Meryl Streep has become the latest to take a swing at Donald
Trump and has done so effectively and to my great admiration, but in my opinion
she unnecessarily marred her presentation. Her gratuitous swipe at the NFL and the
MMA were uncalled for and served to cause the nodding heads of those already
sold on the Trump agenda, and also to turn off people who aren’t but who happen
to love the NFL or MMA.
Streep stressed that these two entities were “NOT THE ARTS,”
when in many people’s view, the elite achievers in both of these leagues indeed
reflect artistic expression. They are certainly expressions of passion, of a
maximizing of human potential born of talent, drive and the moment, which is
not a bad definition of the arts, and however you
look at it there is hardly a need for a fissure between aesthetics and
athletics. In part due to what seemed a lingering cold, the talk in general was
imbued with a gossamer overlay of a somewhat imperious tone.
Apart from slapping the ball out of Tom Brady’s hands
and swatting my man Conor McGregor in the corned beef and cabbage, I think she did
fine. Jimmy Fallon is I suppose understandably reluctant to stir up his good
thing to be of much value in terms of social commentary, so Streep had to be
the one to address the 800-pound partially deflated basketball in middle of the
room.
From the vast available trove of ignominy she picked a few
of Trump’s most vile campaign moments and described them fairly for their
emptiness and cruelty, and expanded further to encourage reflection on just how
degraded a person’s humanity has to be in order to stand as author to such turpitude.
Reliably, Trump took to Twitter and impugned Streep’s acting
as overrated when even the most deluded Trump water-carriers must understand at
some intrinsic level that his opinion of people is solely incumbent on their most
recent criticism or endorsement of him. Were she to have urged "coming together
as a nation" and "giving the president-elect a fair trial" and
"respecting the office first and giving the will of the people a chance to
be heard," his assessment of her would instead be that she is our greatest
living actress and a national treasure.
She believes, as I do, that he is a dreadful human being and
a dangerous US president, and I am glad she said so. I just wish she hadn’t run
the end-around on the NFL and dropped a double-leg takedown on the MMA to do it.
In its own context (the cloistered, hugely friendly audience at the Golden Globes), Streep's speech was elegant. But, from what I can tell, its success is confined to the liberal echo chambers that still seem mostly focused on perpetuating the divide (which will continue to kill us unless we start to think and act differently in our politics). As far as Trump voters are concerned, especially those who are sick of lectured to by the coastal elites), her Hollywood speech likely served to reinforce why they voted for our sorry excuse for a new President in the first place.
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