New article by The Washington Post: A little less than a year ago, just before the inauguration of Donald Trump, Meryl Streep accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes ceremony in Los Angeles, using her speech to castigate the president-elect for his treatment of the press during the presidential campaign, especially a disabled New York Times reporter. “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,” she said to a crowd of her largely supportive peers. “Disrespect invites disrespect; violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.” She concluded by rallying support for the Committee to Protect Journalists. Streep’s remarks — the first widely publicized criticism of Trump by a world-famous figure since his election — became a fulcrum moment, especially in Hollywood. “It felt like [she] was finally letting the air out of the room,” producer Kristie Mocosko Krieger recalls. “We were all just keeping our mouths shut for so long, and [Meryl was] like, ‘[Forget] it — I’m not keeping my mouth shut anymore.’” The screenwriter Liz Hannah remembers the Golden Globes speech just as vividly. At the time, her script for “The Post,” about Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham confronting the perilous decision to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971, was making the rounds in Hollywood. Immediately after Streep spoke, one of “The Post’s” producers, Tim White, texted Hannah and fellow producer Amy Pascal. “He said, ‘Did you see Meryl give her speech?’” Hannah recalls. “And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘That’s Kay.’”. The complete article can be read over at The Washington Post. Many thanks to Glenn for the heads-up.
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