Meryl Streep: Why Hollywood scorns Trump

“Thank you, Meryl Streep,” said Emily Willingham
in Forbes.com. Accepting the Cecil B.
DeMille award at this week’s Golden Globes,
the screen legend spoke for millions of
Americans by delivering a heartfelt and
brilliant attack on Donald Trump’s
xenophobia and crass insensitivity.
Streep began by defending so-called
Hollywood elites, noting her industry
is filled with regular working people
and “crawling with outsiders and
foreigners.” If the president-elect kicks
them all out, she said, “you’ll have nothing
to watch but football and mixed
martial arts.” She took particular aim
at Trump’s flailing-armed mockery of
disabled New York Times reporter Serge
Kovaleski, suggesting Trump’s “instinct
to humiliate” the less powerful has
given his followers permission “to do
the same thing.” Predictably, Trump
lashed back with a nasty tweetstorm, calling the
three-time Oscar winner “one of the most overrated
actresses in Hollywood.”
Outside her congregation, Streep’s sanctimonious
sermon “was a dud,” said Mollie Hemingway
in TheFederalist.com. She made an impassioned
plea for empathy—while scorning millions of
Americans who happen to like football and
mixed martial arts. Her entire speech dripped
with condescension, but then, so did the candidate
she supported, Hillary Clinton, who
called Trump supporters “deplorables.” Is it
any wonder so many voted for Trump as an
act of defiance? “Did Hollywood
really not get the point of this
election?” asked Kelly Riddell in
The Washington Times. Apparently
not. It wasn’t just Streep—the
whole Golden Globes show was a parade of
Trump bashing by liberal celebrities whose
smug opinions mean “nothing to the general
public.” This election proved that
actors may be able to sell cars, makeup,
and perfume, “but they can’t sell their
ideology.”
I wish that were true, said David French in
NationalReview.com. Politically, Democrats
are weaker than they’ve been in
generations. But liberals are winning
the culture. With Hollywood leading
the way, “irreligiosity is rising,” the family
is collapsing, and young people are being educated
to view their nation “not as a flawed but
indispensable beacon of freedom, but rather as a
bigoted oppressor.” Trump is not a triumph over
Hollywood. In many ways, he is Hollywood—a
towering celebrity with multiple marriages and
selfish, secular values. “Laugh all you want at
Streep, conservatives. When it comes to the things
that truly matter, she’s winning, we’re losing, and
Donald Trump isn’t going to turn the tide.”