Patterico's Pontifications

1/9/2017

Apparently Not All Bullies And Their Victims Are Equal In Meryl Streep’s Eyes

Filed under: General — Dana @ 8:22 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Meryl Streep’s unloading on Donald Trump was pretty rich, on a number of levels. Was anyone surprised by her rant? If you were, then you haven’t been paying attention and shame on you. What else would you expect during a self-congratulatory show where a liberal icon has a captive audience full of fellow believers still collectively trying to figure out how the gods turned against them. Don’t they know who we are?!! To me, Streep’s tired tirade was about as surprising as Trump’s complete inability to resist taking the bait and keep his yap shut. Both utterly predictable. Both absurd.

I don’t really want to take too much time examining the stunningly insular arrogance of a multi-millionaire, but hey, she got on the soapbox, so just for kicks, let’s look at a few of her comments. Be careful not to step in the puddle of dripping condescension:

So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if we kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.

Oh boy, those Tinsel Town Saviors are ready to save you from suffering through a pedestrian sport where 70% of the players are black, and another one that has been described as the “most racially and internationally diverse sporting organization in the world.” Instead, Streep believes you prefer a steady diet from Tinsel Town’s visual buffet of glorified gun violence or objectification of women. You choose. It’s a rich irony, don’t you think, that a wealthy, lily-white Patrician beauty seems wholly oblivious to her condescending dismissal of a segment of the population who have, in large part, found their way out of generational poverty and gone on to great success through these chosen sports? Oh well, high-brow, low-brow…

Also, Streep would like you to know your place. And it isn’t all that great of a place either:

This brings me to the press. We need the principal press to hold power to account to call them on the carpet for every outrage.

That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedom in our Constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists because we are going to need them going forward and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.

Streep’s classism makes yet another appearance, reminding the non-elites that it is only the uber-wealthy of Hollywood fit to protect the truth. In the hands of a less sophisticated group, truth, such as it is, would apparently be lost.

But the one performance this year that stunned me and sank its hooks into my heart was this egregious display of moral smugness:

But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good; there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was that moment 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. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And 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 kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose.

Yes, Trump’s behavior was reprehensible, rude and vulgar. But in this instance, it is Streep who is “teaching” the unwashed masses, and if she is going to talk about the powerful riding roughshod over the vulnerable, then do it with some honesty. I think it’s of utter importance that when anyone attempts to enlighten and impose their moral determinations upon us, they be fully conscious of the log in their own hypocritical eye. Because, in the interest of safeguarding the truth, if a wealthy and powerful individual like Streep lectures the masses about the weak being bullied, yet gives a standing ovation of congratulations to another wealthy and powerful individual who just also happens to be a child rapist, then that truth should be made known:


(At the 1:11 mark)

And just so we’re very, very clear about the truth Meryl Streep wants to safeguard, this is the very graphic and horrific grand jury testimony from Roman Polanski’s 13-year old rape victim:

A. Then he lifted up my legs and went in through my anus.

Q. What do you mean by that?

A. He put his penis in my butt.

. . . .

Q. Do you know whether he had a climax?

A. Yes.

Q. And how do you know that?

A. Because I could kind of feel it and it was in my underwear. It was in my underwear. It was on my butt and stuff.

Q. When you say that, you believe that he climaxed in your anus?

A. Yes.

Q. What does climax mean?

A. That his semen came out.

Q. Do you know what semen is?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you see some semen or feel some semen?

A. I felt it.

Q. Where did you feel it?

A. I felt it on the back of my behind and in my underwear when I put them on.

Safeguarding the truth. A noble calling.

–Dana

Trump Praised The “Overrated” Meryl Streep In 2015

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:00 pm



Well of course he did.

Donald Trump, in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, published August 19, 2015:

Any actress you love?

Julia Roberts is terrific, and many others. Meryl Streep is excellent; she’s a fine person, too. The problem is I’ll name three or four or five and then the hundred that I know will be insulted, and I don’t mean to insult them.

Of course, this morning, Streep was overrated, etc. etc. etc.

He’s a child. You praise him and he loves you no matter how evil you are. Insult him and he’ll call you stupid even if yesterday he said you were smart. Ugly even if yesterday he said you were gorgeous. Unpopular even if yesterday he said the crowds love you.

A child.

I sure hope no foreign leader (like say, the truly evil Vladimir Putin) is able to see through Trump this easily.

Oh wait . . .

[Cross-posted at RedState.]

Sean Hannity: Make Russia Great Again!

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:00 am



A Twitter account called “Donnie Lil’ Hands” yesterday tweeted at Sean Hannity: “@seanhannity @RowdyBob89 YES! All Americans must join together to MAKE RUSSIA GREAT AGAIN. Teamwork!! #MRGA.” Apparently not recognizing that “Donnie Lil’ Hands” was a Trump parody account, and that the tweet was sarcasm, Hannity fired off his agreement:

hannity-make-russia-great-again

Hannity later deleted the tweet and apologized, saying that he thought the tweeter had been saying “Make America Great Again” and not “Make Russia Great Again.”

Sad!

Full disclosure: I used to enjoy watching Sean Hannity years ago, and was once very flattered when he featured one of my blog posts on his show. But like many Republicans these days, his partisan infatuation with Donald Trump has caused him to turn soft on enemies of America like Julian Assange and Vladimir Putin. The man who once said Assange “is apparently not done waging his war against the U.S.” changed his tune after Assange helped Trump, saying: “you have done a lot of good in what you have exposed about how corrupt, dishonest, and phony our government is.” (Perhaps one day he’ll tell us that he didn’t realize he was interviewing Julian Assange; he really thought he was talking to Thomas Sowell or something.)

I’m still working on my review of Garry Kasparov’s Winter Is Coming, but he makes a point in the book that is relevant here: Americans need to show solidarity with the Russian people, and not the Russian government. And the only way to do that is to reject Vladimir Putin, and instead support the freedom fighters in Russia who oppose him — the brave journalists who risk being murdered to expose his corruption, and the opposition leaders and dissidents who are thrown in jail, poisoned, or shot for the offense of questioning the Great President. The U.S. can’t get rid of Putin, of course — that will be up to Russians — but the U.S. can make things more difficult for Putin, by refusing to grant him the legitimacy he craves.

Unforunately, Donald Trump seems to be headed in precisely the opposite direction. And partisans like Sean Hannity are cheering him every step of the way.

[Cross-posted at RedState.]


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