Let me start by saying unequivocally that I love Meryl Streep and think she deserved to be recognized for a lifetime of achievement. She is certainly not overrated as our manchild President Elect purported in response to her valid criticism about his unacceptable behavior toward a special needs reporter.
Given that, Meryl Streep's speech last night was also absolutely hypocritical. Sure, she made many eloquent and true statements, such as the frequently-quoted "disrespect invites disrespect"--but almost no one has mentioned many of the issues with her speech.
She began by stating "all of us in this room really belong to the most vilified segments of American society right now. Think about it: Hollywood, foreigners and the press." Foreigners have been vilified in our public discourse of course--but as for the most vilified, arguments can be made that many other groups have been far more vilified. Of the most vilified are those who have been held responsible by the press for Trump's Electoral victory. For example, the economically desperate of the Midwest and coal country who supported Trump have been called racist, sexist, etc. Trump deserves these titles, but not all of his supporters do--in other words, while almost all the racists and sexists seem to support Trump, not all supporters of Trump are racists and sexists. To say that is to practice the dictionary definition of vilification. Third party voters have been maligned as well for being impractical and stupid. I'm not going to defend Gary Johnson's Aleppo moment and insane dismissal of climate change or Dr. Jill Stein's unscientific claims, but their supporters don't deserve to be harassed and blamed as the purveyors of a Trump victory, especially considering that Hillary Clinton would not have won even if both liberal and conservative third party voters turned out for her. And Bernie Sander's supporters have heard every kind of blame lobbed at them by Hilary Clinton supporters and the press. So many Clinton supporters could use a reminder that "disrespect invites disrespect" from America's voters.
Like many other Clinton supporters, Streep embraced the rhetoric of "identity politics", loosely defined as politics that revolves around appeals to aspects of identity including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. The definitions vary somewhat, but Streep clearly represents this line of thought as she begins with an Obama-esque prelude of waxing poetic about how beautiful and wonderful the variety of individual backgrounds found in Hollywood. She jumps between locations, beginning with the backgrounds clustered in America, then jumping to various international locales where celebrities were born, and jokingly asks "Where are their birth certificates?" At least, I hope she did not genuinely try to claim that we shouldn't care about the legal status of individuals in our country. That's not racist. Deciding who to let in based on race is racist. Deciding who to let in based in religion or ethnicity or any number of things Trump has proposed is prejudiced. But caring about whether or not people achieve legal status in and of itself is not prejudiced. My own parents oppose illegal immigration because they fled their home country legally and expect others to do the same. Perhaps they are not empathetic enough to those crossing our Southern border, but they are as far from racist as any people can be, just like many others who have had similar experiences.
Her discussion of Hollywood's diversity were outright misleading in some cases. For one, Amy Adams, though born in Italy, is still considered ethnically American. Same for Natalie Portman being born in Jerusalem. More importantly, even if she had been Italian, it's highly unlikely that "if we kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts." Trump is not after Italians, one of the ethnic groups that has been established and blended into American culture for generations. He's after the more vunerable newcomers. Ironically, many of the groups notably excluded from Hollywood's diversity, such as Hispanic people, women of color, and Muslims will suffer most during a Trump presidency. After all, the border wall isn't being built to keep out people born in Jerusalem, considering how our president elect feels about Israel's right-wing government.
However, it is not the quality of Streep's argument that should worry us. It is the danger of identity politics itself. Identity politics, not prejudiced working class whites, third party voters, and Bernie supporters, is what lost Clinton the election. Understandably, the trust in polling has tanked since the election showed some deep flaws reminiscent of the historical prediction that Alf Landon would beat FDR. But many polls observed that those who were expected to vote for Clinton but did not vote at all were the deciding factor causing the error in many flawed predictions of the election outcome. The Young Turks did an excellent piece on this, stating in summary that Trump did not win so much as Clinton lost. The Democratic party cannot continue to rely on those of us who have the privilege of voting based on identity--I am as excited as anyone by the prospect of a female president, long overdue, and as proud to support that we are stronger together. However, Democrats have largely failed to even nominally address the concerns of the working class. With a few notable exceptions (e.g. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Harry Reid), the Democratic party has grown increasingly subsurvient to corporate donors and not afraid to show it, while the income gap grows dramatically. Since Republicans laregly don't see income inequality as an issue, it makes sense that these voters historically have been a reliable voting bloc for the Democratic party. But this equilibrium has shattered, leaving in its wake millions who will be disappointed to find out that Trump is merely a pseudo-populist and suffer for it. The fact Clinton disrespected them invited us to suffer a Trump presidency. Streep mused that "an actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like." I love the idea that art engenders empathy and see the connection between personal empathy and political decisions. But Streep's (and most of Hollywood's) choice of candidate failed to exercise empathy, directly causing the nightmare situation where a man who mocks a disabled reporter can be elected president. And in turn, they supported her because of their own lack of empathy insofar as identity politics inherently carries the message that we should vote for a candidate because they share our identity (i.e. women saying all women should automatically support Clinton merely for being female) or because they appeal to that identity. It is ultimately harmful because it obscures the truth about prejudice: while "disrespect invites disrespect", a group of people stripped of socioeconomic and political power also are destined to be disrespected. That was the central truth that Bernie understood. People portrayed him as indifferent to racism because he spoke predominately of income inequality (nevermind that he was arrested for protesting segregation at the same time Clinton supported the pro-segregation Republican Barry Goldwater) and lacking interest in LGBTQA issues (even though he has openly supported marriage equality since the 1960s while Clinton only came out in favor of it in 2013) because he campaigned to raise the minimum wage.
People largely informed by the corporate-controlled media that opted to omit or heavily downplay these inconvenient truths because it would hurt their economic interests. Yet if we dealt with income inequality, much of the systemic and de facto racism would also be resolved. And if the minimum wage were raised, LGBTQA youths (frequently kicked out of their homes before finishing their education) and the rest of us could live without fear of losing a tenuous economic foothold while trapped in minimum wage jobs. The running theme is that these policies would both resolve many issues related to identity, but also unify us as Americans by providing unilateral benefits to all, and protect the Democratic Party from fracturing based on racial resentment instead of inflaming the resentment between groups as they vie for the spotlight to fall upon their identity. The corporate media and wealthiest would lose some of their advantages though, so this point was silenced. They hardy seem interested in aiming to "safeguard the truth" as Streep claims in her praise of the media. The truth is that the only way to help all the minorities and vunerable in our country is to deal with the economic problems that have fractured us into factions that care about their own groups and factions that are too preoccupied just trying to survive.
I am not aiming to criticize Meryl Streep as an individual for not having seen through that or being overpowered by greed as those deliberately perpetuating lies for their own benefit. Rather, I felt as if I found an opportunity to explain the problem that Hollywood largely seems to not understand based on the widespread support enjoyed Hillary Clinton among Hollywood's top names--being nice in words to people of different ethnicities, legal statuses, abilities, etc. is very different from actually supporting them and being respectful toward all Americans. Sticks and stones and words all don't hurt me quite as much as lacking a stable income to buy groceries and lacking adequate healthcare while millionaires such as Clinton enjoy increasingly large tax breaks. That's what this is about. So I would say to Ms. Streep, if you feel this way, you should support a Democratic Party that does not rely on Obama and Clinton's identity politics approach, but rather an inclusive and unifying mission represented by Bernie Sanders. While we cannot undo this election, you can help change the Democratic Party by using your voice and fame to support Keith Ellison as DNC chair and raising awareness of the underlying issues. And who knows, maybe Bernie will be back in 2020 to rescue us.
