Court docket justice good friend, you do not ask about their work; in any other case they will not be your good friend," Totenberg replied.
After Haskell's dying, Totenberg met a widower, Dr. David Reines, and Ginsburg married them in 2000.
Reines recalled, "I wasn't too apprehensive about it 'til we informed my mom. And I stated, 'Not a rabbi, we acquired a decide.' She stated, 'A decide?' I stated, 'However she's Jewish!' 'I do not care.' 'It is Ruth Bader Ginsburg!' 'I do not care, she's not a rabbi!'"
Reines may cook dinner, which meant much more dinners with RBG, who at all times requested the Bouillabaisse. "She would eat rooster, however her favourite was seafood," stated Reines. "And in her final years of life, that final yr, we cooked for her 23 consecutive Saturdays."
In Totenberg's e book, she describes how Ginsburg and Dr. Reines would sneak away to debate Ruth's medical challenges, together with lung most cancers, leaving Totenberg in the dead of night. "And I could not say something [to Nina]," he stated. "For six weeks I lied to her, principally."
Codes requested, "Why did you're feeling you needed to lie?"
"As a result of a) it was a HIPPA violation, and b), I did not need any leak."
Totenberg interviewed RBG in public dozens of occasions. Their final personal dialog was by telephone a couple of days earlier than Ginsburg died, two years in the past this month.
Totenberg recalled, "I stated to her, 'You're my darling good friend. And I'm simply, it has been one of many nice components of my life that you have been my good friend.'"
It seems that the hard-hitting Nina Totenberg is probably not as powerful as she would have her sources imagine. She stated, "I believe I realized rather a lot from my associates to be a extra beneficiant individual, easy methods to be a greater good friend. I believe they taught me to be a greater individual."
READ AN EXCERPT: "Dinners with Ruth" by Nina Totenberg
For more information:
- "Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Energy of Friendships" by Nina Totenberg (Simon & Schuster), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio codecs, out there September 13 by way of Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Indiebound
- Nina Totenberg, NPR
- Observe @NinaTotenberg on Twitter
Story produced by Jay Kernis. Editor: Joseph Frandino.
See additionally:
- NPR turns 50 ("Sunday Morning")
- Ebook excerpt: "Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie"
- Lesley Stahl pens tribute to Cokie Roberts ("60 Minutes")