Meryl Streep used almost all of her acceptance speech at Sunday night’s Golden Globes to denounce Donald Trump and sports fans, and to place Hollywood actors among the world’s most persecuted people.
Miss Streep was garlanded with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) lifetime achievement award and said that in addition to losing her voice, she had “lost my mind sometime earlier this year” because of the “real life performance” of Mr. Trump. She didn’t use the president-elect’s name, though he used hers in his Twitter response Monday.
She claimed in her speech that “all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it. Hollywood. Foreigners. And the press.”
After noting that such nominees on the night as Ruth Negga, Ryan Gosling, Natalie Portman and Dev Patel were foreign-born, she implied that there’d be no art left under Mr. Trump’s border-wall plan.
“Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners and if you kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which,” she explained to the applause and laughter of the audience “are not the arts.”
The lengthy diatribe played well in the room — the next man to appear on the show after the commercial break (actor Chris Pine) thanked Miss Streep for what he called a beautiful and moving speech. And on social media, thespians Laverne Cox and Julianne Moore cheered their approval and seconds.
SEE ALSO: Donald Trump dismisses Meryl Streep as ‘over-rated,’ denies mocking disabled reporter
It didn’t play so well in conservative social media though, even in circles skeptical of Mr. Trump.
“This is how you get Trump,” Sonny Bunch, executive editor and film critic at the Washington Free Beacon, wrote on Twitter, sarcastically suggesting that “The GOP should just play Meryl Streep’s line about MMA every day on every channel ahead of the 2020 presidential election.”
“Streep is right now playing her most demanding role yet: Singlehandedly winning Trump a second term. Thanks Meryl,” agreed Seth Mandel, the op-ed editor at the New York Post.
Miss Streep also noted a widely-cited moment when Mr. Trump imitated a handicapped New York Times reporter and said it “broke my heart … because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.”
Mr. Trump seized on that claim in his response Monday, denying over three consecutive tweets that it was true, while also dissing Miss Streep as a performer.
“Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a … Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never ’mocked’ a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him … ’groveling’ when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!” he wrote.
Miss Streep claimed that because actors are a privileged class they “have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility” to cultivate “the act of empathy.”
The most-garlanded actress of her era said the election of Mr. Trump validates and gives social sanction to his “instinct to humiliate.”
In a room with few Trump supporters, Miss Streep said that “when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose” and went on to claim that “disrespect invites disrespect; violence incites violence.”
She said that the HFPA, which she called rich and well-heeled, needed to rally around the Committee to Protect Journalists, saying journalists are as threatened as actors and “we’re going to need them” when Mr. Trump takes office.
Miss Streep’s speech was the lengthiest denunciation of the 2016 election at the show, the first of the big Hollywood awards-season shows. But it wasn’t the first.
Host Jimmy Fallon (falsely) said while introducing the Globes that it was “one of the few places left where America still honors the popular vote.” And actor Hugh Laurie accepted his award for “The Night Manager” “on behalf of psychopathic billionaires everywhere.”
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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