Meryl Streep: Spot on or arrogant interloper?
Meryl Streep has caused a firestorm as a result of comments made during the latest Globe Awards extravaganza. We do not object to Streep’s criticism of Trump, per se, as there’s plenty wrong with Trump for the simple reason he represents and is the culmination of a rotten, fully bipartisan plutocratic system which has been eviscerating American democracy for generations, every inch of the way aided and abetted by some of the liberal crowd’s very heroes: the Clintons, the Obamas, et al, all of whom have received from this affluent, insulated, mostly low-info (despite pretensions), and utterly privileged crowd a blank check for heinous international crimes and a fair dose of grand betrayals on the domestic front. For the sake of brevity and to spare readers the torture of my dense prose, I will simply list here some essays that lucidly encapsulate the rationale I use to reach this conclusion. —PG
The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer (Greenwald)
Hit the Road, Barack: Some Farewell Reflections (Street)
As the Democrats Press for War, the Left Must Demand Peace and Social Transformation (Ford)
Freedom Rider: Contradiction in the Time of Trump (Kimberley)
The Utter Stupidity of the New Cold War (Leupp)
TAKE 1:
Meryl Streep, Donald Trump and the Golden Globes
By David Walsh, wsws.org
DATELINE: 11 January 2017
At the Golden Globes awards ceremony in Beverly Hills, California on Sunday, actress Meryl Streep criticized President-elect Donald Trump as a bully, someone who possessed “the instinct to humiliate” and lacked “empathy.” Trump, as is his habit, tweeted an ignorant response, calling Streep “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood” and a “Hillary [Clinton] flunky.” The exchange has been endlessly covered in the media.
Streep’s various supporters and admirers in Hollywood and the media termed her comments “epic,” “powerful,” “gutsy,” “rousing,” “glorious,” “inspirational,” “brilliant,” “stinging,” “provocative” and “heroic.”
In fact, the actress’s remarks at the Golden Globes, an annual event organized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, were quite mild and limited. On hand to receive the Cecil B. DeMille honorary award for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment,” Streep first took note of earlier comments by British actor Hugh Laurie.
Accepting an award for best supporting performance in a series, miniseries or television film (The Night Manager), Laurie half-joked, “I’ll be able to say I won this at the last-ever Golden Globes. I don’t mean to be gloomy; it’s just that it has the words ‘Hollywood,’ ‘Foreign’ and ‘Press’ in the title.” The actor, who played an arms dealer and criminal in the miniseries, later accepted his award “on behalf of psychopathic billionaires everywhere.”
Streep endorsed Laurie’s comments, noting that “all of us in this room… belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners and the press. But who are we? And, you know, what is Hollywood, anyway? It’s just a bunch of people from other places… So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick ‘em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”
She went on to praise the various performances honored this year, but observed that there was “one performance this year that stunned me… [and] sank its hooks in my heart.” This, Streep explained, was “when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back.” Streep was referring to Trump’s November 2015 mocking of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from arthrogryposis, which causes joint contracture.
The actress suggested that “this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.” She continued, “Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.” She thereupon appealed to the press “to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage.”
Streep has every right to criticize Trump, a bully and much more. Her reference to attacks on foreigners, artists and the “liberal” media suggests a certain sensitivity to the character of right-wing populism and even the history of the emergence of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s.
As a human type, Streep obviously belongs in a different category than the president-elect. The generally positive response to her comments, excluding right-wing media outlets, testifies to the fact that concerns over the emergence of Trump are widely felt. Even before he takes office, the incoming president has generated broad suspicion and contempt, stocking his “outsiders” cabinet with billionaires, former generals and assorted reactionaries.
However, the basis of the actress’s opposition—and liberal Hollywood’s overall—is neither substantial nor genuinely principled and does not give a lead to the mass opposition that will emerge to the Trump administration.
Well-to-do layers in the film and entertainment industry have a close relationship with the Democratic Party. Streep was a prominent speaker at last year’s Democratic National Convention, which nominated the corrupt warmonger Clinton.
Streep made a thoroughly banal and establishment speech there, in which she paid tribute to America’s “female firsts,” including US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Democratic Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and Secretary of State Madeline Albright. Streep declared that Clinton “will be our first woman president. And she will be a great president.”
For eight years, Hollywood has been almost universally and vocally enthusiastic in its support for Barack Obama, even as his administration has run roughshod over democratic rights, prosecuted one bloody neo-colonial war after another, killed thousands with drones, and presided over a massive stock market bonanza for the rich. Where was Streep and the others when the Obama administration persecuted whistleblowers, drew up “kill lists” and ordered the assassination without due process of American citizens? Why did no one call Obama and his officials “on the carpet” for their “outrages”? This record of sordid acquiescence, frankly, diminishes the moral force of Hollywood liberals’ present critique of Trump.
One has every right to be critical of Streep’s criticism. How deep does it go? Time alone will tell, but, based on historical experience, one has the suspicion that many in the entertainment world—if not perhaps Streep herself—will find the ways and means to accommodate themselves to the Trump administration. This is a course, however, excluded for the vast majority of the population, including many of those who voted for the Republican candidate, who will come under unrelenting attack.
To a certain extent, the film and entertainment business has lifestyle and cultural differences with Trump, as it did with George W. Bush. The heyday of their leftism came under Bush and subsided dramatically with the election of Barack Obama. Anti-war slogans and signs were stored away. Sadly, Obama made their hearts beat a little faster.
No doubt, many in the film and music world genuinely despise Trump, but one of the problems in the contemporary culture is that there is much focus and over-emphasis on what celebrity figures like Streep (or Leonardo DiCaprio, or George Clooney or Tom Hanks) say and do.
Fine actors have an extraordinary gift, one that sets them apart to a certain extent. However, this unusual aptitude, which enables the best of them to feel a situation and atmosphere quite profoundly, is not often accompanied by any great insight into politics and social life. They can feel, but they do not necessarily understand.
In this lack of understanding, of course, they are hardly alone. There is a great deal of popular confusion about Trump, Clinton and the state of American politics.
Streep’s comments, in short, reflect a mood, but not deep insight. And they should not be confused with an expression of deep popular anger and discontent. The vast resistance to come will emerge from somewhere else.
* * * * *
As a side note, the attack on Streep in Jacobin, one of the voices of the liberal left, requires a brief comment. The piece, by Eileen Jones, is headlined “Against Streep,” and carries the underline, “Meryl Streep’s speechifying at the Golden Globes was the worst thing to happen since Trump’s election.”
It is a heavy-handedly sarcastic and subjective article, driven by resentment and, one can only conclude, a degree of envy.
“I may have to take today off work,” Jones writes, “just to recover from this latest onslaught of Streepian solipsism embraced by the world as the height of Hollywood ethics… The way she condemned the ‘performance’ of Donald Trump when he mocked disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski… was truly righteous, wasn’t it? She’s so classy, isn’t she?”
The Jacobin film critic goes on to claim that for decades Streep has been “Hollywood’s imperious snob-appeaser,” appearing in a series of “high-toned roles” and receiving “rave reviews” from “besotted critics.” In the face of “titled” performers from England, “Americans can always point with pride to Meryl Streep, our very own homegrown acting royalty with as snooty an accent as any of them!”
Jones writes, “If I seem bitter, it’s because I was raised on this Streep, and she has haunted my life with her high-and-mighty blonde heft and Yale Drama School ways. As an undergraduate, I was one of only two people in America who hated her, hated her with a passion.” The article proceeds along these venomous lines, without an ounce of genuine analysis or insight.
The faux-populism here is nasty and out of place. Frankly, the comment is reminiscent in its tone and thrust of Trump’s own remarks.
TAKE 2
Meryl, Have We Been Living in the Same America All This Time?
by KRISTINE MATTIS
Clearly not. In fact, not many people live in Meryl Streep’s America. Most of those that do were in that Golden Globes ballroom with the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award winner, cheering her triumphant anti-Trump speech in which she never even had to utter the ignoramus’s name. And right on cue, Trump retorted with a ridiculous attack on the ability of one of the most deservedly honored actors of our day, surprisingly refraining from a crack about her looks or age.
Thank goodness we are all still entitled to free speech, for the time being, at least. Though their voices are unduly and unfairly amplified, celebrities have a right to their opinions. Likewise, my muted voice has a right to call celebrities out on their hollowness. Streep’s speech was perfectly suited for Hollywood, believing itself to be important, but lacking the necessary depth from which most meaningful things come.
Let’s be clear. There is good reason for Meryl Streep to use her public platform to lament the incoming sociopath-in-chief and to encourage resistance to the upcoming fascism. There is good reason to be fearful of the future. But while Meryl and her peers have been blissfully unaware of the destination toward which humanity has been heading for at least four decades now – with every single Democrat and Republican at the helm – others of us have been watching each presidential administration lead us closer to the proverbial cliff. Actually, far too many citizens have already fallen to their deaths. For the rest of us, the only difference now is that the velocity at which we approach the precipice is merely accelerating.
It is not hard to call out Trump for mocking a disabled person, as Streep did. Anyone with half a heart felt horrified at the sight of Trump’s deplorable impression. But it is hard to abide the shallowness of scorning the corrupt and contemptible president-elect without also admonishing the equally corrupt and contemptible institutions from which he emanated, including the two-party political system and the entertainment industry.
Streep spoke of the inclusively of her industry, remarking on the diverse backgrounds from which so many of her colleagues came. It was a typical telling of the popular Horatio Alger myth that anyone can find success in America. But we all know the truth: that the accomplishments of people like those at the Golden Globes are one in a million – and it just so happens that the success tales come from those very ones-in-millions. We do not hear the stories of the failures. So-called successes are products of luck, timing, ambition, connections, nepotism, often corruption and compromised ethics, and sometimes, hard work and/or talent. “Making it” in Hollywood is a windfall, yet for the majority of the hard-working and talented people who do not, the entertainment industry is emblematic of the rampant income inequality in this nation. Many worthy artists never make it and never even have a chance. It’s a lottery and a crapshoot, but it does not have to be. It does not have to reward few and leave the majority to struggle.
No one deserves the massive wealth that these people enjoy. That wealth is always at the expense of those who have little. Furthermore, if everyone in America lived so lavishly – as do both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as well – the earth would be destroyed because it could not sustain such wealth and excess.
(Speaking of sustainability, most of those in the entertainment industry like to tout themselves as concerned about the environment, but their industry itself is awash in almost unbridled energy and resource use, waste, and pollution.)
Streep stressed the importance of the profound artistry produced by Hollywood. Granted, I admit watching some select television series and the occasional film. There is quality to be had; there are some very worthwhile endeavors, But that does not mitigate the fact that the entertainment industry produces complete and utter crap in far excess of its products of value. And because it follows the corporate capitalist model that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton support full throttle, it also exacerbates economic inequality and environmental devastation.
“There is good reason to be fearful of the future. But while Meryl and her peers have been blissfully unaware of the destination toward which humanity has been heading for at least four decades now – with every single Democrat and Republican at the helm – others of us have been watching each presidential administration lead us closer to the proverbial cliff…”
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s fitting at the Golden Globes, where the awards are given by the Hollywood Foreign Press, Streep underscored the obligation of a vibrant fourth estate, saying, “We need the principled press to hold power to account.” Actors like Meryl echoed the same sentiments during the George W. Bush administration, but why did we not hear those sentiments from them when Nobel peace prize-winning Obama started dropping bombs in seven foreign countries, when he escalated drone warfare – killing untold numbers of innocent civilians, when he deported more immigrants than any other president in U.S. history, when he rubber-stamped the surveillance state, when just a couple of weeks ago he passed a law that amounts to enacting an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, when he and Clinton pushed for the TPP, when he and Clinton supported fracking, when he and Clinton derided and jailed whistleblowers like Snowden and Manning? If we are to hold one power to account, we should hold ALL powers to account, Meryl.
Furthermore, Streep called for support for the Committee to Protect Journalists, perhaps forgetting that the Obama administration has sentenced more whistleblowers than all other previous presidents combined. These whistleblowers committed the grave act of leaking to the press, and thus to the public, the immoral and nefarious deeds of our government. You know, holding power to account. Obama will now pass on his legacy of attacking and imprisoning journalists and their sources to the unhinged Trump.
One could claim that the burden of the failure of American democracy is partially at the hands of the entertainment industry. Arguably, the man who was the progenitor of the modern systemic decline of America was none other than Ronald Reagan, a product of Hollywood whose political rise was enabled by his star power. Similarly, Donald Trump only became a household name because of his stint on the Apprentice. His nationwide name recognition “bigly” aided his campaign – and, to be sure, he conducted his campaign not unlike the Hollywood campaigns at this time of year for the much-coveted Oscars Everyone in New York business circles already knew what a misogynist, racist, con-artist the Donald was. No doubt, everyone in Hollywood soon learned the same when Trump embarked upon his reality show. But no one dared speak out when Trump was a cash cow for their respective industries.
Meanwhile, one of very few principled “mainstream” presidential candidates in my lifetime emerged with great fortitude in the 2016 race. Bernie Sanders could very well have been elected President and we could all be ushering in a whole new promising era of equity, inclusion, and justice not seen for scores and scores of years. His primary loss could be blamed partly on an archaic election process in which voters are disenfranchised through ridiculous rules, including registering months ahead of elections and closed primaries, not to mention voter suppression due to erroneous purging of registry lists, and many other undemocratic practices. But mostly, Bernie lost due to the concerted effort, through unethical and illegal tactics of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Rodham Clinton, to provide Clinton the Democratic nomination at all costs, the will of the people be damned.
It is likely that we can thank the very unpopular Hillary Clinton, who, like most Democrats of the modern era, promulgated neoliberal, corporatist, Republican policies (militarism, privatization, deregulation, and austerity – to name but a few) for the election of Trump. Soon too, we may be able to thank the Democrats for sending us all to nuclear annihilation, as their unverifiable, evidence-free blaming of Russia for Trump’s election may send us into a wholly preventable nuclear war. (At which point, we will always then be left wondering why the Democrats did not fight to eliminate the electoral college after Gore won the popular vote in 2000.) Yet Streep has held fast to propping up Clinton and these very same Democrats, who have laid the foundation for this unfettered plutocratic regime, hiding its support structure behind their dignified, yet duplicitous faces.
Meryl, while I appreciate the gravity of this moment in U.S. history and your calling attention to it, I cannot refrain from questioning your collaboration with and support of the very people and systems that laid the groundwork for this doom. Like them, your superficial examination of the issues we are facing only perpetuates the phony political partisanship under which the nation and the world are being utterly destroyed. Perhaps the best thing that you and your comrades could do, instead of making speeches that fall far from the mark, is to cancel all of your extravagant and wasteful ceremonies of the season and join the hoi polloi in the community and in the streets to fight against the plutocracy. At this crucial moment in time, we need less superficiality and more substance, especially from Hollywood.
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