The Trump Chronicles, Volume 20: Meryl Streep Is Overrated? Seriously?

Last night at the Golden Globes Awards, the award winning actress Meryl Streep earned the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award.

I can’t imagine anyone not supporting this. I first saw her genius in the movie The Deer Hunter and have never been disappointed in anything since. I’m not alone.

She has won 3 Academy Awards (nominated 19 times) and 8 Golden Globes (nominated 30 times). Additionally she has been nominated for a Tony and 5 Grammy’s. I loathe linking to Wikipedia, but you can find these awards here.

Cut to last night. As part of her acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille award she said this:

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. 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 kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.

Clearly Ms. Streep referenced New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski who lives with Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita. On November 24, 2015 Mr. Trump mocked his disability over a dispute whether American Muslims celebrated the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Mr. Trump continues to deny his mockery and nobody can see the videotape and believe him.

And so last night when Ms. Streep called him out, he responded according to his thin skinned playbook. Hard to imagine but Mr. Trump called Ms. Streep “overrated.” You can read about it here.

It’s going to be a long four years.

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