January 9, 2017
On Sunday night at the Golden Globes, Meryl Streep was given
the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award and gave what quickly became a
polarizing acceptance speech. In her
speech, she exhorted everyone to hold those in power to account on this
monumental eve of the changing of the guards in the United States. She used her spotlight to call attention to
our duty and responsibility to question and speak out where we see injustice
and to expect our leaders to comport themselves with dignity and compassion. In part, she said,
“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.”
The polarizing aspect of this speech is appalling to me. I find it difficult to take exception to the
idea that we should expect the powerful to use their powers for the benefit of
all, rather than to use that power to bully others. There is a flurry of conversation, however,
about the fact that those ‘Hollywood types’ have no business politicizing an
entertainment forum; they should just, in essence, ‘shut up and just do their
jobs’. How is it, by virtue of their
chosen profession, there are people who seem to have decided that they are not
entitled to their opinions? That they are
not entitled to share their opinions? I am not a politician; I am not a legal
analyst or a foreign or domestic policy expert.
I have never held a public office, and yet I am an intelligent,
knowledgeable individual with valid opinions and insight. The stakes are high, and my life, and the
lives of all Americans, will be impacted by decisions and actions of our
President-elect. Therefore, my opinion
matters. My voice matters. Why is it that someone like Meryl Streep, or
even Jimmy Fallon, Golden Globes host, isn’t entitled to share their opinions
as well? Streep has a career as an
actress; it’s not her sole identity. It’s
not the only thing about which she should be allowed to speak. She is a citizen, just like you, just like
me. She happens to have a very public
forum in which to share her opinions and to use her power—the power of access
to audience—to speak to and for those who don’t have that privilege. She is, in fact, modeling exactly what she
wishes to see in the leader of her country:
to use her power to model the way in which power should be used in order to benefit others who don’t have a
voice. She did so with grace and
clarity, without resorting to name-calling.
Trump, on the other hand, took to Twitter, which is apparently his
primary means of communication, to call Streep “one of the most over-rated
actresses in Hollywood” who is a “Hillary flunky who lost big”.
Streep’s speech was a bold one, because as she was
exercising her First Amendment right of free speech, she knew that she was
risking losing fans who did not agree with her politics—movie goers who have
the right to spend their hard-earned cash at the box office and to speak with
their dollars. She knew that she risked
alienating those who did not agree with her views—and she did it anyway. We HAVE to be willing to put ourselves on the
line and speak up for what we believe in, lest our silence be taken for tacit
agreement. So as our President-elect is
pushing forward confirmation hearings on a slate of appointed officials who
have not yet completed the standard ethics review process, and as Senator Paul
Ryan is pushing to defund Planned Parenthood, effectively limiting access to
reproductive health and cancer screenings for people who are historically
underserved and underrepresented, it is our responsibility to speak out, call
our government representatives, and to use our forums no matter how big or
small, to continue to hold our government to account.
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