Why America hates Hollywood, or should

John has already written about the Trump hate-fest at the Golden Globe awards last night. I want to focus on Meryl Streep’s attack on the president-elect.

Streep hammered Trump for ridiculing a New York Times reporter [formerly with the Washington Post reporter] with a disability. She said:

[T]here 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.

Trump’s mocking of the reporter was disgusting. His denial that he had mocked the guy was pathetic.

But David French points out that during the same event in which Streep condemned Trump, she applauded a man who did something far worse. She, and most of the other assembled Hollywood worthies, applauded Roman Polanski who received a Golden Globe award.

As French reminds us:

Roman Polanski pled guilty to statutory rape and admitted in open court to having sex with his victim when he knew she was only 13 years old. Polanski was 43. In so doing, he avoided trial on a number of more serious charges.

Polanski didn’t just have sex with the 13 year old. There is strong reason to believe that he raped her, and not just in the statutory sense. French writes:

According to [the victim’s] April 4, 1977 grand-jury testimony, Polanski drove her to Jack Nicholson’s house. The actor wasn’t home, but his ex-girlfriend Anjelica Huston was there when they arrived.

Polanski poured Gailey champagne and they took more photographs. After they shared a quaalude, he instructed her to strip and enter a Jacuzzi, where—despite her protests—he soon joined her, after removing his own clothes.

She lied about having asthma as an excuse to leave the hot tub. Although Gailey repeatedly told him “no” and asked him to drive her home, he proceeded to perform oral, vaginal, and anal sex on her inside the house. Gailey told the grand jury she was reluctant to resist because she was “afraid” of Polanski.

Polanski fled the United States rather than serve his sentence. He lives overseas, where, according to French, he has directed a number of films starring a cavalcade of Hollywood liberals.

If making fun of a veteran reporter who, though disabled, surely has some thick bark on him, “sank hooks” in Streep’s heart, what effect did the rape of a 13 year old girl by a powerful Hollywood director have on her heart?

None, or she wouldn’t have stood and applauded the pervert last night.

The enthusiastic applause by Streep and many others for Polanski, who having fled the U.S. couldn’t accept it in person, tells you everything you need to know about Hollywood and its celebrities. The attitude that underlies this reaction helps explain why I almost never watch anything that Hollywood currently grinds out.

It helps explains why most Americans don’t take the pompous utterances of people like Meryl Streep seriously, why many Americans hate Hollywood, and why the rest of the country should.

Here is the video of the reaction to Polanski’s award. Streep can be seen standing and clapping at about the 1:10 mark.

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