Meryl Streep's Sports Dig at Golden Globes Was Quite Trump-ish Of Her

by Julian Spivey
Meryl Streep made quite a few waves on Sunday night at the Golden Globe Awards during her acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award, for lifetime achievement. The eight-time Golden Globe winner made the decision to go political in her six-minute speech calling out President-elect Donald Trump, without ever once mentioning his name.
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Streep called out Trump’s hateful and bullying rhetoric during her speech. She said: “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 was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter.” She later added, “When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”

President-elect Trump responded on Monday with a tweet calling Streep “one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood,” even though he called her one of his favorite actresses in an interview in 2015.

I’ve always been in support of celebrities speaking their minds on important topics. After all, if us regular Joes believe we have the right to do so, why shouldn’t famous people? I also agree with a lot of what Streep said last night and believe she mostly did so eloquently.

But, she made one big mistake and it honestly has nothing to do with politics.

Streep, who definitely had her speech either memorized or on the teleprompter, in trying to prove the point about how Hollywood wouldn’t exist without many of the people President-elect Trump seems to take issue with said, “Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if we kick ‘em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”

So, in this great, eloquent speech about understanding others and how one shouldn’t bully others she in fact makes the mistake of both not understanding those different than her and her ilk and stoops to bullying rhetoric by running down the skills of athletes.

This almost throw away statement on her part may have played well to the room at the Globes, but it instantly stood out to me as something that took away greatly from her overall point and it has riled up fans of both football and MMA and rightfully so.

First, Streep’s statement is incredibly inaccurate – almost as if it were something coming straight from the mouth of President-elect Trump. There are many foreign fighters in mixed martial arts, in fact five of the 10 current champions in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) were born outside of the United States. Maybe Streep should’ve done some research before making this idiotic claim?

Second, saying that football and mixed martial arts “are not the arts” is just as rude and hateful as someone bashing acting, and is obviously just a matter of opinion, but she says it as if it’s fact.

Streep’s little jab at athletics comes off as a bitchy statement from someone who after 40 years of winning numerous awards, basically everything an actor could possibly win, still seemingly takes issue with that fact that football players and other “jocks” get more attention in high schools and colleges than theater kids.
Many on Monday were bashing Streep’s speech for being either holier than thou or out of touch with much of America – and many of those bashing Streep are doing so for the wrong reasons, in my opinion – but if they want to pinpoint this particular sentence that struck a nerve so much with me than they might have a point. After all Mrs. Streep, when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.

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