A Case of Streep Throat

In my short review of The Iron Lady last week I noted that Meryl Streep had generally spoken carefully about her opinions about Margaret Thatcher.  The worst I could find at that time was her comment to Newsweek that “For feminists it’s a betrayal because she doesn’t do the right thing, and so you hate her more than you’d hate a man who stood for the same things.”

I had missed the comments Streep and the film’s director, Phyllida Lloyd, made to the New York Times right before Christmas, where they similarly let the mask slip:

Ms. Lloyd, who is probably better known as a stage director than a filmmaker, said she sometimes thought of “The Iron Lady” as “ ‘King Lear’ for girls.” “Here is this mighty leader reduced to nothing,” she added. “No, not to nothing — to a reckoning with herself.”

Ms. Streep said, laughing: “We’re not interested in King Lear’s politics. We’re not saying we would have voted for him.” She added: “What interested me was the part of someone who does monstrous things maybe, or misguided things. Where do they come from? How do those formulations begin, how do they solidify, calcify, become deficits? How do a person’s strengths become weaknesses?”

Monstrous things?  Like restoring Britain’s economy instead of acquiescing in its continued decline?  Like standing up for the Western alliance against the tides of capitulation to the Soviet Union in the opposition party?  Like . . . never mind; this is obviously futile when dealing with a political child of Hollywood like Streep.

As a special bonus, Streep calls England “class bound, socially rigid, homophobic.”  Class bound and socially rigid, yes, but homophobicBritain?  With all due respect to the clichés about ancient Greece, Britain practically invented the celebration of homosexuality.  Unlike Hollywood for most of its existence, for example.

Hat tip: Breitbart’s Big Hollywood.

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